One is often tempted of the Devil to forswear the study of history
altogether as the pursuit of the Unknowable. 'How is it possible,'
he whispers in our ear, as we stand gloomily regarding the portly
calf-bound volumes without which no gentleman's library is complete,
'how is it possible to suppose that you have there, on your shelves--the
actual facts of history--a true record of what men, dead long ago, felt
and thought?' Yet, if we have not, I for one, though of a literary
turn, would sooner spend my leisure playing skittles with boors than in
reading sonorous lies in stout volumes.
'It is not so much,' wilily insinuates the Tempter, 'that these renowned
authors lack knowledge. Their habit of giving an occasional reference
(though the verification of these is usually left to the malignancy of a
rival and less popular historian) argues at least some reading. No; what
is wanting is ignorance, carefully acquired and studiously maintained.
This is no paradox. To carry the truisms, theories, laws, language of
to-day, along with you in your historical pursuits, is to turn the muse
of history upside down--a most disrespectful proceeding--and yet to
ignore them--to forget all about them--to hang them up with your hat
and coat in the hall, to remain there whilst you sit in the library
composing your immortal work, which is so happily to combine all that
is best in Gibbon and Macaulay--a sneerless Gibbon and an impartial
Macaulay--is a task which, if it be not impossible is, at all events, of
huge difficulty.
Another blemish in English historical work has been noticed by the
Rev. Charles Kingsley, and may therefore be referred to by me without
offence. Your standard historians, having no unnatural regard for their
most indefatigable readers, the wives and daughters of England, feel it
incumbent upon them to pass over, as unfit for dainty ears and dulcet
tones, facts, and rumours of facts, which none the less often determined
events by stirring the strong feelings of your ancestors, whose conduct,
unless explained by this light, must remain enigmatical.
When, to these anachronisms of thought and omissions of fact, you have
added the dishonesty of the partisan historian and the false glamour
of the picturesque one, you will be so good as to proceed to find the
present value of history!'
Thus far the Enemy of Mankind:
An admirable lady orator is reported lately to have 'brought down'
Exeter Hall by observing, 'in a low but penetrating voice,' that the
Devil was a very stupid person. It is true that Ben Jonson is on the
side of the lady, but I am far too orthodox to entertain any such
opinion; and though I have, in this instance of history, so far resisted
him as to have refrained from sending my standard historians to the
auction mart--where, indeed, with the almost single exception of Mr.
Grote's History of Greece (the octavo edition in twelve volumes), prices
rule so low as to make cartage a consideration--I have still of late
found myself turning off the turnpike of history to loiter down the
primrose paths of men's memoirs of themselves and their times.
Here at least, so we argue, we are comparatively safe. Anachronisms of
thought are impossible; omissions out of regard for female posterity
unlikely, and as for party spirit, if found, it forms part of what
lawyers call the _res gestae_, and has therefore a value of its own.
Against the perils of the picturesque, who will insure us?
But when we have said all this, and, sick of prosing, would begin
reading, the number of really readable memoirs is soon found to be but
few. This is, indeed, unfortunate; for it launches us off on another
prose-journey by provoking the question, What makes memoirs interesting?
Is it necessary that they should be the record of a noble character?
Certainly not. We remember Pepys, who--well, never mind what he does.
We call to mind Cellini; _he_ runs behind a fellow-creature, and with
'admirable address' sticks a dagger in the nape of his neck, and long
afterwards records the fact, almost with reverence, in his life's story.
Can anything be more revolting than some portions of the revelation
Benjamin Franklin was pleased to make of himself in writing? And what
about Rousseau? Yet, when we have pleaded guilty for these men, a modern
Savonarola, who had persuaded us to make a bonfire of their works, would
do well to keep a sharp look-out, lest at the last moment we should
be found substituting 'Pearson on the Creed' for Pepys, Coleridge's
'Friend' for Cellini, John Foster's Essays for Franklin, and Roget's
Bridgewater Treatise for Rousseau.
Neither will it do to suppose that the interest of a memoir depends on
its writer having been concerned in great affairs, or lived in stirring
times. The dullest memoirs written even in English, and not excepting
those maimed records of life known as 'religious biography,' are the
work of men of the 'attaché' order, who, having been mixed up in events
which the newspapers of the day chronicled as 'Important Intelligence,'
were not unnaturally led to cherish the belief that people would like to
have from their pens full, true and particular accounts of all that
then happened, or, as they, if moderns, would probably prefer to say,
transpired. But the World, whatever an over-bold Exeter Hall may say of
her old associate the Devil, is not a stupid person, and declines to
be taken in twice; and turning a deaf ear to the most painstaking and
trustworthy accounts of deceased Cabinets and silenced Conferences, goes
journeying along her broad way, chuckling over some old joke in Boswell,
and reading with fresh delight the all-about-nothing letters of Cowper
and Lamb.
How then does a man--be he good or bad--big or little--a philosopher or
a fribble--St. Paul or Horace Walpole--make his memoirs interesting?
To say that the one thing needful is individuality, is not quite enough.
To be an individual is the inevitable, and in most cases the unenviable,
lot of every child of Adam. Each one of us has, like a tin soldier, a
stand of his own. To have an individuality is no sort of distinction,
but to be able to make it felt in writing is not only distinction but
under favouring circumstances immortality.
Have we not all some correspondents, though probably but few, from whom
we never receive a letter without feeling sure that we shall find inside
the envelope something written that will make us either glow with the
warmth or shiver with the cold of our correspondent's life? But how many
other people are to be found, good, honest people too, who no sooner
take pen in hand than they stamp unreality on every word they write. It
is a hard fate, but they cannot escape it. They may be as literal as the
late Earl Stanhope, as painstaking as Bishop Stubbs, as much in earnest
as the Prime Minister--their lives may be noble, their aims high, but no
sooner do they seek to narrate to us their story, than we find it is not
to be. To hearken to them is past praying for. We turn from them as from
a guest who has outstayed his welcome. Their writing wearies, irritates,
disgusts.
Here then, at last, we have the two classes of memoir writers--those who
manage to make themselves felt, and those who do not. Of the latter, a
very little is a great deal too much--of the former we can never have
enough.
What a liar was Benvenuto Cellini!--who can believe a word he says? To
hang a dog on his oath would be a judicial murder. Yet when we lay down
his Memoirs and let our thoughts travel back to those far-off days he
tells us of, there we see him standing, in bold relief, against the
black sky of the past, the very man he was. Not more surely did he, with
that rare skill of his, stamp the image of Clement VII. on the papal
currency than he did the impress of his own singular personality upon
every word he spoke and every sentence he wrote.
We ought, of course, to hate him, but do we? A murderer he has written
himself down. A liar he stands self-convicted of being. Were anyone
in the nether world bold enough to call him thief, it may be doubted
whether Rhadamanthus would award him the damages for which we may be
certain he would loudly clamour. Why do we not hate him? Listen to him:
'Upon my uttering these words, there was a general outcry, the noblemen
affirming that I promised too much. But one of them, who was a great
philosopher, said in my favour, "From the admirable symmetry of shape
and happy physiognomy of this young man, I venture to engage that he
will perform all he promises, and more." The Pope replied, "I am of the
same opinion;" then calling Trajano, his gentleman of the bed-chamber,
he ordered him to fetch me five hundred ducats.'
And so it always ended; suspicions, aroused most reasonably, allayed
most unreasonably, and then--ducats. He deserved hanging, but he died
in his bed. He wrote his own memoirs after a fashion that ought to have
brought posthumous justice upon him, and made them a literary gibbet, on
which he should swing, a creaking horror, for all time; but nothing
of the sort has happened. The rascal is so symmetrical, and his
physiognomy, as it gleams upon us through the centuries, so happy, that
we cannot withhold our ducats, though we may accompany the gift with a
shower of abuse.
This only proves the profundity of an observation made by Mr. Bagehot--a
man who carried away into the next world more originality of thought
than is now to be found in the Three Estates of the Realm. Whilst
remarking upon the extraordinary reputation of the late Francis Horner
and the trifling cost he was put to in supporting it, Mr. Bagehot said
that it proved the advantage of 'keeping an atmosphere.'
The common air of heaven sharpens men's judgments. Poor Horner, but for
that kept atmosphere of his, always surrounding him, would have been
bluntly asked, 'What he had done since he was breeched,' and in reply
he could only have muttered something about the currency. As for our
especial rogue Cellini, the question would probably have assumed this
shape: 'Rascal, name the crime you have not committed, and account for
the omission.'
But these awkward questions are not put to the lucky people who keep
their own atmospheres. The critics, before they can get at them, have
to step out of the everyday air, where only achievements count and the
Decalogue still goes for something, into the kept atmosphere, which they
have no sooner breathed than they begin to see things differently,
and to measure the object thus surrounded with a tape of its
own manufacture. Horner--poor, ugly, a man neither of words nor
deeds--becomes one of our great men; a nation mourns his loss and erects
his statue in the Abbey. Mr. Bagehot gives several instances of the same
kind, but he does not mention Cellini, who is, however, in his own way,
an admirable example.
You open his book--a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Lying indeed! Why, you
hate prevarication. As for murder, your friends know you too well to
mention the subject in your hearing, except in immediate connection with
capital punishment. You are, of course, willing to make some allowance
for Cellini's time and place--the first half of the sixteenth century
and Italy. 'Yes,' you remark, 'Cellini shall have strict justice at my
hands.' So you say as you settle yourself in your chair and begin to
read. We seem to hear the rascal laughing in his grave. His spirit
breathes upon you from his book--peeps at you roguishly as you turn the
pages. His atmosphere surrounds you; you smile when you ought to frown,
chuckle when you should groan, and--O final triumph!--laugh aloud when,
if you had a rag of principle left, you would fling the book into the
fire. Your poor moral sense turns away with a sigh, and patiently awaits
the conclusion of the second volume.
How cautiously does he begin, how gently does he win your ear by his
seductive piety! I quote from Mr. Roscoe's translation:--
'It is a duty incumbent on upright and credible men of all ranks, who
have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to record, in their own
writing, the events of their lives; yet they should not commence this
honourable task before they have passed their fortieth year. Such, at
least, is my opinion, now that I have completed my fifty-eighth year,
and am settled in Florence, where, considering the numerous ills that
constantly attend human life, I perceive that I have never before been
so free from vexations and calamities, or possessed of so great a share
of content and health as at this period. Looking back on some
delightful and happy events of my life, and on many misfortunes so truly
overwhelming that the appalling retrospect makes me wonder how I have
reached this age in vigour and prosperity, through God's goodness I have
resolved to publish an account of my life; and ... I must, in commencing
my narrative, satisfy the public on some few points to which its
curiosity is usually directed; the first of which is to ascertain
whether a man is descended from a virtuous and ancient family.... I
shall therefore now proceed to inform the reader how it pleased God that
I should come into the world.'