Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

the truth. And as soon as a La Place, or anybody else, builds higher upon the foundations laid by this book, effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay and darkness; by weapons won from this book he superannuates 5 and destroys this book, so that soon the name of Newton remains as a mere nominis umbra, but his book, as a living power, has transmigrated into other forms. Now, on the contrary, the Iliad, the Prometheus of Eschylus, the Othello or King Lear, the Hamlet or Macbeth, and the Paradise Lost 10 are not militant but triumphant forever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. To reproduce these in new forms or variations, even if in some things they should be improved, would be to plagiarize. A 15 good steam-engine is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo. These things are separated, not by imparity, but by disparity. They are not thought of as unequal under the same standard, but 20 as different in kind, and, if otherwise equal, as equal under a different standard. Human works of immortal beauty and works of nature in one respect stand on the same footing: they never absolutely repeat each other, never approach so near as not to differ; and they differ not as better and worse, 25 or simply by more and less; they differ by undecipherable and incommunicable differences, that cannot be caught by mimicries, that cannot be reflected in the mirror of copies, that cannot become ponderable in the scales of vulgar comparison.

Thomas Carlyle.

1795-1881.

BIOGRAPHY.

(1832.)

Man's sociality of nature evinces itself, in spite of all that can be said, with abundant evidence by this one fact, were there no other: the unspeakable delight he takes in Biography. It is written, "The proper study of mankind is man "; to which study, let us candidly admit, he, by true or by false 5 methods, applies himself, nothing loath. "Man is perennially interesting to man; nay, if we look strictly to it, there is nothing ele interesting." How inexpressibly comfortable to know our fellow-creature; to see into him, understand his goings-forth, decipher the whole heart of his mys- 10 tery: nay, not only to see into him, but even to see out of him, to view the world altogether as he views it; so that we can theoretically construe him, and could almost practically personate him; and do now thoroughly discern both what manner of man he is, and what manner of thing he 15 has got to work on and live on!

A scientific interest and a poetic one alike inspire us in this matter. A scientific: because every mortal has a Problem of Existence set before him, which, were it only, what for the most it is, the Problem of keeping soul and body together, 20 must be to a certain extent original, unlike every other; and yet, at the same time, so like every other; like our own, therefore: instructive, moreover, since we also are indentured to live. A poetic interest still more: for precisely this same struggle of human Free-will against material Necessity, which 25 every man's Life, by the mere circumstance that the man continues alive, will more or less victoriously exhibit, is that which above all else, or rather inclusive of all else, calls

the Sympathy of mortal hearts into action; and whether as acted, or as represented and written of, not only is Poetry, but is the sole Poetry possible. Borne onwards by which two all-embracing interests, may the earnest Lover of Biog5 raphy expand himself on all sides, and indefinitely enrich himself. Looking with the eyes of every new neighbor, he can discern a new world different for each: feeling with the heart of every neighbor, he lives with every neighbor's life, even as with his own. Of these millions of living men each. 10 individual is a mirror to us; a mirror both scientific and poetic; or, if you will, both natural and magical;—from which one would so gladly draw aside the gauze veil; and, peering therein, discern the image of his own natural face, and the supernatural secrets that prophetically lie under the

15 same!

Observe, accordingly, to what extent, in the actual course of things, this business of Biography is practised and relished. Define to thyself, judicious Reader, the real significance of these phenomena named Gossip, Egoism, Personal 20 Narrative (miraculous or not), Scandal, Raillery, Slander, and suchlike; the sum-total of which (with some fractional addition of a better ingredient, generally too small to be noticeable) constitutes that other grand phenomenon still called "Conversation." Do they not mean wholly: Biography 25 and Autobiography? Not only in the common Speech of men, but in all Art, too, which is or should be the concentrated and conserved essence of what men can speak and show, Biography is almost the one thing needful.

Even in the highest works of Art our interest, as the critics 30 complain, is too apt to be strongly or even mainly of a Biographic sort. In the Art we can nowise forget the Artist: while looking on the Transfiguration, while studying the Iliad, we ever strive to figure to ourselves what spirit dwelt in Raphael; what a head was that of Homer, wherein, woven 35 of Elysian light and Tartarean gloom, that old world fashioned itself together, of which these written Greek characters are but a feeble though perennial copy. The Painter and the Singer are present to us; we partially and for the time

become the very Painter and the very Singer while we enjoy the Picture and the Song. Perhaps, too, let the critic say what he will, this is the highest enjoyment the clearest recognition, we can have of these. Art indeed is Art; yet Man also is Man. Had the Transfiguration been painted without 5 human hand, had it grown merely on the canvas, say by atmospheric influences, as lichen-pictures do on rocks, it were a grand picture doubtless; yet nothing like so grand as the Picture which, on opening our eyes, we everywhere in Heaven and in Earth see painted; and everywhere pass over with 10 indifference, because the painter was not a Man. Think of this; much lies in it. The Vatican is great; yet poor to Chimborazo or the Peak of Teneriffe: its dome is but a foolish Big-endian or Little-endian chip of an egg-shell, compared with that star-fretted Dome where Arcturus and Orion glance 15 forever; which latter, notwithstanding, who looks at, save perhaps some necessitous star-gazer bent to make Almanacs, some thick-quilted watchman to see what weather it will prove? The Biographic interest is wanting: no Michael Angelo was He who built that "Temple of Immensity "; 20 therefore do we, pitiful Littlenesses as we are, turn rather to wonder and to worship in the little toy-box of a Temple built by our like.

Still more decisively, still more exclusively, does the Biographic interest manifest itself as we descend into lower 25 regions of spiritual communication; through the whole range of what is called Literature. Of History, for example, the most honored if not honorable species of composition, is not the whole purport Biographic? "History," it has been said, "is the essence of innumerable biographies." Such, at least, 30 it should be: whether it is, might admit of question. But, in any case, what hope have we in turning over those old interminable Chronicles, with their garrulities and insipidities; or, still worse, in patiently examining those modern Narrations, of the Philosophic kind, where "Philosophy, 35 teaching by Experience," has to sit like owl on housetop, seeing nothing, understanding nothing, uttering only, with such solemnity, her perpetual most wearisome hoo-hoo:—what

hope have we, except the for most part fallacious one of gaining some acquaintance with our fellow-creatures, though dead and vanished, yet dear to us; how they got along in those old days, suffering and doing; to what extent, and under 5 what circumstances, they resisted the Devil and triumphed over him, or struck their colors to him and were trodden under foot by him; how, in short, the perennial Battle went, which men name Life, which we also in these new days, with indifferent fortune, have to fight, and must bequeath to our 10 sons and grandsons to go on fighting,-till the Enemy one day be quite vanquished and abolished, or else the great Night sink and part the combatants; and thus, either by some Millennium or some new Noah's Deluge, the Volume of Universal History wind itself up! Other hope, in studying such Books, 15 we have none: and that it is a deceitful hope, who that has tried knows not? A feast of widest Biographic insight is spread for us; we enter full of hungry anticipations: alas, like so many other feasts which Life invites us to, a mere Ossian's "feast of shells," the food and liquor being all emptied. 20 out and clean gone, and only the vacant dishes and deceitful emblems thereof left! Your modern Historical Restaurateurs are indeed little better than high-priests of Famine, that keep choicest china dinner-sets, only no dinner to serve therein. Yet such is our Biographic appetite, we run trying 25 from shop to shop, with ever new hope; and, unless we could eat the wind, with ever new disappointment.

Again, consider the whole class of Fictitious Narratives, from the highest category of epic or dramatic Poetry, in Shakespeare and Homer, down to the lowest of froth Prose 30 in the Fashionable Novel. What are all these but so many mimic Biographies? Attempts, here by an inspired Speaker, there by an uninspired Babbler, to deliver himself, more or less ineffectually, of the grand secret wherewith all hearts labor oppressed: the significance of Man's Life;--which deliv35 erance, even as traced in the unfurnished head, and printed at the Minerva Press, finds readers. For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a superlative in every kind; and the most Foolish man in the Earth is now indubitably living

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »