La Bruyere possessed the same gift of accurate and penetrating observation of character. He watched and studied everybody about him.
He sought to read their secrets; and, retiring to his chamber, he deliberately painted their portraits, returning to them from time to time to correct some prominent feature--hanging over them as fondly as an artist over some favourite study--adding trait to trait, and touch to touch, until at length the picture was complete and the likeness perfect.
It may be said that much of the interest of biography, especially of the more familiar sort, is of the nature of gossip; as that of the MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR is of the nature of scandal, which is no doubt true. But both gossip and scandal ill.u.s.trate the strength of the interest which men and women take in each other"s personality; and which, exhibited in the form of biography, is capable of communicating the highest pleasure, and yielding the best instruction. Indeed biography, because it is instinct of humanity, is the branch of literature which--whether in the form of fiction, of anecdotal recollection, or of personal narrative--is the one that invariably commends itself to by far the largest cla.s.s of readers.
There is no room for doubt that the surpa.s.sing interest which fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds, arises mainly from the biographic element which it contains. Homer"s "Iliad" owes its marvellous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develope themselves by their actions.
"There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have not produced any but what are to be found there."
The genius of Shakspeare also was displayed in the powerful delineation of character, and the dramatic evolution of human pa.s.sions. His personages seem to be real--living and breathing before us. So too with Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though homely and vulgar, is intensely human. The characters in Le Sage"s "Gil Blas," in Goldsmith"s "Vicar of Wakefield," and in Scott"s marvellous muster-roll, seem to us almost as real as persons whom we have actually known; and De Foe"s greatest works are but so many biographies, painted in minute detail, with reality so apparently stamped upon every page, that it is difficult to believe his Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack to have been fict.i.tious instead of real persons.
Though the richest romance lies enclosed in actual human life, and though biography, because it describes beings who have actually felt the joys and sorrows, and experienced the difficulties and triumphs, of real life, is capable of being made more attractive, than the most perfect fictions ever woven, it is remarkable that so few men of genius have been attracted to the composition of works of this kind. Great works of fiction abound, but great biographies may be counted on the fingers. It may be for the same reason that a great painter of portraits, the late John Philip, R.A., explained his preference for subject-painting, because, said he, "Portrait-painting does not pay." Biographic portraiture involves laborious investigation and careful collection of facts, judicious rejection and skilful condensation, as well as the art of presenting the character portrayed in the most attractive and lifelike form; whereas, in the work of fiction, the writer"s imagination is free to create and to portray character, without being trammelled by references, or held down by the actual details of real life.
There is, indeed, no want among us of ponderous but lifeless memoirs, many of them little better than inventories, put together with the help of the scissors as much as of the pen. What Constable said of the portraits of an inferior artist--"He takes all the bones and brains out of his heads"--applies to a large cla.s.s of portraiture, written as well as painted. They have no more life in them than a piece of waxwork, or a clothes-dummy at a tailor"s door. What we want is a picture of a man as he lived, and lo! we have an exhibition of the biographer himself. We expect an embalmed heart, and we find only clothes.
There is doubtless as high art displayed in painting a portrait in words, as there is in painting one in colours. To do either well requires the seeing eye and the skilful pen or brush. A common artist sees only the features of a face, and copies them; but the great artist sees the living soul shining through the features, and places it on the canvas. Johnson was once asked to a.s.sist the chaplain of a deceased bishop in writing a memoir of his lordship; but when he proceeded to inquire for information, the chaplain could scarcely tell him anything.
Hence Johnson was led to observe that "few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him."
In the case of Johnson"s own life, it was the seeing eye of Boswell that enabled him to note and treasure up those minute details of habit and conversation in which so much of the interest of biography consists.
Boswell, because of his simple love and admiration of his hero, succeeded where probably greater men would have failed. He descended to apparently insignificant, but yet most characteristic, particulars. Thus he apologizes for informing the reader that Johnson, when journeying, "carried in his hand a large English oak-stick:" adding, "I remember Dr.
Adam Smith, in his rhetorical lectures at Glasgow, told us he was glad to know that Milton wore latchets in his shoes instead of buckles."
Boswell lets us know how Johnson looked, what dress he wore, what was his talk, what were his prejudices. He painted him with all his scars, and a wonderful portrait it is--perhaps the most complete picture of a great man ever limned in words.
But for the accident of the Scotch advocate"s intimacy with Johnson, and his devoted admiration of him, the latter would not probably have stood nearly so high in literature as he now does. It is in the pages of Boswell that Johnson really lives; and but for Boswell, he might have remained little more than a name. Others there are who have bequeathed great works to posterity, but of whose lives next to nothing is known.
What would we not give to have a Boswell"s account of Shakspeare? We positively know more of the personal history of Socrates, of Horace, of Cicero, of Augustine, than we do of that of Shakspeare. We do not know what was his religion, what were his politics, what were his experiences, what were his relations to his contemporaries. The men of his own time do not seem to have recognised his greatness; and Ben Jonson, the court poet, whose blank-verse Shakspeare was content to commit to memory and recite as an actor, stood higher in popular estimation. We only know that he was a successful theatrical manager, and that in the prime of life he retired to his native place, where he died, and had the honours of a village funeral. The greater part of the biography which has been constructed respecting him has been the result, not of contemporary observation or of record, but of inference. The best inner biography of the man is to be found in his sonnets.
Men do not always take an accurate measure of their contemporaries. The statesman, the general, the monarch of to-day fills all eyes and ears, though to the next generation he may be as if he had never been. "And who is king to-day?" the painter Greuze would ask of his daughter, during the throes of the first French Revolution, when men, great for the time, were suddenly thrown to the surface, and as suddenly dropt out of sight again, never to reappear. "And who is king to-day? After all,"
Greuze would add, "Citizen Homer and Citizen Raphael will outlive those great citizens of ours, whose names I have never before heard of."
Yet of the personal history of Homer nothing is known, and of Raphael comparatively little. Even Plutarch, who wrote the lives of others: so well, has no biography, none of the eminent Roman writers who were his contemporaries having so much as mentioned his name. And so of Correggio, who delineated the features of others so well, there is not known to exist an authentic portrait.
There have been men who greatly influenced the life of their time, whose reputation has been much greater with posterity than it was with their contemporaries. Of Wickliffe, the patriarch of the Reformation, our knowledge is extremely small. He was but as a voice crying in the wilderness. We do not really know who was the author of "The Imitation of Christ"--a book that has had an immense circulation, and exercised a vast religious influence in all Christian countries. It is usually attributed to Thomas a Kempis but there is reason to believe that he was merely its translator, and the book that is really known to be his, [1910]
is in all respects so inferior, that it is difficult to believe that "The Imitation" proceeded from the same pen. It is considered more probable that the real author was John Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, a most learned and devout man, who died in 1429.
Some of the greatest men of genius have had the shortest biographies. Of Plato, one of the great fathers of moral philosophy, we have no personal account. If he had wife and children, we hear nothing of them. About the life of Aristotle there is the greatest diversity of opinion. One says he was a Jew; another, that he only got his information from a Jew: one says he kept an apothecary"s shop; another, that he was only the son of a physician: one alleges that he was an atheist; another, that he was a Trinitarian, and so forth. But we know almost as little with respect to many men of comparatively modern times. Thus, how little do we know of the lives of Spenser, author of "The Faerie Queen," and of Butler, the author of "Hudibras," beyond the fact that they lived in comparative obscurity, and died in extreme poverty! How little, comparatively, do we know of the life of Jeremy Taylor, the golden preacher, of whom we should like to have known so much!
The author of "Philip Van Artevelde" has said that "the world knows nothing of its greatest men." And doubtless oblivion has enwrapt in its folds many great men who have done great deeds, and been forgotten.
Augustine speaks of Romania.n.u.s as the greatest genius that ever lived, and yet we know nothing of him but his name; he is as much forgotten as the builders of the Pyramids. Gordiani"s epitaph was written in five languages, yet it sufficed not to rescue him from oblivion.
Many, indeed, are the lives worthy of record that have remained unwritten. Men who have written books have been the most fortunate in this respect, because they possess an attraction for literary men which those whose lives have been embodied in deeds do not possess. Thus there have been lives written of Poets Laureate who were mere men of their time, and of their time only. Dr. Johnson includes some of them in his "Lives of the Poets," such as Edmund Smith and others, whose poems are now no longer known. The lives of some men of letters--such as Goldsmith, Swift, Sterne, and Steele--have been written again and again, whilst great men of action, men of science, and men of industry, are left without a record. [1911]
We have said that a man may be known by the company he keeps in his books. Let us mention a few of the favourites of the best-known men.
Plutarch"s admirers have already been referred to. Montaigne also has been the companion of most meditative men. Although Shakspeare must have studied Plutarch carefully, inasmuch as he copied from him freely, even to his very words, it is remarkable that Montaigne is the only book which we certainly know to have been in the poet"s library; one of Shakspeare"s existing autographs having been found in a copy of Florio"s translation of "The Essays," which also contains, on the flyleaf, the autograph of Ben Jonson.
Milton"s favourite books were Homer, Ovid, and Euripides. The latter book was also the favourite of Charles James Fox, who regarded the study of it as especially useful to a public speaker. On the other hand, Pitt took especial delight in Milton--whom Fox did not appreciate--taking pleasure in reciting, from "Paradise Lost," the grand speech of Belial before the a.s.sembled powers of Pandemonium. Another of Pitt"s favourite books was Newton"s "Principia." Again, the Earl of Chatham"s favourite book was "Barrow"s Sermons," which he read so often as to be able to repeat them from memory; while Burke"s companions were Demosthenes, Milton, Bolingbroke, and Young"s "Night Thoughts."
Curran"s favourite was Homer, which he read through once a year. Virgil was another of his favourites; his biographer, Phillips, saying that he once saw him reading the "Aeneid" in the cabin of a Holyhead packet, while every one about him was prostrate by seasickness.
Of the poets, Dante"s favourite was Virgil; Corneille"s was Lucan; Schiller"s was Shakspeare; Gray"s was Spenser; whilst Coleridge admired Collins and Bowles. Dante himself was a favourite with most great poets, from Chaucer to Byron and Tennyson. Lord Brougham, Macaulay, and Carlyle have alike admired and eulogized the great Italian. The former advised the students at Glasgow that, next to Demosthenes, the study of Dante was the best preparative for the eloquence of the pulpit or the bar.
Robert Hall sought relief in Dante from the racking pains of spinal disease; and Sydney Smith took to the same poet for comfort and solace in his old age. It was characteristic of Goethe that his favourite book should have been Spinoza"s "Ethics," in which he said he had found a peace and consolation such as he had been able to find in no other work.
[1912]
Barrow"s favourite was St. Chrysostom; Bossuet"s was Homer. Bunyan"s was the old legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton, which in all probability gave him the first idea of his "Pilgrim"s Progress." One of the best prelates that ever sat on the English bench, Dr. John Sharp, said--"Shakspeare and the Bible have made me Archbishop of York." The two books which most impressed John Wesley when a young man, were "The Imitation of Christ" and Jeremy Taylor"s "Holy Living and Dying." Yet Wesley was accustomed to caution his young friends against overmuch reading. "Beware you be not swallowed up in books," he would say to them; "an ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge."
Wesley"s own Life has been a great favourite with many thoughtful readers. Coleridge says, in his preface to Southey"s "Life of Wesley,"
that it was more often in his hands than any other in his ragged book-regiment. "To this work, and to the Life of Richard Baxter," he says, "I was used to resort whenever sickness and languor made me feel the want of an old friend of whose company I could never be tired. How many and many an hour of self-oblivion do I owe to this Life of Wesley; and how often have I argued with it, questioned, remonstrated, been peevish, and asked pardon; then again listened, and cried, "Right!
Excellent!" and in yet heavier hours entreated it, as it were, to continue talking to me; for that I heard and listened, and was soothed, though I could make no reply!" [1913]
Soumet had only a very few hooks in his library, but they were of the best--Homer, Virgil, Dante, Camoens, Ta.s.so, and Milton. De Quincey"s favourite few were Donne, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, South, Barrow, and Sir Thomas Browne. He described these writers as "a pleiad or constellation of seven golden stars, such as in their cla.s.s no literature can match," and from whose works he would undertake "to build up an entire body of philosophy."
Frederick the Great of Prussia manifested his strong French leanings in his choice of books; his princ.i.p.al favourites being Bayle, Rousseau, Voltaire, Rollin, Fleury, Malebranche, and one English author--Locke.
His especial favourite was Bayle"s Dictionary, which was the first book that laid hold of his mind; and he thought so highly of it, that he himself made an abridgment and translation of it into German, which was published. It was a saying of Frederick"s, that "books make up no small part of true happiness." In his old age he said, "My latest pa.s.sion will be for literature."
It seems odd that Marshal Blucher"s favourite book should have been Klopstock"s "Messiah," and Napoleon Buonaparte"s favourites, Ossian"s "Poems" and the "Sorrows of Werther." But Napoleon"s range of reading was very extensive. It included Homer, Virgil, Ta.s.so; novels of all countries; histories of all times; mathematics, legislation, and theology. He detested what he called "the bombast and tinsel" of Voltaire. The praises of Homer and Ossian he was never wearied of sounding. "Read again," he said to an officer on board the BELLEROPHO--"read again the poet of Achilles; devour Ossian. Those are the poets who lift up the soul, and give to man a colossal greatness."
[1914]
The Duke of Wellington was an extensive reader; his princ.i.p.al favourites were Clarendon, Bishop Butler, Smith"s "Wealth of Nations," Hume, the Archduke Charles, Leslie, and the Bible. He was also particularly interested by French and English memoirs--more especially the French MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR of all kinds. When at Walmer, Mr. Gleig says, the Bible, the Prayer Book, Taylor"s "Holy Living and Dying," and Caesar"s "Commentaries," lay within the Duke"s reach; and, judging by the marks of use on them, they must have been much read and often consulted.
While books are among the best companions of old age, they are often the best inspirers of youth. The first book that makes a deep impression on a young man"s mind, often const.i.tutes an epoch in his life. It may fire the heart, stimulate the enthusiasm, and by directing his efforts into unexpected channels, permanently influence his character. The new book, in which we form an intimacy with a new friend, whose mind is wiser and riper than our own, may thus form an important starting-point in the history of a life. It may sometimes almost be regarded in the light of a new birth.
From the day when James Edward Smith was presented with his first botanical lesson-book, and Sir Joseph Banks fell in with Gerard"s "Herbal"--from the time when Alfieri first read Plutarch, and Schiller made his first acquaintance with Shakspeare, and Gibbon devoured the first volume of "The Universal History"--each dated an inspiration so exalted, that they felt as if their real lives had only then begun.
In the earlier part of his youth, La Fontaine was distinguished for his idleness, but hearing an ode by Malherbe read, he is said to have exclaimed, "I too am a poet," and his genius was awakened. Charles Bossuet"s mind was first fired to study by reading, at an early age, Fontenelle"s "Eloges" of men of science. Another work of Fontenelle"s--"On the Plurality of Worlds"--influenced the mind of Lalande in making choice of a profession. "It is with pleasure," says Lalande himself in a preface to the book, which he afterwards edited, "that I acknowledge my obligation to it for that devouring activity which its perusal first excited in me at the age of sixteen, and which I have since retained."
In like manner, Lacepede was directed to the study of natural history by the perusal of Buffon"s "Histoire Naturelle," which he found in his father"s library, and read over and over again until he almost knew it by heart. Goethe was greatly influenced by the reading of Goldsmith"s "Vicar of Wakefield," just at the critical moment of his mental development; and he attributed to it much of his best education. The reading of a prose "Life of Gotz vou Berlichingen" afterwards stimulated him to delineate his character in a poetic form. "The figure of a rude, well-meaning self-helper," he said, "in a wild anarchic time, excited my deepest sympathy."
Keats was an insatiable reader when a boy; but it was the perusal of the "Faerie Queen," at the age of seventeen, that first lit the fire of his genius. The same poem is also said to have been the inspirer of Cowley, who found a copy of it accidentally lying on the window of his mother"s apartment; and reading and admiring it, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet.
Coleridge speaks of the great influence which the poems of Bowles had in forming his own mind. The works of a past age, says he, seem to a young man to be things of another race; but the writings of a contemporary "possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man. His very admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves a.s.sume the properties of flesh and blood."
[1915]
But men have not merely been stimulated to undertake special literary pursuits by the perusal of particular books; they have been also stimulated by them to enter upon particular lines of action in the serious business of life. Thus Henry Martyn was powerfully influenced to enter upon his heroic career as a missionary by perusing the Lives of Henry Brainerd and Dr. Carey, who had opened up the furrows in which he went forth to sow the seed.
Bentham has described the extraordinary influence which the perusal of "Telemachus" exercised upon his mind in boyhood. "Another book," said he, "and of far higher character [19than a collection of Fairy Tales, to which he refers], was placed in my hands. It was "Telemachus." In my own imagination, and at the age of six or seven, I identified my own personality with that of the hero, who seemed to me a model of perfect virtue; and in my walk of life, whatever it may come to be, why [19said I to myself every now and then]--why should not I be a Telemachus?....
That romance may be regarded as THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF MY WHOLE CHARACTER--the starting-post from whence my career of life commenced.
The first dawning in my mind of the "Principles of Utility" may, I think, be traced to it." [1916]
Cobbett"s first favourite, because his only book, which he bought for threepence, was Swift"s "Tale of a Tub," the repeated perusal of which had, doubtless, much to do with the formation of his pithy, straightforward, and hard-hitting style of writing. The delight with which Pope, when a schoolboy, read Ogilvy"s "Homer" was, most probably, the origin of the English "Iliad;" as the "Percy Reliques" fired the juvenile mind of Scott, and stimulated him to enter upon the collection and composition of his "Border Ballads." Keightley"s first reading of "Paradise Lost," when a boy, led to his afterwards undertaking his Life of the poet. "The reading," he says, "of "Paradise Lost" for the first time forms, or should form, an era in the life of every one possessed of taste and poetic feeling. To my mind, that time is ever present.... Ever since, the poetry of Milton has formed my constant study--a source of delight in prosperity, of strength and consolation in adversity."
Good books are thus among the best of companions; and, by elevating the thoughts and aspirations, they act as preservatives against low a.s.sociations. "A natural turn for reading and intellectual pursuits,"
says Thomas Hood, "probably preserved me from the moral shipwreck so apt to befal those who are deprived in early life of their parental pilotage. My books kept me from the ring, the dogpit, the tavern, the saloon. The closet a.s.sociate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to the n.o.ble though silent discourse of Shakspeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low company and slaves."
It has been truly said, that the best books are those which most resemble good actions. They are purifying, elevating, and sustaining; they enlarge and liberalize the mind; they preserve it against vulgar worldliness; they tend to produce highminded cheerfulness and equanimity of character; they fashion, and shape, and humanize the mind. In the Northern universities, the schools in which the ancient cla.s.sics are studied, are appropriately styled "The Humanity Cla.s.ses." [1917]
Erasmus, the great scholar, was even of opinion that books were the necessaries of life, and clothes the luxuries; and he frequently postponed buying the latter until he had supplied himself with the former. His greatest favourites were the works of Cicero, which he says he always felt himself the better for reading. "I can never," he says, "read the works of Cicero on "Old Age," or "Friendship," or his "Tusculan Disputations," without fervently pressing them to my lips, without being penetrated with veneration for a mind little short of inspired by G.o.d himself." It was the accidental perusal of Cicero"s "Hortensius" which first detached St. Augustine--until then a profligate and abandoned sensualist--from his immoral life, and started him upon the course of inquiry and study which led to his becoming the greatest among the Fathers of the Early Church. Sir William Jones made it a practice to read through, once a year, the writings of Cicero, "whose life indeed," says his biographer, "was the great exemplar of his own."
When the good old Puritan Baxter came to enumerate the valuable and delightful things of which death would deprive him, his mind reverted to the pleasures he had derived from books and study. "When I die," he said, "I must depart, not only from sensual delights, but from the more manly pleasures of my studies, knowledge, and converse with many wise and G.o.dly men, and from all my pleasure in reading, hearing, public and private exercises of religion, and such like. I must leave my library, and turn over those pleasant books no more. I must no more come among the living, nor see the faces of my faithful friends, nor be seen of man; houses, and cities, and fields, and countries, gardens, and walks, will be as nothing to me. I shall no more hear of the affairs of the world, of man, or wars, or other news; nor see what becomes of that beloved interest of wisdom, piety, and peace, which I desire may prosper."
It is unnecessary to speak of the enormous moral influence which books have exercised upon the general civilization of mankind, from the Bible downwards. They contain the treasured knowledge of the human race. They are the record of all labours, achievements, speculations, successes, and failures, in science, philosophy, religion, and morals. They have been the greatest motive powers in all times. "From the Gospel to the Contrat Social," says De Bonald, "it is books that have made revolutions." Indeed, a great book is often a greater thing than a great battle. Even works of fiction have occasionally exercised immense power on society. Thus Rabelais in France, and Cervantes in Spain, overturned at the same time the dominion of monkery and chivalry, employing no other weapons but ridicule, the natural contrast of human terror.
The people laughed, and felt rea.s.sured. So "Telemachus" appeared, and recalled men back to the harmonies of nature.