BIOGRAPHY.
Great poetry is the expression of the spiritual life, not of the poet
merely, but of the poet in his capacity of forthteller of what is
divine and universal in human life. History deals with the life and
actions and motives of men in a particular age and treats of human
achievements and relations, and of their causes and effects. Both
Poetry and History are in a sense impersonal, being concerned not so
much with individuals as such, as with the ideals toward which or
the ideas with which men live their lives and do their work. It is
biography to which we turn for the most intimate and detailed personal
knowledge of a particular great man who may have been the poet whose
lines have met response in every heart or the writer whose mind has
guided a nation. As dealing with life itself biography may well be
regarded as one of the important divisions of literature. It may be
and usually is found to belong in both classes, the literature of
knowledge, and the literature of power. There is a directness about a
great biography that causes us to feel personally acquainted with the
subject of it.
“The great man,” says Carlyle, “does in good truth, belong to his own
age--nay, more so than any other man; being properly the synopsis and
epitome of such age with its interests and influences; but belongs
likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was transitory
in him passes away and an immortal part remains, the significance of
which is in strict speech inexhaustible--as that of every _real_ object
is. Aloft, conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, serene,
unaltering; silently addresses to every new generation a new lesson and
monition. Well is his life worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever,
in the new dialect of new times, of rewriting and reinterpreting;” and
he adds, “as the highest Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of
every good man still an indubitable Gospel.”
There is an obvious similarity between the biography of a great man
by a great man and the portrait of a great man by a great artist.
The National Portrait Gallery in London makes real to us the men who
have been England’s glory in peace and war. No one can leave it after
looking on the faces of Gladstone and Tennyson and Sir John Franklin
and the hundreds of others who scorned delights and lived laborious
days without having a higher estimate of humanity and being nerved
to new efforts, and we may obtain the same effect in a more detailed
manner by reading the best biographies.
The number of great men who are alive at any one time is small, and
they are too much occupied to see any but those who have important
business with them, but we may study them at our leisure in their
biographies, and go over the events of years in a few hours.
A knowledge of the life of an author always adds interest to the
perusal of his books and is frequently of value in explaining them.
The study of the noble life in connection with the works of the noble
mind is one of the best foundations for liberal culture. Consider the
influence of an acquaintance with the entire works of Longfellow or
Lowell, read in connection with the life of the former by his brother,
or with the biography of the latter by Scudder. To know the atmosphere
which surrounded such men, the things towards which their interest
went out, the sources from which they drew their inspiration, the way
in which the common experiences of life, so familiar to us all grew
beautiful under their poetic imagination; a familiarity with all these
things will elevate a man’s whole life.
The light too which is thrown by biography on the conduct of life is
very great. Theory, philosophizing, opinions, reasoning, are of little
worth when compared with the actual facts of the life of a man who has
attained distinction in any department of human achievement. Reading of
this kind teaches us that chance is only to a small extent an element
of success, that nothing is attained by the brightest minds without
that infinite patience and labor which in itself is genius. To think of
the brave way in which such men met the trials that they were called
upon to endure is a most healthful remedy for warped and selfish ideas
of life.
Take the life of Scott by Lockhart; note the domestic tastes of the
author of _Waverly_, his kindly interest in the humblest persons around
him, the heroic way in which he nerved himself to meet single-handed
the overwhelming catastrophe of the failure of Constable, the way
in which, while struggling with physical weaknesses that would have
rendered another conscious only of his own sufferings, he retained his
simplicity and gentle thoughtfulness for others,--all these lessons may
be learned from that noble biography.
We should take a sympathetic interest in the lives of high-minded men,
and note how in spite of obstacles and failures they have accomplished
their purposes and how some have been great because they nobly tried
and in spite of the fact that they nobly failed. Nothing is more
helpful than to see that our ills are not peculiar to ourselves, but
that others have overcome the same difficulties that are perplexing us.
Biography teaches us to look at life from many points of view. In
reading biography, said Dr. Andrew Peabody, “I find myself translating
a life unlike what mine can ever be into terms of my own life, shaping
from it analogies, equivalents, and parallels for my own aims and
endeavors, studying modes of embodying its underlying principles in
forms, it may be of which he whose experience suggests them could never
have dreamed.”
Learn to make a distinction between the essential and fundamental
characteristics of a great man and such gossipy details as what he
had for breakfast and how he wore his hair. “It is the great error of
thoughtless biographers,” says Ruskin, “to attribute to the accident
which introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances of
character which gave the accident importance.”
When a great man has written the story of his own life the result is a
book of double value. Emerson and George Eliot agreed in considering
the _Confessions of Rousseau_ the most interesting book they had ever
read. _Franklin’s_ _Autobiography_ is a model of keen and accurate
observation expressed in the clearest and simplest language.
_Boswell’s_ _Life of Johnson_ is commonly considered the best biography
in the language. Of this and _Lockhart’s_ _Scott_ Phillips Brooks says
that they are “worthy to be read and re-read, and read again by all men
who want to keep their manhood healthy, broad and brave, and true.”