Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

"What do you mean?"

"Have not you seen the papers? Here they are."

"Gallant conduct of Ensign de Caxton – promoted to a lieutenancy on the field" – I wipe my eyes, and cry – "Thank Heaven – it is my cousin!" Then new hand-shakings, new groups gather round. I feel taller by the head than I was before! We grumbling English, always quarrelling with each other – the world not wide enough to hold us; and yet, when in the far land some bold deed is done by a countryman, how we feel that we are brothers! how our hearts warm to each other! What a letter I wrote home I and how joyously I went back to the Bush! The Will-o'-the Wisp has attained to a cattle station of his own. I go fifty miles out of my way to tell him the news and give him the newspaper; for he knows now that his old master, Vivian, is a Cumberland man – a Caxton. Poor Will-o'-the Wisp! The tea that night tasted uncommonly like whisky-punch! Father Mathew forgive us! – but if you had been a Cumberland man, and heard the Will-o'-the Wisp roaring out, "Blue bonnets over the Borders," I think your tea, too, would not have come out of the caddy!

CHAPTER XCIX

A great change has occurred in our household. Guy's father is dead – his latter years cheered by the accounts of his son's steadiness and prosperity, and by the touching proofs thereof which Guy has exhibited. For he insisted on repaying to his father the old college debts, and the advance of the £1500, begging that the money might go towards his sister's portion. Now, after the old gentleman's death, the sister resolved to come out and live with her dear brother Guy. Another wing is built to the hut. Ambitious plans for a new stone house, to be commenced the following year, are entertained; and Guy has brought back from Adelaide not only a sister, but, to my utter astonishment, a wife, in the shape of a fair friend, by whom the sister was accompanied. The young lady did quite right to come to Australia if she wanted to be married. She was very pretty, and all the beaux in Adelaide were round her in a moment. Guy was in love the first day – in a rage with thirty rivals the next – in despair the third – put the question the fourth – and before the fifteenth was a married man, hastening back with a treasure, of which he fancied all the world was conspiring to rob him. His sister was quite as pretty as her friend, and she too had offers enough the moment she landed – only she was romantic and fastidious, and I fancy Guy told her that "I was just made for her."

However, charming though she be – with pretty blue eyes, and her brother's frank smile – I am not enchanted. I fancy she lost all chance of my heart by stepping across the yard in a pair of silk shoes. If I were to live in the Bush, give me a wife as a companion who can ride well, leap over a ditch, walk beside me when I go forth, gun in hand, for a shot at the kangaroos. But I dare not go on with the list of a Bush husband's requisites. This change, however, serves, for various reasons, to quicken my desire of return. Ten years have now elapsed, and I have already obtained a much larger fortune than I had calculated to make. Sorely to Guy's honest grief, I therefore wound up our affairs, and dissolved partnership; for he had decided to pass his life in the colony – and, with his pretty wife, who has grown very fond of him, I don't wonder at it. Guy takes my share of the station and stock off my hands; and, all accounts squared between us, I bid farewell to the Bush. Despite all the motives that drew my heart homeward, it was not without participation in the sorrow of my old companions, that I took leave of those I might never see again on this side the grave. The meanest man in my employ had grown a friend; and when those hard hands grasped mine, and from many a breast that once had waged fierce war with the world came the soft blessing to the Homeward-bound – with a tender thought for the Old England, that had been but a harsh step-mother to them – I felt a choking sensation, which I suspect is little known to the friendships of Mayfair and St James's. I was forced to get off, with a few broken words, when I had meant to part with a long speech: perhaps the broken words pleased the audience better. Spurring away, I gained a little eminence and looked back. There, were the poor faithful fellows gathered in a ring, watching me – their hats off – their hands shading their eyes from the sun. And Guy had thrown himself on the ground, and I heard his loud sobs distinctly. His wife was leaning over his shoulder, trying to soothe: forgive him, fair helpmate, you will be all in the world to him – to-morrow! And the blue-eyed sister, where was she? Had she no tears for the rough friend who laughed at the silk shoes, and taught her how to hold the reins, and never fear that the old pony would run away with her? What matter? – if the tears were shed, they were hidden tears. No shame in them, fair Ellen – since then, thou hast wept happy tears over thy first-born – those tears have long ago washed away all bitterness in the innocent memories of a girl's first fancy.

CHAPTER C

(DATED FROM ADELAIDE.)

Imagine my wonder – Uncle Jack has just been with me, and – but hear the dialogue.

Uncle Jack. – So you are positively going back to that smoky, fusty, old England, just when you are on your high road to a plumb. A plumb, sir, at least! They all say there is not a more rising young man in the colony. I think Bullion would take you into partnership. What are you in such a hurry for?

Pisistratus. – To see my father, and mother, and Uncle Roland, and – (was about to name some one else, but stops.)

You see, my dear uncle, I came out solely with the idea of repairing my father's losses, in that unfortunate speculation of The Capitalist.

Uncle Jack (coughs and ejaculates) – That villain Peck!

Pisistratus. – And to have a few thousands to invest in poor Roland's acres. The object is achieved: why should I stay?

Uncle Jack. – A few paltry thousands, when in twenty years more, at the farthest, you would wallow in gold!

Pisistratus. – A man learns in the Bush how happy life can be with plenty of employment, and very little money. I shall practise that lesson in England.

Uncle Jack. – Your mind's made up?

Pisistratus. – And my place in the chip taken.

Uncle Jack. – Then there's no more to be said. (Hums, haws, and examines his nails – filbert nails, not a speck on them.) Then suddenly, and jerking up his head. "That 'Capitalist!' it has been on my conscience, nephew, ever since; and, somehow or other, since I have abandoned the cause of my fellow-creatures, I think I have cared more for my relations."

Pisistratus, (smiling, as he remembers his father's shrewd predictions thereon.) – Naturally, my dear uncle: any child who has thrown a stone into a pond knows that a circle disappears as it widens.

Uncle Jack. – Very true – I shall make a note of that, applicable to my next speech, in defence of what they call the "land monopoly." Thank you – stone – circle! (Jots down notes in his pocket-book.) But, to return to the point: I am well off now – I have neither wife nor child; and I feel that I ought to bear my share in your father's loss: it was our joint speculation. And your father, good dear Austin, paid my debts into the bargain. And how cheering the punch was that night, when your mother wanted to scold poor Jack! And the £300 Austin lent me when I left him: nephew, that was the remaking of me – the acorn of the oak I have transplanted. So here they are, (added Uncle Jack with a heroical effort – and he extracted from the pocket-book, bills for a sum between three and four thousand pounds.) There, it is done – and I shall sleep better for it! (With that Uncle Jack got up, and bolted out of the room.)

Ought I to take the money? Why, I think yes! – it is but fair. Jack must be really rich, and can well spare the money; besides, if he wants it again, I know my father will let him have it. And, indeed, Jack caused the loss of the whole sum lost on The Capitalist, &c.; and this is not quite the half of what my father paid away. But is it not fine in Uncle Jack! Well, my father was quite right in his milder estimate of Jack's scalene conformation, and it is hard to judge of a man when he is needy and down in the world. When one grafts one's ideas on one's neighbour's money, they are certainly not so grand as when they spring from one's own.

Uncle Jack, (popping his head into the room.) – And you see, you can double that money if you will just leave it in my hands for a couple of years, – you have no notion what I shall make of the Tibbet's Wheal! Did I tell you? – the German was quite right, – I have been offered already seven times the sum which I gave for the land. But I am now looking out for a Company: let me put you down for shares to the amount at least of those trumpery bills. Cent per cent, – I guarantee cent per cent! (And Uncle Jack stretches out those famous smooth hands of his, with a tremulous motion of the ten eloquent fingers.)

Pisistratus. – Ah, my dear uncle, if you repent —

Uncle Jack. – Repent! when I offer you cent per cent, on my personal guarantee!

Pisistratus, (carefully putting the bills into his breast coat-pocket.) Then, if you don't repent, my dear uncle, allow me to shake you by the hand, and say that I will not consent to lessen my esteem and admiration for the high principle which prompts this restitution, by confounding it with trading associations of loans, interests, and copper mines. And, you see, since this sum is paid to my father, I have no right to invest it without his permission.

Uncle Jack, (with emotion.) – "Esteem, admiration, high principle!" – these are pleasant words, from you, nephew. – (Then shaking his head and smiling.) You sly dog! you are quite right: get the bills cashed at once. And hark ye, sir, just keep out of my way, will you? – and don't let me coax you out of a farthing! (Uncle Jack slams the door, and rushes out. Pisistratus draws the bills warily from his pocket, half-suspecting they must already have turned into withered leaves, like fairy money; slowly convinces himself that the bills are good bills, and by lively gestures testifies his delight and astonishment.) Scene Changes.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY – CHATEAUBRIAND'S MEMOIRS.[3 - Mémoires d'Outre Tombe. Par M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand. 4 vols. Paris, 1846-9.]

Autobiography, when skilfully and judiciously done, is one of the most delightful species of composition of which literature can boast. There is a strong desire in every intelligent and well-informed mind to be made acquainted with the private thoughts, and secret motives of action, of those who have filled the world with their renown. We long to learn their early history, to be made acquainted with their first aspirations – to learn how they became so great as they afterwards turned out. Perhaps literature has sustained no greater loss than that of the memoirs which Hannibal wrote of his life and campaigns. From the few fragments of his sayings which Roman admiration or terror has preserved, his reach of thought and statesmanlike sagacity would appear to have been equal to his military talents. Cæsar's Commentaries have always been admired; but there is some doubts whether they really were written by the dictator; and, supposing they were, they relate almost entirely to military movements and public events, without giving much insight into private character. It is that which we desire in autobiography: we hope to find in it a window by which we may look into a great man's mind. Plutarch's Lives owe their vast and enduring popularity to the insight into private character which the innumerable anecdotes he has collected, of the heroes and statesmen of antiquity, afford.

Gibbon's autobiography is the most perfect account of an eminent man's life, from his own hand, which exists in any language. Independent of the interest which naturally belongs to it as the record of the studies, and the picture of the growth of the mind of the greatest historian of modern times, it possesses a peculiar charm from the simplicity with which it is written, and the judgment it displays, conspicuous alike in what is revealed and what is withheld in the narrative. It steers the middle channel so difficult to find, so invaluable when found, between ridiculous vanity on the one side, and affected modesty on the other. We see, from many passages in it, that the author was fully aware of the vast contribution he had made to literature, and the firm basis on which he had built his colossal fame. But he had good sense enough to see, that those great qualities were never so likely to impress the reader as when only cautiously alluded to by the author. He knew that vanity and ostentation never fall to make the character in which they predominate ridiculous – if excessive, contemptible; and that, although the world would thankfully receive all the details, how minute soever, connected with his immortal work, they would not take off his hands any symptom of his own entertaining the opinion of it which all others have formed. It is the consummate judgment with which Gibbon has given enough of the details connected with the preparation of his works to be interesting, and not enough to be ridiculous, which constitutes the great charm, and has occasioned the marked success, of his autobiography. There are few passages in the English language so popular as the well-known ones in which he has recounted the first conception, and final completion of his history, which, as models of the kind, as well as passages of exquisite beauty, we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of transcribing, the more especially as they will set off, by way of contrast, the faults in some parallel passages attempted by Chateaubriand and Lamartine.

"At the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable spot – where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell – was at once present to my eyes; and several days of intoxication were lost, or enjoyed, before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation. It was at Rome, on the 15th October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing this Decline and Fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work." – (Life, p. 198, 8vo edition.)

Again, the well-known description of the conclusion of his labours: —

"I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion; and that, whatever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." – (Life, p. 255, 8vo edition.)

Hume's account of his own life is a model of perspicuity, modesty, and good sense; but it is so brief that it scarcely can be called a biography. It is not fifty pages long. The wary Scotch author was well aware how vanity in such compositions defeats its own object: he had too much good sense to let it appear in his pages. Perhaps, however, the existence of such a feeling in the recesses of his breast may be detected in the prominent manner in which he brings forward the discouragement he experienced when the first volume of his history was published, and the extremely limited sale it met with for some time after its first appearance. He knew well how these humble beginnings would be contrasted with its subsequent triumphant success. Amidst his many great and good qualities, there is none for which Sir Walter Scott was more admirable than the unaffected simplicity and good sense of his character, which led him to continue through life utterly unspotted by vanity, and unchanged by an amount of adulation from the most fascinating quarters, which would probably have turned the head of any other man. Among the many causes of regret which the world has for the catastrophes which overshadowed his latter years, it is not the least that it prevented the completion of that autobiography with which Mr Lockhart has commenced his Life. His simplicity of character, and the vast number of eminent men with whom he was intimate, as well as the merit of that fragment itself, leave no room for doubt that he would have made a most charming memoir, if he had lived to complete it. This observation does not detract in the slightest degree from the credit justly due to Mr Lockhart, for his admirable Life of his illustrious father-in-law: on the contrary, it forms its highest encomium. The charm of that work is mainly owing to its being so embued with the spirit of the subject, that it may almost be regarded as an autobiography.

Continental writers of note have, more than English ones, fallen into that error which is of all others the most fatal in autobiography – inordinate vanity. At the head of all the delinquents of this class we must place Rousseau, whose celebrated Confessions contain a revelation of folly so extreme, vanity so excessive, and baseness so disgraceful, that it would pass for incredible if not proved by the book itself, which is to be found in every library. Not content with affirming, when past fifty, that there was no woman of fashion of whom he might not have made the conquest if he chose to set about it,[4 - "Il y a peu des femmes, même dans le haut rang, dont je n'eusse fait la conquête si je l'avais enterprise." – Biogiaphie Universelle, xxxix. 136.] he thought fit to entertain the world with all the private details of his life, which the greater prudence of his most indiscreet biographers would have consigned to oblivion. No one who wishes to discredit the Genevese philosopher, need seek in the works of others for the grounds of doing so. Enough is to be found in his own to consign him to eternal execration and contempt. He has told us equally in detail, and with the same air of infantine simplicity, how he committed a theft when in service as a lackey, and permitted an innocent girl, his fellow-servant, to bear the penalty of it; how he alternately drank the wine in his master's cellars, and made love to his wife; how he corrupted one female benefactress who had sheltered him in extremity of want, and afterwards made a boast of her disgrace; and abandoned a male benefactor who fell down in a fit of apoplexy on the streets of Lyons, and left him lying on the pavement, deserted by the only friend whom he had in the world. The author of so many eloquent declamations against mothers neglecting their children, on his own admission, when in easy circumstances, and impelled by no necessity, consigned five of his natural children to a foundling hospital, with such precautions against their being known that he never did or could hear of them again! Such was his vanity, that he thought the world would gladly feed on the crumbs of this sort which fell from the table of the man rich in genius. His grand theory was that the human mind is born innocent, with dispositions only to good, and that all the evils of society arise from the follies of education or the oppression of government. Judging from the picture he has presented of himself, albeit debased by no education but what he himself had afforded, we should say his disposition was more corrupt than has even been imagined by the most dark-minded and bigoted Calvinist that ever existed.

Alfieri was probably as vain in reality as Rousseau; but he knew better how to conceal it. He had not the folly of supposing that he could entertain women by the boastful detail of his conquests over them. He judged wisely, and more like a man who had met with bonnes fortunes, that he would attain more effectually the object of interesting their feelings, by painting their conquests over him. He has done this so fully, so sincerely, and with such eloquence, that he has made one of the most powerful pieces of biography in any language. Its charm consists in the picture he has drawn, with equal truth and art, of a man of the most impetuous and ardent temperament, alternately impelled by the strongest passions which can agitate the breast – love and ambition. Born of a noble family, inheriting a great fortune, he exhibited an uncommon combination of patrician tastes and feelings with republican principles and aspirations. He was a democrat because he knew the great by whom he was surrounded, and did not know the humble who were removed to a distance. He said this himself, after witnessing at Paris the horrors of the 10th August. – "Je connais bien les grands, mais je ne connais pas les petits." He drew the vices of the former from observation, he painted the virtues of the latter from imagination. Hence the absurdity and unnatural character of many of his dramas, which, to the inhabitant of our free country, who is familiar with the real working of popular institutions, renders them, despite their genius, quite ridiculous. But, in the delineation of what passed in his own breast, he is open to no such reproach. His picture of his own feelings is as forcible and dramatic as that of any he has drawn in his tragedies; and it is far more truthful, for it is taken from nature, not an imaginary world of his own creation, having little resemblance to that we see around us. His character and life were singularly calculated to make such a narrative interesting, for never was one more completely tossed about by vehement passions, and abounding with melodramatic incidents. Alternately dreaming over the most passionate attachments, and labouring of his own accord at Dante fourteen hours a-day; at one time making love to an English nobleman's wife, and fighting him in the Park, at another driving through France with fourteen blood horses in harness; now stealing from the Pretender his queen, now striving to emulate Sophocles in the energy of his picture of the passions, he was himself a living example of the intensity of those feelings which he has so powerfully portrayed in his dramas. It is this variety, joined to the simplicity and candour of the confessions, which constitutes the charm of this very remarkable autobiography. It could have been written by no one but himself; for an ordinary biographer would only have described the incidents of his life, none else could have painted the vehement passions, the ardent aspirations, from which they sprang.

From the sketches of Goethe's life which have been preserved, it is evident that, though probably not less vain than the French philosopher or the Italian poet, his vanity took a different direction from either of theirs. He was neither vain of his turpitudes, like Rousseau, nor of his passions, like Alfieri. His self-love was of a more domestic kind; it partook more of the home-scenes of the Fatherland. No one will question the depth of Goethe's knowledge of the heart, or the sagacity of the light which his genius has thrown on the most profound feelings of human nature. But his private life partook of the domestic affections and unobtrusive rest in which it was passed, exempt alike from the grinding poverty which too often impelled the Genevese watchmaker's son into disgraceful actions, or the vehement passions which drove the Italian nobleman into brilliant crimes. Hence his biography exhibits an extraordinary mixture of lofty feelings with puerile simplicity, of depth of views with childishness, of divine philosophy with homely inclinations. Amidst all his enthusiasm and effusions of sentiment, he was as much under the influence as any man of creature comforts; and never hesitated to leave the most lofty efforts of the muse, to participate in the substantial advantages of rich preserves or sweet cakes. This singular mixture arose in a great measure from the habits of his life, and the limited circle by which, during the greater part of it, he was surrounded. Living with a few friends in the quiet seclusion of a small German town, the object of almost superstitious admiration to a few females by whom he was surrounded, he became at once a little god of his own and their idolatry, and warmly inclined, like monks all over the world, to the innocent but not very elevating pleasures of breakfast and dinner. Mahomet said that he experienced more difficulty in persuading his four wives of his divine mission, than all the rest of the world besides; and this, says Gibbon, was not surprising, for they knew best his weaknesses as a man. Goethe thought, on the same principle, his fame was secure, when he was worshipped as a god by his female coterie. He had the highest opinion of his own powers, and of the lofty mission on which he was sent to mankind; but his self-love was less offensive than that of Rousseau, because it was more unobtrusive. It was allied rather to pride than vanity – and though pride may often be hateful, it is never contemptible.

From the Life of Lord Byron which Moore has published, it may be inferred that the latter acted wisely in consigning the original manuscript of the noble poet's autobiography to the flames. Assuming that a considerable part of that biography is taken from what the noble bard had left of himself, it is evident that a more complete detail of his feelings and motives of action would have done anything rather than have added to his reputation. In fact, Moore's Life has done more than anything else to lower it. The poetical biographer had thought and sung so much of the passions, that he had forgot in what light they are viewed by the generality of men; he was so deeply imbued with the spirit of his hero, that he had come to regard his errors and vices as not the least interesting part of his life. That they may be so to that class of readers, unhappily too extensive, who are engaged in similar pursuits, is probably true; but how small a portion do these constitute of the human race, and how weak and inaudible is their applause when compared to the voice of ages! What has become of the innumerable licentious works whose existence in antiquity has become known from the specimens disinterred in the ruins of Herculaneum? Is there one of them which has taken its place beside the Lives of Plutarch? Whatever is fetid, however much prized at the moment, is speedily sunk in the waves of time. Nothing permanently floats down its stream but what is buoyant from its elevating tendency.

Boswell's Life of Johnson is so replete with the sayings and thoughts of the intellectual giant, whom it was so much his object to elevate, even above his natural Patagonian stature, that it may be regarded as a sort of autobiography, dictated by the sage in his moments of abandon to his devout worshipper. It is hardly going too far to say that it is the most popular book in the English language. Johnson's reputation now mainly rests on that biography. No one now reads the Rambler or the Idler– few the Lives of the Poets, interesting as they are, and admirable as are the criticisms on our greatest authors which they contain. But Boswell's Life of Johnson is in everybody's hands; you will hear the pithy sayings, the admirable reflections, the sagacious remarks it contains, from one end of the world to the other. The secret of this astonishing success is to be found in the caustic tone, sententious brevity, and sterling good sense of Johnson, and the inimitable accuracy, faithful memory, and almost infantine simplicity of his biographer. From the unbounded admiration with which he was inspired for the sage, and the faithful memory with which he was gifted, he was enabled to commit to paper, almost as they were delivered, those admirable sayings which have ever since been the delight and admiration of the world. We almost live with the members of the Literary Club; we hear their divers sentiments, and can almost conceive their tones of voice. We see the gigantic form of the sage towering above his intellectual compeers. Burke said that Johnson was greater in conversation than writing, and greater in Boswell than either; and it is easy to conceive that this must have been the case. The Life contains all the admirable sayings, verbatim as they were delivered, and without the asperity of tone and manner which formed so great a blot in the original deliverer. Johnson's sayings were of a kind which were susceptible of being accurately transferred, and with full effect, to paper, because they were almost all reflections on morals, men, or manners, which are of universal application, and come home to the senses of mankind in every age. In this respect they were much more likely to produce an impression in biography than the conversation of Sir Walter Scott, which, however charming to those who heard it, consisted chiefly of anecdotes and stories, great part of the charm of which consisted in the mode of telling and expression of the countenance, which, of course, could not be transferred to paper.

But it is not every eminent man who is so fortunate as to find a biographer like Boswell, who, totally forgetful of self, recorded for posterity with inimitable fidelity all the sayings of his hero. Nor is it many men who would bear so faithful and searching an exposure. Johnson, like every other man, had his failings; but they were those of prejudice or manner, rather than morals or conduct. We wish we could say that every other eminent literary man was equally immaculate, or that an entire disclosure of character would in every case reveal no more weaknesses or failings than have been brought to light by Boswell's faithful chronicle. We know that every one is liable to err, and that no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre. But being aware of all this, we were not prepared for the immense mass of weaknesses, follies, and errors, which have been brought to light by the indiscreet zeal of biographers, in the character of many of our ablest literary, poetical, and philosophical characters. Certainly, if we look at the details of their private lives, these men of literary celebrity have had little title to set up as the instructors, or to call themselves the benefactors of mankind. From the days of Milton, whose divine genius was so deeply tarnished by the asperity of his feelings, and the unpardonable license in controversy which he permitted to his tongue, to those of Lord Byron, who scandalised his country and the world by the undisguised profligacy of his private life, the biography of literary men, with a few brilliant exceptions, – in the foremost of which we must place Sir Walter Scott – consists in great part of a series of follies, weaknesses, or faults, which it would be well for their memory could they be buried in oblivion. We will not say that the labours of their biographers have been the Massacre of the Innocents, for truly there were very few innocents to massacre; but we will say that they have, in general, done more to degrade those they intended to elevate, than the envenomed hostility of their worst enemies. We forbear to mention names, which might give pain to many respectable persons still alive. The persons alluded to, and the truth of the observation, will be at once understood and admitted by every person acquainted with the literary history of France and England during the last century.

Vanity and jealousy – vanity of themselves, jealousy of others – are the great failings which have hitherto tarnished the character and disfigured the biography of literary men. We fear it is destined to continue the same to the end of the world. The qualities which contribute to their greatness, which occasion their usefulness, which insure their fame, are closely allied to failings which too often disfigure their private lives, and form a blot on their memory, when indiscreetly revealed in biography, either by themselves or others. Genius is almost invariably united to susceptibility; and this temperament is unhappily too apt to run into irritability. No one can read D'Israeli's essay on The Literary Character, the most admirable of his many admirable works, without being convinced of that. Celebrity of any sort is the natural parent of vanity, and this weakness is in a peculiar manner fostered in poets and romance writers, because their writings interest so warmly the fair, who form the great dispensers of general fame, and convey it in the most flattering form to the author. It would perhaps be unjust to women to say that poets and novelists share in their weaknesses; but it is certain that their disposition is, in general, essentially feminine, and that, as they attract the admiration of the other sex more strongly than any other class of writers, so they are liable in a peculiar degree to the failings, as well as distinguished by the excellencies, by which their female admirers are characterised. We may regret that it is so: we may lament that we cannot find poets and romancers, who to the genius of Byron, or the fancy of Moore, unite the sturdy sense of Johnson, or the simplicity of character of Scott; but it is to be feared such a combination is as rare, and as little to be looked for in general life, as the union of the strength of the war-horse to the fleetness of the racer, or the courage of the mastiff to the delicacy of the greyhound. Adam Smith long ago pointed out the distinction between those who serve and those who amuse mankind; and the difference, it is to be feared, exists not merely between the philosopher and the opera-dancer, but between the instructors of men in every department of thought, and those whose genius is devoted rather to the pleasing of the eye, the melting of the feelings, or the kindling of the imagination. Yet this observation is only generally, not universally, true; and Sir Joshua Reynolds remains a memorable proof that it is possible for an artist to unite the highest genius and most imaginative power of mind to the wisdom of a philosopher, the liberality of a gentleman, the benevolence of a Christian, and the simplicity of a child.

We are not at all surprised at the intoxication which seizes the literary men and artists whose genius procures for them the favour or admiration of women. Everybody knows it is the most fascinating and transporting flattery which the mind of man can receive. But we confess we are surprised, and that too not a little, at the want of sense which so frequently makes men even of the highest abilities mar the influence of their own genius, and detract from the well-earned celebrity of their own productions, by the indiscreet display of this vanity, which the applause they have met with has produced in their minds. These gentlemen are charmed with the incense they have received, and of course desirous to augment it, and extend the circle from which it is to be drawn. Well, that is their object; let us consider what means they take to gain it. These consist too often in the most undisguised display of vanity in their conduct, manner, and conversation. Is this the way likely to augment the admiration which they enjoy so much, and are so solicitous to extend? Are they not clear-sighted enough to see, that, holding this to be their aim, considering female admiration as the object of their aspirations, they cannot in any way so effectually mar their desires as by permitting the vanity, which the portion of it they have already received has produced, to appear in their manner or conversation? Are they so little versed in the female heart, as not to know that as self-love acts, if not in a stronger at least in a more conspicuous way in them than in the other sex, so there is nothing which repels them so effectually as any display of that vanity in men which they are all conscious of in themselves, and nothing attracts them so powerfully as that self-forgetfulness, which, estimable in all, is in a peculiar manner graceful and admirable when it is met with in those whom none others can forget? Such a quality is not properly modesty – that is the retiring disposition of those who have not yet won distinction. No man who has done so is ignorant of it, as no woman of beauty is insensible to her charms. It is more nearly allied to good sense, and its invariable concomitant – a due regard for the feelings of others. It not unfrequently exists, in the highest degree, in those who have the strongest inward consciousness of the services they have rendered to mankind. No man was more unassuming than Kepler, but he wrote in reference to his great discoveries, and the neglect they at first met with, "I may well be a century without a reader, since God Almighty has been six thousand years without such an observer as me." Yet is this universally felt to have been no unworthy effusion of vanity, but a noble expression of great services rendered by one of his most gifted creatures to the glory of the Almighty. Such men as Kepler are proud, but not vain, and proud men do not bring their feelings so prominently or frequently forward as vain ones; for pride rests on the consciousness of superiority, and needs no external support; vanity arises from a secret sense of weakness, and thirsts for a perpetual solace from the applause of others.

It is in the French writers that this inordinate weakness of literary men is most conspicuous, and in them it exists to such an extent as, on this side of the Channel, to be altogether ridiculous. Every Frenchman thinks his life worth recording. It was long ago said that the number of unpublished memoirs which exist in France, on the war of the League, would, if put together, form a large library. If those relating to the war of the Revolution were accumulated, we have no doubt they would fill the Bibliothèque du Roi. The number already published exceeds almost the dimensions of any private collection of books. The composition and style of these memoirs is for the most part as curious, and characteristic of French character, as their number is descriptive of their ruling passion. In the age of the religious wars, every writer of memoirs seems to have placed himself in the first rank, Henry IV. in the second; in that of the Revolution, the greater part of the autobiographies scarcely disguise the opinion, that, if the first place must be reluctantly conceded to Napoleon Buonaparte, the second must, beyond all question, be assigned to themselves. The Abbé de Pradt expressed the feeling almost every one entertained of himself in France, not the sentiment of an individual man, when he said, "There was one who overturned Napoleon, and that man was me." Most persons in this country will exclaim, that this statement is overcharged, and that it is incredible that vanity should so generally pervade the writers of a whole nation. If they will take the trouble to read Lamartine's Confidences and Raphael, containing the events of his youth, or his Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, recently published, they will find ample confirmation of these remarks; nor are they less conspicuously illustrated by the more elaborate Mémoires d'Outre Tombe of Chateaubriand, the name of which is prefixed to this essay.

One thing is very remarkable, and forcibly illustrates the marked difference, in this respect, between the character of the French and the English nation. In France all memoirs assume the form of autobiographies: and so general is the thirst for that species of composition that, where a man of any note has not compiled his own life, his papers are put into the hands of some skilful bookmaker, who speedily dresses them up, in the form of an attractive autobiography. This was done with the papers of Brissot, Robespierre, Marshal Ney, Fouché, and a great many others, all of which appeared with the name of their authors, and richly stored with these private papers, though it was morally certain that they could not by possibility have written their own lives. In England nothing of the kind is attempted. Scarcely any of the eminent men in the last age have left their own memoirs; and the papers of the most remarkable of them have been published without any attempt at biography. Thus we have the Wellington Papers, the Marlborough Papers, the Nelson Papers, the Castlereagh Papers, published without any autobiography, and only a slight sketch, though in all these cases very ably done, of the author's life by their editor. The lives of the other eminent men of the last age have been given by others, not themselves: as that of Pitt, by Tomline and Gifford; that of Fox, by Trotter; that of Sheridan, by Moore; that of Lord Eldon, by Twiss; that of Lord Sidmouth, by Pellew. There is more here than an accidental diversity: there is a difference arising from a difference of national character. The Englishmen devoted their lives to the public service, and bestowed not a thought on its illustration by themselves; the French mainly thought of themselves when acting in the public service, and considered it mainly as a means of elevation and self-laudation to themselves.

In justice to the literary men of France, however, it must be stated that, of late years at least, they have been exposed to an amount of temptation, and of food for their self-love, much exceeding anything previously seen among men, and which may go far to account for the extraordinary vanity which they have everywhere evinced. In England, literary distinction is neither the only nor the greatest passport to celebrity. Aristocratic influences remain, and still possess the deepest hold of the public mind: statesmen exist, whose daily speeches in parliament render their names as household words. Fashion exercises an extraordinary and almost inexplicable sway, especially over the fairest part of creation. How celebrated soever an author may be, he will in London soon be brought to his proper level, and a right appreciation of his situation. He will see himself at once eclipsed by an old nobleman, whose name is fraught with historic glory; by a young marquis, who is an object of solicitude to the mothers and daughters in the room; by a parliamentary orator, who is beginning to acquire distinction in the senate house. We hold this state of things to be eminently favourable to the right character of literary men; for it saves them from trials before which, it is all but certain, both their good sense and their virtue would succumb. But in Paris this salutary check upon individual vanity and presumption is almost entirely awanting. The territorial aristocracy is confiscated and destroyed; titles of honour are abolished; historic names are almost forgotten in the ceaseless whirl of present events; parliamentary orators are in general unpopular, for they are for the most part on the side of power. Nothing remains but the government of mind. The intellectual aristocracy is all in all.

It makes and unmakes kings alternately; produces and stops revolutions, at one time calls a new race to the throne, at another consigns them with disgrace to foreign lands. Cabinets are formed out of the editors of newspapers, intermingled with a few bankers, whom the public convulsions have not yet rendered insolvent; prime ministers are to be found only among successful authors. Thiers, the editor of the National and the historian of the Revolution; Guizot, the profound professor of history; Villemain, the eloquent annalist of French literature; Lamartine, the popular traveller, poet, and historian, have been the alternate prime ministers of France since the revolution of 1830. Even the great name of Napoleon cannot save his nephew from the irksomeness of bending to the same necessity. He named Thiers his prime minister at the time of the Boulogne misadventure, he is caressing him now in the salons of the Elysée Bourbon. Successful authors thus in France are surrounded with a halo, and exposed to influences, of which in this country we cannot form a conception. They unite in their persons the fame of Mr Fox and the lustre of Sir Walter Scott: often the political power of Mr Pitt with the celebrity of Lord Byron. Whether such a concentration is favourable either to their present utility or lasting fame, and whether the best school to train authors to be the instructors of the world is to be found in that which exposes them to the combined influence of its greatest temptations, are questions on which it is not necessary now to enter, but on which posterity will probably have no difficulty in coming to a conclusion.

But while we fully admit that these extraordinary circumstances, unparalleled in the past history of the world, go far to extenuate the blame which must be thrown on the French writers for their extraordinary vanity, they will not entirely exculpate them. Ordinary men may well be carried away by such adventitious and flattering marks of their power; but we cannot accept such an excuse from the first men of the age – men of the clearest intellect, and the greatest acquisitions – whose genius is to charm, whose wisdom is to instruct the world through every succeeding age. If the teachers of men are not to be above the follies and weaknesses which are general and ridiculous in those of inferior capacity, where are we to look for such an exemption? It is a poor excuse for the overweening vanity of a Byron, a Goethe, a Lamartine, or a Chateaubriand, that a similar weakness is to be found in a Madame Grisi or a Mademoiselle Cerito, in the first cantatrice or most admired ballerina of the day. We all know that the professors of these charming arts are too often intoxicated by the applause which they meet with; we excuse or overlook this weakness from respect due to their genius and their sex. But we know, at the same time, that there are some exceptions to the general frailty; and in one enchanting performer, our admiration for talents of the very highest order is enhanced by respect for the simplicity of character and generosity of disposition with which they are accompanied. We might desiderate in the men who aspire to direct the thoughts of the world, and have received from nature talents equal to the task, the unaffected singleness of heart, and sterling good sense, which we admire, not less than her admirable powers, in Mademoiselle Jenny Lind.

The faults, or rather frailties, we have alluded to, are in an especial manner conspicuous in two of the most remarkable writers of France of the present century – Lamartine and Chateaubriand. There is some excuse for the vanity of these illustrious men. They have both acquired an enduring fame – their names are known all over the world, and will continue to be so while the French language is spoken on the earth; and they have both, by their literary talents, been elevated to positions far beyond the rank in society to which they were born, and which might well make an ordinary head reel from the giddy precipices with which it is surrounded. Chateaubriand powerfully aided in crushing Napoleon in 1814, when Europe in arms surrounded Paris: with still more honourable constancy he resisted him in 1804, when, in the plenitude of his power, he executed the Duke d'Enghien. He became ambassador to London for the Restoration – minister of foreign affairs, and representative of France at the Congress of Verona. He it was who projected and carried into execution the French invasion of the Peninsula in 1823, the only successful expedition of the Restoration. Lamartine's career, if briefer, has been still more dazzling. He aided largely in the movement which overthrew Louis Philippe; by the force of his genius he obtained the mastery of the movement, "struggled with democracy when it was strongest, and ruled it when it was wildest;" and had the glory, by his single courage and energy, of saving the character of the revolution from bloodshed, and coercing the Red Republicans in the very tumult of their victory. He has since fallen from power, less from any known delinquencies imputed to him, than from the inherent fickleness of the French people, and the impossibility of their submitting, for any length of time, to the lead of a single individual. The autobiography of two such men cannot be other than interesting and instructive in the highest degree; and if we see in them much which we in England cannot altogether understand, and which we are accustomed to stigmatise with the emphatic epithet "French," there is much also in them which candour must respect, and an equitable spirit admire.

The great thing which characterises these memoirs, and is sufficient to redeem a multitude of vanities and frailties, is the elevated and chivalrous spirit in which they are composed. In this respect they are a relic, we fear, of the olden time; a remnant of those ancient days which Mr Burke has so eloquently described in his portrait of Marie Antoinette. That is the spirit which pervades the breasts of these illustrious men; and therefore it is that we respect them, and forgive or forget many weaknesses which would otherwise be insupportable in their autobiographies. It is a spirit, however, more akin to a former era than the present; to the age which produced the crusades, more than that which gave birth to railways; to the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, rather than those which raised a monument to Mr Hudson. We are by no means convinced, however, that it is not the more likely to be enduring in the future ages of the world; at least we are sure it will be so, if the sanguine anticipations everywhere formed, by the apostles of the movement of the future improvement of the species, are destined in any degree to be realised.

Although, however, the hearts of Chateaubriand and Lamartine are stamped with the impress of chivalry, and the principal charm of their writings is owing to its generous spirit, yet we should err greatly if we imagined that they have not shared in the influences of the age in which they lived, and become largely imbued with the more popular and equalising notions which have sprung up in Europe during the last century. They could not have attained the political power which they have both wielded if they had not done so; for no man, be his genius what it may, will ever acquire a practical lead among men unless his opinions coincide in the main with those of the majority by whom he is surrounded. Chateaubriand's earliest work, written in London in 1793 – the Essai Historique– is, in truth, rather of a republican and sceptical tendency; and it was not till he had travelled in America, and inhaled a nobler spirit amid the solitudes of nature, that the better parts of his nature regained their ascendency, and his fame was established on an imperishable foundation by the publication of Atala et René, and the Génie du Christianisme. Throughout his whole career, the influence of his early liberal principles remained conspicuous: albeit a royalist, he was the steady supporter of the freedom of the press and the extension of the elective suffrage; and he kept aloof from the government of Louis Philippe less from aversion to the semi-revolutionary spirit in which it was cradled, than from an honourable fidelity to misfortune and horror at the selfish corrupt multitude by which it was soon surrounded. Lamartine's republican principles are universally known: albeit descended of a noble family, and largely imbued with feudal feelings, he aided in the revolt which overturned the throne of Louis Philippe in February 1848, and acquired lasting renown by the courage with which he combated the sanguinary spirit of the Red Republicans, when minister of foreign affairs. Both are chivalrous in heart and feeling, rather than opinions; and they thus exhibit curious and instructive instances of the fusions of the moving principle of the olden time with the ideas of the present, and of the manner in which the true spirit of nobility, forgetfulness of self, can accommodate itself to the varying circumstances of society, and float, from its buoyant tendency, on the surface of the most fetid stream of subsequent selfishness.