THE CRAZE FOR BIOGRAPHIES. T HE craze of the reading public
at this moment is bio- graphy and autobiography. Nothing but the Lives of distinguished or notorious people, if possible written by them- selves, will now give satisfaction to the general reader. Indeed, so urgent has been the demand, that to meet it the supply for the next fifty years has been forestalled. Time was when a man's life and reminiscences never appeared till he had been at the very least ten or fifteen years in the grave. Now there are plenty of men not much passed middle-life who have published their memoirs ; while a public man who has lived to be eighty and not given his Life to the world, is becoming quite a rarity. The most reticent have their recollections put up in type during their lifetime, and make death the signal to the printer to begin his work. Carlyle was helping Mr. Fronde to stitch his literary shroud all through his last years, knowing full well that his memoirs would be mentioned as " forthcoming " in the announcements of his death.
At first sight, it might seem as if this desire for biographies was a good sign, and that people generally were beginning to realise that the most delightful thing in the world is the history of a man told faithfully either by himself or by some competent observer. Mr. Mathew Arnold has lately told us, in effect, that the most civilised community is that which is most interesting. Is not, then, the love of biography, the liking to know what must be admitted to be the most interesting thing that men can occupy themselves with—the study of mankind—a sign of the higher civilisation Perhaps so ; but what do we mean by " biography " ? If we mean the true record of great lives laid bare for us to trace the motives and the actions that have changed the history of the world, even ii we mean the story of the quietest of lives told so that we can see the real man beneath, then the love for biography is something to be proud of. If, however, we mean by biography a mere collection of stories and anecdotes of the eminent people of the day strung upon the bare thread of the ex- ternal events of this or that man or woman's life—such a book as that published this week by Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft—then emphatically we must say that there is nothing upon which we can congratulate ourselves in the new craze for biography. It shows no more than that the love for anecdotes is universally inherent in the human mind. To read, as we read in so many modern reminiscences, that the writer dined with this or that person, and met so many or so few distinguished guests, and that the following stories were told, is not biography; it is mere anecdotage. The stories may be good enough and well worth reading ; but the desire on the part of the public to know them is no more a subject for congratulation than the desire of the maid-servant to read through the column of comic varieties in a provincial newspaper. So few auto- biographies, in the true sense of the word, have been published of late years, that it is difficult to quote an example. Let us take, however, the Life of himself published by the late Rector of Lincoln, to illustrate the distinction. Here there were few stories of great men, few happy sayings to be picked out by the reviewers ; but, instead, the real picture of a man painted in detail, and with the most consummate literary skill. The Life was no padding from old journals and commonplace-books in which the writer had written down " a good thing " whenever he heard it, but the true, if disagreeable, story of a human heart. Less noticed at the time, and even more rapidly over- whelmed by the cataract of new books, was a biography pub- lished at about the same date, containing the journals and letters of Mountstuart Elphinstone, the well-known Indian official. This book, again, had no anecdotes and no gossip ; but as revealing to us a man as he really lived, it was worth a hundred volumes recording the very choicest stories of the Cabinet or the Court. It showed us how the mind of a young Englishman was developed under the strangest series of conflicting influences. Imagine a young man, at the moment when his character was forming, placed in a position of great power and responsibility, and left in complete solitude, isola- tion, and danger, as the Ambassador at the Court of a hostile. treacherous, and crafty Prince of Freebooters. Remember. too, that his mind was possessed of a constitutional melan- choly, and that his tender and affectionate heart was balanced by an extreme sensitiveness and reserve. Add that his enthu- siasm for and appreciation of literature was so intense, that he felt poetry, as Keats felt it, with his whole nature—so deeply was he affected by the great Persian lyrists, that for years he did not dare to read them lest their melancholy should over- come him—and it is not difficult to realise that Elphinstone's account of himself is worth study by all who would know how men really live their lives. Fortunately for the world, Elphin- stone possessed a literary power as delicate and flexible as it was natural; and so he is able to show us not dimly, but in the full light, the workings of his mind. Another Life of a man of action, which is also just what an autobiography should be. must be mentioned here. General Grant's Memoirs are no mere sketch of the externals of his life, but the true image of a man. Probably never before, perhaps never again, shall we be told exactly how a commander feels when he goes into action. General Grant shows us this, and besides, he presents that curious problem, the man in whom the purely personal pleasure of success in battle was reduced to nothing, and who was genuinely sorry, nay, crestfallen, at having to take his opponent's sword. From such Lives as these—even from books like Amiel's Journal, where the brain, iridescent in its decay, illumines a singularly soft and kindly nature—it is possible to learn much, and to gain what in the widest sense is interesting to the world. Books, on the other hand, like Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft's Reminiscences, afford us no more perma- nent interest than does the perusal of a file of a society paper.
In one way, however, the craze for biographies may turn out a blessing. It is just possible that the public may get heartily tired of the anecdotal form of life, and yet, not- withstanding, keep up the taste for biography. If this happens, there is hope that the universal law of supply and demand may give us reading of the most delightful kind. There is plenty of ground to be covered still in the region of biography. In the first place, no woman yet has ever really told us the history of her life as Rousseau and Pepys have told theirs—that is, without any attempt at con- cealment—though Heaven forbid that the spirit of the former example should ever be followed. If, however, the form of frank confession were adopted, and we were made to realise a woman's true mental attitude towards men and towards her own sex, how extremely interesting would be the result ! Probably, however, we shall never know this. Is not there in every woman's mind a refinement, a delicacy, and a sense of the sacredness of the seclusion in which all human hearts are primarily placed, which would forbid the necessary introspec- tion ? Unless we mistake, there is a repugnance in women to self-analysis which they will never get over. Is not some of that gentle contempt which women often feel for men in general, to be accounted for by the fact that they always a little despise the male habit of self-analysis?
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