BIOGRAPHY.
AMID the shifting interest which makes a library so different
• a place to different readers, one department, we presume, will always keep its predominance. The "Biblia-abiblia" which, for all but the most omnivorous, make up a large proportion of those creamy folios, russet, red-labelled regiments, or hetero- geneous contemporary publications, in their crude red and brown cloth ; —will include very few biographies. Under whatever name —memoirs, letters, journals, or reminiscences—the books that aim at revealing an individual character to the world, will always number most readers. Their pre-eminence is not, indeed, un- disputed. We have known misanthropes who declare them- selves to have more than enough of the company of their fellow- men and fellow-women in actual life, and if they must meet them in literature, prefer to have them thrown into masses, so that any further investigation may be repaid by the sense of merit inseparable from the study of history. But these are remarkable specimens of humanity. For most people, the taste for biography is almost the same thing as the taste for reading. To accompany an individual life through its varying phases of blossom, fruit-bearing, and decay, sitting in one's quiet arm- chair; to pass with the boy to school, with the youth to college, to mark the gradual growth of his fame, his early disappoint- ments, his gradual recognition ; to share in his friendships, sympathise with his aims, speculate on the causes of his success or of its limits ; and then listen to his last words, and join the company of mourners round his death-bed,- this is to taste some of the pleasures alike of friendship and of fame, with absolutely none of the disadvantages of either. We know a great man, but we have not intruded upon his time ; we have not approached him with unreasonable demand or unworthy flattery, nor have we earned his attention by any laborious exertions on our part ; we have had his best, and expended nothing of our own in order to gain it. There is something soothing, too, in following out, on a small scale, the different seasons of life. To pass from the flush of hope and the pride of first achievement, through the often disappointing stage of active maturity to the autumn of falling friends and failing powers, and to th9 yet deeper pathos of the brief winter of repose,—Nature meanwhile recording on a small arc of her dial, the progress our own life has made to that same goal, showing us a skeleton tracery of dark boughs where autumn's gold and amber tempted us from the opening page, or setting the legend to an inverted music, and introducing us to our hero's brilliant career under black skies and driving winds, while we carry out the volume to read of his death-bed among the bloom and scent of spring flowers,—this is a mental excursion, helpful in many obvious and. some unexpected. ways. Some calming influence all must have felt from the reflected interests of a large life,-mirrored on this small fragment of their own ;' the lesson, trite as it may seem, of the comparative importance of what is exceptional by the side of the supreme value of its common elements, Comes home with undimmed freshness, to the mind of one who reviews it by the light of a completed. career. We feel our own heart- beats, as it were, set to the rhythm of a larger measure, we have quitted the limits of our own individual incompleteness and explored a wide domain ; yet., as we return, the conviction is borne in upon us,—" The things we shared. are more than the things that divided us." "When you are my age,, my dear," said Sir Walter Scott to his daughter Anne, who had called something vulgar not in his opinion deserving the stigma, "you will thank God that nothing that is much worth having is not common ;" and his life preached. the lesson more eloquently than the touching words. The appanage of genius, when it is largest, seems a small thing, beside the inheritance of humanity.
We have spoken of this as the lesson of a larger life, but we are far from believing that it needs colossal powers to set it forth, Indeed, we are by no means inclined to echo a common complaint of the day, that "every name which has ever appeared on a title-page is considered a fit subject for a biography." How far a life is suited for a biography appears to depend on circumstances to some degree independent of the scale of its achievements. It is possible that a great career had better be left unportrayed. Sometimes its own interest is of a kind. that should not be revealed, sometimes there is little to say about it but what it has said for itself. And some lives that are anything but great are full of interest in the hands of a worthy biographer. No doubt, in this respect, affection and sorrow are liable to delusion ; yet even in their feeblest .effort, where it is perfectly sincere, we find so much of value, that we should have no heart to discourage any fresh addition to the stores. The only question we would ask a biographer, even of an obscure life, is, " Can you tell your story P" Every one who aims at setting forth another life to the public, unless from some low motive, has probably within him something that others would be thankful to receive, could he really transfer it. What he thinks it worth while to write they would think it worth while to read, if they really read what he aimed. at writing. The truth is, that what is needed. for a Biography is not so much exceptional power or exceptional beauty, as exceptional illumination. The most ordinary life, could we really see it, would be full of interest. Could we penetrate the thick fog which enfolds the true history of each one of us, and witness the drama of wish, hope, and. effort which goes on behind that opaque curtain, we should not miss the interest of remarkable incident, or even remarkable achievement ; the ordinary vicissitude of aspiration and dis- appointment, love and grief, would be quite enough for us. But it is not even those who have thus penetrated who can lift the curtain for others. The lessons drawn from the joys and sorrows of an average life can be reproduced, for the most part, only on the pages of fiction ; and if we are to have light enough to paint an individual career, we roust generally seek our subject on the heights. And yet exceptions will not fail to occur to most readers, and there is none who would assert that the interest inspired by biographies bears any proportion to the value of that which their subjects have bequeathed to us through other channels. What should we remember of Johnson, without Bos- well P The biographer there created the interest for every generation but his own. The rugged and massive individuality which has become familiar to so many thousands of readers, is endeared to them by 'qualities of which elsewhere than in that biography they have no glimmer. From Johnson's writings we should know nothing of the man whose up- roarious enjoyment of his own very small jokes affects us as the finest wit, whose tenderness towards the poor and the despised, peers out amid his roughness like Alpine flowers, whose very rudenesses are remembered. as the preliminaries to what might be taken for the model of a manly and simple apology. And if the most famous delineation in all biography is thus, as it were, only accidentally connected with any pre-eminence but that very strength of individuality which is its own object, one does not see why such delineation should. not at some time dispense with all independent eminence, and reveal through its loving portraiture a character for the knowledge of which we were dependent on the painter alone. But as a matter of fact, such a portrait has never yet been, and it is not very probable that it ever should be painted. We arc reminded of the possi- bility only by seeing the very different degrees in which lives equally important in every other respect lend themselves to the art of the narrator.
Itis in the interest of what we feel the most instructive and delightful of all forms of literature, that we would protest against a growing tendency which, originating in the desire to enrich this fairest parterre in our garden, seems to us to bid fair to
choke it with weeds. We have, on several occasions, called this attention of our readers to what we feel to be one of the great dangers of our time,--its increasing disinclination to reserve. -There is no department of life which does not seem to us to have lost something of its dignity by this tendency, but that which it has most hurt is that in which we have all the keenest interest,—the narratives of life, either revealed by those who are the subjects of the narrative, or by others. Do not let us be misunderstood. Biography, which is but a part of history, if it is to have any value must contain the materials for moral judgment ; and if it is not a transcript from fact, these materials are worthless. We would not only -concede, we would urge, that the biographer should give a complete portrait; and it would not be difficult to point to instances where an interesting and valuable biography loses something of its interest and its value, because the biographer has resolved to see only that part of his subject which was noble etud memorable. If we are to represent a man's character, we should represent it fully. But the question is whether you do represent a man's character more fully by putting every scrap of information about him on record. We can imagine a literary 'condition in which we should protest against the timidity which would curtain round a great man's character from any breath of censure, and the untruthfulness which would retouch the copy 'of some actual features from a cast of the Apollo Belvidere. Only this condition, surely, would be the very opposite of ours. It is possible to fall on the right hand, but when we are so far to the left, it would be better to get nearer the ditch on that side. We should make a great step, as things are, if we conceded that we are not miraculously guarded against any infringement ot the sphere of silence when we meddle with print. Nobody questions that, while truth is always valuable, it is yet possible to tell one person what should be left unspoken, and we urge no more than that it is possible to do the like by several hundreds. There is no magic in printer's ink, that it should filter away whatever would. be felt unsuitable for ordinary ink. Every one will agree with us when we say that Rousseau should not have published his "Confessions," and if decency," in the ordinary sense of the word, is to be the only limit -to a justifiable literary frankness, we do not see why it should not be the only limit to frankness that is not literary -also. Surely, there are several grounds on which true things -should be left unspoken. We should go so far as to allow -that there are some biographies, and some of much inter- est, which ought not to have been written, though pro- bably this would never be the case with the biography of a great man. The proportion of objection changes altogether, when it is a question of revealing more clearly to the world the -character of one who has already opened the door to such reve- lation. Byron's profligacy, for instance, would have been a mason against undertaking the biography of a man of lesser fame. And there are other reasons why we should be propor- tionately more careful, as we unveil the lesser lives ; the life of a great man needs no adventitious interest, but it is often possible to put a more private career in a picturesque light, by some hint that unveils a vista which it is not legitimate to explore. This is a kind of cheap effectiveness which reviewers are quite as much in danger of pursuing as are authors ; and indeed, the tendency we deprecate takes in the field of personal remark and -narrative in the periodical literature of the day quite as much -as that of literature properly so called.
It is interesting and instructive to note the connection of this tendency with what many would consider the most valuable ciufluence of our day. Physical Science, colouring the specula- tions and moulding the dialect of those who.are ignorant of all in it but its most obvious and rudimentary laws, has gradually absorbed to itself that ideal of orthodoxy which belonged, in the days of our fathers, to a wholly different region. In the world -of literature, this influence has told, among other ways, in setting up a standard of what is generally called truth, but what sve would rather call accuracy, which must perforce some- what blunt and deaden that instinct which demands, not that information should be given accurately, but that it should not ,la,be_giveu at all. In itself, this scientific standard is most vale- n le, If we accustom ourselves to remember and record the facts of experience and history with the accuracy needful to any scientific record, we are materially helped on our way to that moral virtue Which we know as truthfulness ; and we should -suppose, as a matter of fact, that a man of science would, except under some temptation to which he might give a plausible aspect, be rarely untruthful. At the same time, we think that both the duty of accuracy and the duty of truthfulness will be better observed, when they are seen to be distinct. It is possible to convey an absolute falsehood through the most per- feet accuracy. We have known a friendship ended by an accurate repetition to an accused person of part of his friend's indignant defence of his conduct. It may be objected. that in such a case a partial repetition was not accurate. But to pass by the consideration which surely the imagina- tion of every reader will illustrate, that even the complete repetition to a man of what is said by another of him, in defend- ing him from a grave imputation, would rarely fail to betray some concession the true bearing of which he could. not but misunderstand—to pass by all this, it is still true that, to identify completeness and accuracy in moral narrative, is to concede the difference we are urging. Who shall say when he has the whole account of any moral transaction before him P And, on the other hand, who would feel any perfectly accurate account of some physical experiment misleading, be- cause he knew that he had more to learn about it ? The "whispering tongue that poisoned. truth," in the case we recall, was not incorrect. Even in cases where there is no blame of any kind, do we not often feel, after some accidental betrayal of the kind, such as a letter read by a person whom it blamed, that the interests of truth would be best consulted by oblivion of what- ever has been seen ? Human imagination does not suffice to translate the moral effect of censure from the third person to the second. In such a case, and in many others, truth on the lips is falsehood in the ears. Truth about things is capable of no such duality, and a standard of accuracy cultivated by the search for it is not indeed sweless, as applied to the personal world—we could mention more than one biography in which this kind of accuracy was all that was needed to obviate grave disaster—but is so small a part of that regard for moral truth- fulness which we need in order to give a picture of character, that if we here depend upon it as adequate, it becomes wholly misleading.
Even in the mere question of proportion, how different are the two regions! In the outer world, you can mention no single fact, however trivial, which is not valuable, as far as it goes. This plant, which I find. described as bearing only blue or pink flowers, was in a single specimen found by me perfectly white. That is a piece of information about the flower. But how much accidental knowledge of human beings is misleading ? You met an eminent man at dinner many years ago, and remem- ber nothing about him but that he looked very much annoyed at having to carve a haunch of venison, he being, meanwhile, one of the most generous of men. At least, it might be said, that proves him to have cared. too much for the pleasures of the table. True, but how much else you must tell, to put that fault in its true proportion ! You would. never require thus to surround any mere physical fact with a mass of apparently contradictory facts, in order to reduce it to its proper insignifi- cance. A trifle is a trifle, in both regions. But a trifle does not put us on a wrong track in the world of physical science, as it may in the moral world. And yet, how often it brings in some picturesque or humorous element, which adds readable- ness to a narrative ! It is not every one who is above profiting by this questionable source of flavour to his style.
The change in the conception of Biography (in which, be it remembered, we would include Autobiography) on which we are remarking is mainly this,—that in former days, a bio- graphy was consciously and avowedly an account of that part of the life, and. of that only, with which the pub- lic was supposed to have any concern, it was in one sense a more partial ideal, And yet in another sense it was a more complete ideal, for it proposed to narrate nothing that could not be narrated fully. It set its object further off, but for that very reason it could give the whole figure. The new ideal, that everything that can be told about a hero should be told, is really a much more fragmentary conception, for it takes in much that it is impossible to give completely. We now know much about hfin that in former days we should not have known, but probably, in many respects whore formerly our minds would have been a blank, they are now filled with miscon- ceptions. It is true that the change is as much in the subject as in the medium ; life is less draped. altogether. If life be also better understood, perhaps the gain may be worth the loss. But the theory that reserve is hostile to truth, is the very thing we are protesting against. We are far from
thinking this change of feeling an unmixed loss. Some of the most interesting and some of the most popular books of our time owe their existence to an instinct which our forefathers, probably, would never have felt ; and if we owe it to this, that two brothers have told us, in independent narratives, how they parted on the watershed of thought, and dwell beside oceans separated by half the world, while the same instinct has made the Sovereign more known and beloved by the humblest of her subjects, we must allow that there is something to he said for the new fashion. Still, it is well to recognise the dangers of a growing taste, which provides its own nourishment. The belief that all a biographer has to consider is what his readers will receive with interest, tends to develope that which, on a small scale, we call a love of gossip, and which, in its fullest development, is the very antithesis to modesty, to refinement, to all that gives dignity and softness to human relation. Some people will think this not too heavy a pike to pay for all that it gives us. We think that here, as elsewhere, it might surely be pos- sible, to some extent, to separate the good and the evil ; and the first step towards this is to recognise the disadvantages, even if we feel, on the whole, that they are overbalanced by the gain.
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