登陆注册
4613800000096

第96章 COMPANIONSHIP OF BOOKS.(5)

"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 principal 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." (7)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 nobly--did they act nobly? "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 passions; the rocks they were conscious of having split upon;their regrets, their complacencies, and their self-justifications?" (8)

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. (9) 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 class 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 mass of minute and circumstantial information relative to many great personages of history. They are full of anecdotes illustrative 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 constitute 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 passion 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.

同类推荐
  • 学仕遗规补编

    学仕遗规补编

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 先识览

    先识览

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 演三字经

    演三字经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 皇朝经世文编

    皇朝经世文编

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • On the Frontier

    On the Frontier

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 郡主的田园生活

    郡主的田园生活

    安然,暗夜王国的王牌杀手,为情所困,殒命在心爱之人的枪下。安然,宁氏财阀家的小公主,宁氏明珠坠崖归来后所生的女儿。当阴谋来袭,母亲带着沉睡中的她走上了曾经摔落的悬崖。一次穿越,她装聋作哑,把世人玩弄于掌心;田园中,她淡然浅笑,安然度日,全然不理因她而起的纷乱。她是一只小狐狸,一只贪财护食傲娇的小狐狸;抢她钱财等同于断她饱腹之食,小狐狸呲牙上阵,打不过就咬是她一贯的作风,挨咬的人不服,她用小手轻轻叩击着闪亮如钻的小虎牙,笑的温婉,“难道没有人告诉过你我已经武装到牙齿了吗?”
  • 春秋左传

    春秋左传

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 云中鸢萝花蔓蔓

    云中鸢萝花蔓蔓

    她出身烟花之地,幼年长在梨园,半生颠沛流离。他出身金贵,乃是沈家大院独子,半生独宠于一身。本是两个不相干的人,却偏偏入了对方的眼。他一袭长衫,眉眼如墨,一段戏腔自报家门闯进她的心。她又是如何进了他的心,无法细说,许是早已命中注定。他霸道、任性、玩世不恭,却给了她前所未有的宠爱。她软弱、卑微、百般隐忍,却只为他不顾伦理纲常。他说:“我心眼比较小,你这辈子,是我一个人的。”她说:“到头来你是西厢记里的张生,而我不是崔莺莺。”洗尽半生浮华,终究你是你,他是他。云中鸢萝花蔓蔓,只是戏中无故人。
  • 大明剑道

    大明剑道

    我师傅叮嘱说,杀一个皇帝容易,让天下老百姓个个开心,难!我师傅还叮嘱说,所谓“明”者,崇光明,仇奸邪,传善念,今天下为朱元璋所拥,虽号大明,却是从小明王韩林儿手中窃来,他篡位谋权,逆天行事,应诛之!我师傅最后叮嘱我说,为了一己私仇,弄得天下大乱,生灵涂炭,哀鸿遍野,倒不如不杀。要知道,世间上,绝对的光明是不会存在的!我和师妹泪别师傅,背起行囊下山。那时节,丁香花开,空气中飘散着若有若无的清香,忧郁得如心碎的歌谣。师妹向北,我向南。
  • 新时期社会管理总论

    新时期社会管理总论

    转型时期的中国需要不断加强和创新社会管理,这已成为事关巩固党的执政地位,事关国家长治久安,事关人民安居乐业的大事。本书着重从提高社会管理科学化水平出发,就新时期加强与创新社会管理的时代背景、社会管理实践,全面系统地进行了梳理和解析。
  • 至尊御兽妃

    至尊御兽妃

    你看这四国雄风威武,二十八小国林立。然表面的安静又能维持多久?凤还景相嫡长女景雪染,有美名在外实则丑陋不堪!直至一朝她到来——丫鬟:哇,大小姐洗心革面了嫡妹:靠,智商涨了她惩渣灭恶,御领百兽,为天道之所命,扶千年来第一女皇,造就万里冥国疆域!却有一人始终伴随身旁,笑:“染染,尘埃落定,我们做对逍遥鸳鸯?”#此文慢热,莫心急。作者手残,准催更#[反正你催了我也……看不见?]
  • 我是天空里的一片云

    我是天空里的一片云

    徐志摩,以“情诗”闻名于世,本书通过生动细腻的笔调讲述一代才子徐志摩的传奇人生。张幼仪、林徽因、陆小曼,诗人生命中不可错过的三个女人,他与她们之间又经历了怎样的感情纠葛……《我是天空里的一片云》带你亲临“情圣”徐志摩的世界,解析大诗人不为人知的婚姻内幕。
  • 广陵涛尺牍

    广陵涛尺牍

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 龙虎还丹诀

    龙虎还丹诀

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 野蛮公主拽恶少

    野蛮公主拽恶少

    【雪熠宫出品】她,夏若沫。有着华丽无人能及的外表。有着豪华奢侈的公主生活。他,崔熙晨。有着帅气酷似张根硕的外表,开朗的性格却因为前女友的不告而别而一夜间变得冷酷无情。直到他遇到她,这个跟他前女友有着那么相似的眉眼。而且要比他的前女友还美的女孩子,他愣住了。她到底是他的代替品还是他的真爱?当他前女友回来跟他说当时的苦衷时,他是原谅她?还是继续与夏若沫在一起?