Character Part 17

They live in him together, and he in them.

"Books," said Hazlitt, "wind into the heart; the poet's verse slides into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember them when old. We read there of what has happened to others; we feel that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be had everywhere cheap and good.

We breathe but the air of books. We owe everything to their authors, on this side barbarism."

A good book is often the best urn of a life, enshrining the best thoughts of which that life was capable; for the world of a man's life is, for the most part, but the world of his thoughts. Thus the best books are treasuries of good words and golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our abiding companions and comforters.

"They are never alone," said Sir Philip Sidney, "that are accompanied by n.o.ble thoughts." The good and true thought may in time of temptation be as an angel of mercy purifying and guarding the soul. It also enshrines the germs of action, for good words almost invariably inspire to good works.

Thus Sir Henry Lawrence prized above all other compositions Wordsworth's 'Character of the Happy Warrior,' which he endeavoured to embody in his own life. It was ever before him as an exemplar. He thought of it continually, and often quoted it to others. His biographer says: "He tried to conform his own life and to a.s.similate his own character to it; and he succeeded, as all men succeed who are truly in earnest." [191]

Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most lasting products of human effort. Temples crumble into ruin; pictures and statues decay; but books survive. Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh to-day as when they first pa.s.sed through their authors' minds ages ago. What was then said and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed page. The only effect of time has been to sift and winnow out the bad products; for nothing in literature can long survive but what is really good. [192]

Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we are partic.i.p.ators in their thoughts; we sympathise with them, enjoy with them, grieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in a measure actors with them in the scenes which they describe.

The great and good do not die, even in this world. Embalmed in books their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens. Hence we ever remain under the influence of the great men of old:

"The dead but sceptred sovrans, who still rule Our spirits from their urns."

The imperial intellects of the world are as much alive now as they were ages ago. Homer still lives; and though his personal history is hidden in the mists of antiquity, his poems are as fresh to-day as if they had been newly written. Plato still teaches his transcendent philosophy; Horace, Virgil, and Dante still sing as when they lived; Shakspeare is not dead: his body was buried in 1616, but his mind is as much alive in England now, and his thought as far-reaching, as in the time of the Tudors.

The humblest and poorest may enter the society of these great spirits without being thought intrusive. All who can read have got the ENTREE.

Would you laugh?--Cervantes or Rabelais will laugh with you. Do you grieve?--there is Thomas a Kempis or Jeremy Taylor to grieve with and console you. Always it is to books, and the spirits of great men embalmed in them, that we turn, for entertainment, for instruction and solace--in joy and in sorrow, as in prosperity and in adversity.

Man himself is, of all things in the world, the most interesting to man. Whatever relates to human life--its experiences, its joys, its sufferings, and its achievements--has usually attractions for him beyond all else. Each man is more or less interested in all other men as his fellow-creatures--as members of the great family of humankind; and the larger a man's culture, the wider is the range of his sympathies in all that affects the welfare of his race.

Men's interest in each other as individuals manifests itself in a thousand ways--in the portraits which they paint, in the busts which they carve, in the narratives which they relate of each other. "Man,"

says Emerson, "can paint, or make, or think, nothing but Man." Most of all is this interest shown in the fascination which personal history possesses for him. "Man s sociality of nature," says Carlyle, "evinces itself, in spite of all that can be said, with abundance of evidence, by this one fact, were there no other: the unspeakable delight he takes in Biography."

Great, indeed, is the human interest felt in biography! What are all the novels that find such mult.i.tudes of readers, but so many fict.i.tious biographies? What are the dramas that people crowd to see, but so much acted biography? Strange that the highest genius should be employed on the fict.i.tious biography, and so much commonplace ability on the real!

Yet the authentic picture of any human being's life and experience ought to possess an interest greatly beyond that which is fict.i.tious, inasmuch as it has the charm of reality. Every person may learn something from the recorded life of another; and even comparatively trivial deeds and sayings may be invested with interest, as being the outcome of the lives of such beings as we ourselves are.

The records of the lives of good men are especially useful. They influence our hearts, inspire us with hope, and set before us great examples. And when men have done their duty through life in a great spirit, their influence will never wholly pa.s.s away. "The good life,"

says George Herbert, "is never out of season."

Goethe has said that there is no man so commonplace that a wise man may not learn something from him. Sir Walter Scott could not travel in a coach without gleaning some information or discovering some new trait of character in his companions. [193] Dr. Johnson once observed that there was not a person in the streets but he should like to know his biography--his experiences of life, his trials, his difficulties, his successes, and his failures. How much more truly might this be said of the men who have made their mark in the world's history, and have created for us that great inheritance of civilization of which we are the possessors! Whatever relates to such men--to their habits, their manners, their modes of living, their personal history, their conversation, their maxims, their virtues, or their greatness--is always full of interest, of instruction, of encouragement, and of example.

The great lesson of Biography is to show what man can be and do at his best. A n.o.ble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others. It exhibits what life is capable of being made. It refreshes our spirit, encourages our hopes, gives us new strength and courage and faith--faith in others as well as in ourselves. It stimulates our aspirations, rouses us to action, and incites us to become co-partners with them in their work. To live with such men in their biographies, and to be inspired by their example, is to live with the best of men, and to mix in the best of company.

At the head of all biographies stands the Great Biography, the Book of Books. And what is the Bible, the most sacred and impressive of all books--the educator of youth, the guide of manhood, and the consoler of age--but a series of biographies of great heroes and patriarchs, prophets, kings, and judges, culminating in the greatest biography of all, the Life embodied in the New Testament? How much have the great examples there set forth done for mankind! How many have drawn from them their truest strength, their highest wisdom, their best nurture and admonition! Truly does a great Roman Catholic writer describe the Bible as a book whose words "live in the ear like a music that can never be forgotten--like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead pa.s.ses into it, The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible." [194]

It would, indeed, be difficult to overestimate the influence which the lives of the great and good have exercised upon the elevation of human character. "The best biography," says Isaac Disraeli, "is a reunion with human existence in its most excellent state." Indeed, it is impossible for one to read the lives of good men, much less inspired men, without being unconsciously lighted and lifted up in them, and growing insensibly nearer to what they thought and did. And even the lives of humbler persons, of men of faithful and honest spirit, who have done their duty in life well, are not without an elevating influence upon the character of those who come after them.

History itself is best studied in biography. Indeed, history is biography--collective humanity as influenced and governed by individual men. "What is all history," says Emerson, "but the work of ideas, a record of the incomparable energy which his infinite aspirations infuse into man?" In its pages it is always persons we see more than principles. Historical events are interesting to us mainly in connection with the feelings, the sufferings, and interests of those by whom they are accomplished. In history we are surrounded by men long dead, but whose speech and whose deeds survive. We almost catch the sound of their voices; and what they did const.i.tutes the interest of history. We never feel personally interested in ma.s.ses of men; but we feel and sympathise with the individual actors, whose biographies afford the finest and most real touches in all great historical dramas.

Among the great writers of the past, probably the two that have been most influential in forming the characters of great men of action and great men of thought, have been Plutarch and Montaigne--the one by presenting heroic models for imitation, the other by probing questions of constant recurrence in which the human mind in all ages has taken the deepest interest. And the works of both are for the most part cast in a biographic form, their most striking ill.u.s.trations consisting in the exhibitions of character and experience which they contain.

Plutarch's 'Lives,' though written nearly eighteen hundred years ago, like Homer's 'Iliad,' still holds its ground as the greatest work of its kind. It was the favourite book of Montaigne; and to Englishmen it possesses the special interest of having been Shakspeare's princ.i.p.al authority in his great cla.s.sical dramas. Montaigne p.r.o.nounced Plutarch to be "the greatest master in that kind of writing"--the biographic; and he declared that he "could no sooner cast an eye upon him but he purloined either a leg or a wing."

Alfieri was first drawn with pa.s.sion to literature by reading Plutarch.

"I read," said he, "the lives of Timoleon, Caesar, Brutus, Pelopidas, more than six times, with cries, with tears, and with such transports, that I was almost furious.... Every time that I met with one of the grand traits of these great men, I was seized with such vehement agitation as to be unable to sit still." Plutarch was also a favourite with persons of such various minds as Schiller and Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon and Madame Roland. The latter was so fascinated by the book that she carried it to church with her in the guise of a missal, and read it surrept.i.tiously during the service.

It has also been the nurture of heroic souls such as Henry IV. of France, Turenne, and the Napiers. It was one of Sir William Napier's favourite books when a boy. His mind was early imbued by it with a pa.s.sionate admiration for the great heroes of antiquity; and its influence had, doubtless, much to do with the formation of his character, as well as the direction of his career in life. It is related of him, that in his last illness, when feeble and exhausted, his mind wandered back to Plutarch's heroes; and he descanted for hours to his son-in-law on the mighty deeds of Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar.

Indeed, if it were possible to poll the great body of readers in all ages whose minds have been influenced and directed by books, it is probable that--excepting always the Bible--the immense majority of votes would be cast in favour of Plutarch.

And how is it that Plutarch has succeeded in exciting an interest which continues to attract and rivet the attention of readers of all ages and cla.s.ses to this day? In the first place, because the subject of his work is great men, who occupied a prominent place in the world's history, and because he had an eye to see and a pen to describe the more prominent events and circ.u.mstances in their lives. And not only so, but he possessed the power of portraying the individual character of his heroes; for it is the principle of individuality which gives the charm and interest to all biography. The most engaging side of great men is not so much what they do as what they are, and does not depend upon their power of intellect but on their personal attractiveness. Thus, there are men whose lives are far more eloquent than their speeches, and whose personal character is far greater than their deeds.

It is also to be observed, that while the best and most carefully-drawn of Plutarch's portraits are of life-size, many of them are little more than busts. They are well-proportioned but compact, and within such reasonable compa.s.s that the best of them--such as the lives of Caesar and Alexander--may be read in half an hour. Reduced to this measure, they are, however, greatly more imposing than a lifeless Colossus, or an exaggerated giant. They are not overlaid by disquisition and description, but the characters naturally unfold themselves. Montaigne, indeed, complained of Plutarch's brevity. "No doubt," he added, "but his reputation is the better for it, though in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch would rather we should applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us with an appet.i.te to read more than glutted with what we have already read. He knew very well that a man may say too much even on the best subjects.... Such as have lean and spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who are defective in matter, endeavour to make amends with words." [195]

Plutarch possessed the art of delineating the more delicate features of mind and minute peculiarities of conduct, as well as the foibles and defects of his heroes, all of which is necessary to faithful and accurate portraiture. "To see him," says Montaigne, "pick out a light action in a man's life, or a word, that does not seem to be of any importance, is itself a whole discourse." He even condescends to inform us of such homely particulars as that Alexander carried his head affectedly on one side; that Alcibiades was a dandy, and had a lisp, which became him, giving a grace and persuasive turn to his discourse; that Cato had red hair and gray eyes, and was a usurer and a screw, selling off his old slaves when they became unfit for hard work; that Caesar was bald and fond of gay dress; and that Cicero [19like Lord Brougham] had involuntary twitchings of his nose.

Such minute particulars may by some be thought beneath the dignity of biography, but Plutarch thought them requisite for the due finish of the complete portrait which he set himself to draw; and it is by small details of character--personal traits, features, habits, and characteristics--that we are enabled to see before us the men as they really lived. Plutarch's great merit consists in his attention to these little things, without giving them undue preponderance, or neglecting those which are of greater moment. Sometimes he hits off an individual trait by an anecdote, which throws more light upon the character described than pages of rhetorical description would do. In some cases, he gives us the favourite maxim of his hero; and the maxims of men often reveal their hearts.

Then, as to foibles, the greatest of men are not visually symmetrical.

Each has his defect, his twist, his craze; and it is by his faults that the great man reveals his common humanity. We may, at a distance, admire him as a demiG.o.d; but as we come nearer to him, we find that he is but a fallible man, and our brother. [196]

Nor are the ill.u.s.trations of the defects of great men without their uses; for, as Dr. Johnson observed, "If nothing but the bright side of characters were shown, we should sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to imitate them in anything."

Plutarch, himself justifies his method of portraiture by averring that his design was not to write histories, but lives. "The most glorious exploits," he says, "do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or of vice in men. Sometimes a matter of much less moment, an expression or a jest, better informs us of their characters and inclinations than battles with the slaughter of tens of thousands, and the greatest arrays of armies or sieges of cities. Therefore, as portrait-painters are more exact in their lines and features of the face and the expression of the eyes, in which the character is seen, without troubling themselves about the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the signs and indications of the souls of men; and while I endeavour by these means to portray their lives, I leave important events and great battles to be described by others."

Things apparently trifling may stand for much in biography as well as history, and slight circ.u.mstances may influence great results. Pascal has remarked, that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the whole face of the world would probably have been changed. But for the amours of Pepin the Fat, the Saracens might have overrun Europe; as it was his illegitimate son, Charles Martel, who overthrew them at Tours, and eventually drove them out of France.

That Sir Walter Scott should have sprained his foot in running round the room when a child, may seem unworthy of notice in his biography; yet 'Ivanhoe,' 'Old Mortality,' and all the Waverley novels depended upon it. When his son intimated a desire to enter the army, Scott wrote to Southey, "I have no t.i.tle to combat a choice which would have been my own, had not my lameness prevented." So that, had not Scott been lame, he might have fought all through the Peninsular War, and had his breast covered with medals; but we should probably have had none of those works of his which have made his name immortal, and shed so much glory upon his country. Talleyrand also was kept out of the army, for which he had been destined, by his lameness; but directing his attention to the study of books, and eventually of men, he at length took rank amongst the greatest diplomatists of his time.

Byron's clubfoot had probably not a little to do with determining his destiny as a poet. Had not his mind been embittered and made morbid by his deformity, he might never have written a line--he might have been the n.o.blest fop of his day. But his misshapen foot stimulated his mind, roused his ardour, threw him upon his own resources--and we know with what result.

So, too, of Scarron, to whose hunchback we probably owe his cynical verse; and of Pope, whose satire was in a measure the outcome of his deformity--for he was, as Johnson described him, "protuberant behind and before." What Lord Bacon said of deformity is doubtless, to a great extent, true. "Whoever," said he, "hath anything fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons are extremely bold."

As in portraiture, so in biography, there must be light and shade.

The portrait-painter does not pose his sitter so as to bring out his deformities; nor does the biographer give undue prominence to the defects of the character he portrays. Not many men are so outspoken as Cromwell was when he sat to Cooper for his miniature: "Paint me as I am," said he, "warts and all." Yet, if we would have a faithful likeness of faces and characters, they must be painted as they are. "Biography,"

said Sir Walter Scott, "the most interesting of every species of composition, loses all its interest with me when the shades and lights of the princ.i.p.al characters are not accurately and faithfully detailed.

I can no more sympathise with a mere eulogist, than I can with a ranting hero on the stage." [197]

Addison liked to know as much as possible about the person and character of his authors, inasmuch as it increased the pleasure and satisfaction which he derived from the perusal of their books. What was their history, their experience, their temper and disposition? Did their lives resemble their books? They thought n.o.bly--did they act n.o.bly? "Should we not delight," says Sir Egerton Brydges, "to have the frank story of the lives and feelings of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Campbell, Rogers, Moore, and Wilson, related by themselves?--with whom they lived early; how their bent took a decided course; their likes and dislikes; their difficulties and obstacles; their tastes, their pa.s.sions; the rocks they were conscious of having split upon; their regrets, their complacencies, and their self-justifications?" [198]

When Mason was reproached for publishing the private letters of Gray, he answered, "Would you always have my friends appear in full-dress?"

Johnson was of opinion that to write a man's life truly, it is necessary that the biographer should have personally known him. But this condition has been wanting in some of the best writers of biographies extant. [199]

In the case of Lord Campbell, his personal intimacy with Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham seems to have been a positive disadvantage, leading him to dwarf the excellences and to magnify the blots in their characters.

Again, Johnson says: "If a man profess to write a life, he must write it really as it was. A man's peculiarities, and even his vices, should be mentioned, because they mark his character." But there is always this difficulty,--that while minute details of conduct, favourable or otherwise, can best be given from personal knowledge, they cannot always be published, out of regard for the living; and when the time arrives when they may at length be told, they are then no longer remembered.

Johnson himself expressed this reluctance to tell all he knew of those poets who had been his contemporaries, saying that he felt as if "walking upon ashes under which the fire was not extinguished."

For this reason, amongst others, we rarely obtain an unvarnished picture of character from the near relatives of distinguished men; and, interesting though all autobiography is, still less can we expect it from the men themselves. In writing his own memoirs, a man will not tell all that he knows about himself. Augustine was a rare exception, but few there are who will, as he did in his 'Confessions,' lay bare their innate viciousness, deceitfulness, and selfishness. There is a Highland proverb which says, that if the best man's faults were written on his forehead he would pull his bonnet over his brow. "There is no man," said Voltaire, "who has not something hateful in him--no man who has not some of the wild beast in him. But there are few who will honestly tell us how they manage their wild beast." Rousseau pretended to unbosom himself in his 'Confessions;' but it is manifest that he held back far more than he revealed. Even Chamfort, one of the last men to fear what his contemporaries might think or say of him, once observed:--"It seems to me impossible, in the actual state of society, for any man to exhibit his secret heart, the details of his character as known to himself, and, above all, his weaknesses and his vices, to even his best friend."

An autobiography may be true so far as it goes; but in communicating only part of the truth, it may convey an impression that is really false. It may be a disguise--sometimes it is an apology--exhibiting not so much what a man really was, as what he would have liked to be. A portrait in profile may be correct, but who knows whether some scar on the off-cheek, or some squint in the eye that is not seen, might not have entirely altered the expression of the face if brought into sight?

Scott, Moore, Southey, all began autobiographies, but the task of continuing them was doubtless felt to be too difficult as well as delicate, and they were abandoned.

French literature is especially rich in a cla.s.s of biographic memoirs, of which we have few counterparts in English. We refer to their MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR, such as those of Sully, De Comines, Lauzun, De Retz, De Thou, Rochefoucalt, &c., in which we have recorded an immense ma.s.s of minute and circ.u.mstantial information relative to many great personages of history. They are full of anecdotes ill.u.s.trative of life and character, and of details which might be called frivolous, but that they throw a flood of light on the social habits and general civilisation of the periods to which they relate. The MEMOIRES of Saint-Simon are something more: they are marvellous dissections of character, and const.i.tute the most extraordinary collection of anatomical biography that has ever been brought together.

Saint-Simon might almost be regarded in the light of a posthumous court-spy of Louis the Fourteenth. He was possessed by a pa.s.sion for reading character, and endeavouring to decipher motives and intentions in the faces, expressions, conversation, and byplay of those about him.

"I examine all my personages closely," said he--"watch their mouth, eyes, and ears constantly." And what he heard and saw he noted down with extraordinary vividness and dash. Acute, keen, and observant, he pierced the masks of the courtiers, and detected their secrets. The ardour with which he prosecuted his favourite study of character seemed insatiable, and even cruel. "The eager anatomist," says Sainte-Beuve, "was not more ready to plunge the scalpel into the still-palpitating bosom in search of the disease that had baffled him."