Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 65, March, 1863

Plutarch, when about to enter upon the crowded lives of Alexander and Caesar, declares his purpose and sets forth the true nature and province of biography in these words:—"It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore, as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others."

That these general principles of biography are correct, and that Plutarch, by adhering to them, succeeded, beyond all others, in making his heroes realities, men of flesh and blood, whom we see and know like those about us, in whom we feel the warmest interest, and from whom we derive lessons of deep wisdom, as from our own experience,—all this could best be shown by the enduring popularity of his "Lives," and the seal of approval set upon them by critics of the most opposite schools. What a long array of names might be presented of those who have given their testimony to the wondrous fascination of this undying Greek!—names of the great and wise through many long centuries, men differing in age, country, religion, language, and occupation. For ages he has charmed youth, instructed manhood, and solaced graybeards. His heroes have become household words throughout the world. He has been equally familiar with court, with camp, and with cottage. He has been the companion of the soldier, the text-book of the philosopher, and the vade-mecum of kings and statesmen. And his name even now, after the lapse of so many generations, is fresher than ever.

Yet Lord Macaulay could not refrain from a sneer at Plutarch as a pedant who thought himself a great philosopher and a great politician. Pedant he may have been; philosopher and politician he may not have been; but he was, nevertheless, the prince of biographers. Macaulay has praised Boswell's "Life of Johnson" as the best biography ever written. But was not Boswell a pedant? Was he a philosopher? Macaulay himself has penned many biographies. Most of them are quite above the pedantry of small facts. Instead, they are crammed with deep philosophy, with abstractions, and with the balancing of antithetical qualities. They are bloodless frameworks, without life or humanity,—bundles of peculiarities skilfully grouped, and ticketed with such and such a name. No one sees a man within. As biographies they will not be remembered, but as instances of labored learning, of careful special pleading, and of brilliant rhetoric. Elsewhere, however, he has descended from philosophy, and not been above the pedantry of detail. And he has given us, in consequence, charming lives,—successful, in fact, just so far as he has followed in the footsteps of the old Greek. Yet who would for a moment compare his Pitt, his Goldsmith, or his William IV., as biography, with Plutarch's Alcibiades, or Cato the Censor? We remember the fact that Goldsmith sometimes wore a peach-blossom suit, but we see Cato in his toga.

Very many works have been written, purporting to be "The Life and Times" of this or that man. Where a man has occupied a large historic place, has been moulded by his times, and has moulded in turn the coming years, such works are well enough as history. As biography they are failures. The Times get the upper hand, and thrust down the Life. Without the Life, such works would be better, too, as history; for man and the world are two different things, and their respective provinces cannot, without confusion, be thrown into one. Now every leading man bears a twofold character. He is man, and something more: he is a power in history. Whatever concerns him as man,—his humanity, his individuality, his personal qualities, his character and inclinations, "the marks and indications of the soul," as Plutarch phrases it,—all this, and hardly more than this, is matter for biography, and for that alone. But so far as he is a representative man, standing for communities, for nations, for the world of his time,—so far as he is an historic force, making and solving, in some degree, large human problems,—so far as he is the organ chosen by destiny to aid in the development of his race,—just so far he is a maker of history, and therefore its proper subject, and its alone. Napoleon was not only a man, but he was Europe for some twenty years. Louis XIV was the Europe of half a century. There should be lives of such men, for they were akin to their fellows: histories, too, should be theirs, for they were allied to Nature, and fate, and law. They jested; and Biography, smiling, seized her tablets. They embodied a people; and Clio, pondering, opened the long scrolls of time.

All biography has been said to be eulogistic in its nature. This is well enough. But it is not well, when the author, high on daring stilts, overlooks the little matters just about him, and, rapidly running his eye over the wastes that stretch from Dan to Beersheba, prates of the fields that lie along the distant horizon. Nor is it well, when he forgets his hero, and writes himself,—when he constantly thrusts upon us philosophy, abstractions, and the like,—when he has a pet theory to sustain through thick and thin,—when narrative becomes disquisition, memoir is criticism, life is bloodless, and the man is a puppet whose strings he jerks freakishly. There may be something good in all this; but it is all quite out of place: it is simply not biography. The foundation of most biographical sins is, perhaps, ambition,—an ambition to do something more or something other than the subject demands, and to pitch the strain in too high a key. Hence we have usually found the memoirs of comparatively insignificant men to be better reading, and more fertile in suggestion, than those of what are called great men. Not that the real life, as he lived it, of a man of mediocrity has in itself more seeds of thought than that of a hero. Far otherwise. But his written life has often greater lessons of wisdom for us, precisely because it is generally found to give us more of the individual, and more of our common humanity,—which is the very thing we want. There is less of pretext to pour this one small drop into the broad ocean, and then treat us to a vague essay on salt-water. What is it, for instance, that gives to Southey's "Life of Nelson" its great excellence? There have been many other works on the same subject, larger, fuller, and more carefully studied. But these will perish, while that will be cherished by all the generations to come. It is because the author kept throughout precisely on a level with his subject. He was conscious, on every page, that he was writing of one man,—that nothing was trivial which could throw light on this man, and nothing important which did not tend directly to the same end. Nelson was made to speak, not only in his own words, but in the many little ways and actions which best show the stuff one is made of. There is no essay, nothing strictly didactic. Facts are given: inferences are left entirely with the reader. Few books are more wearisome than those which are thoroughly exhaustive, which point a moral and adorn a tale on every page. Imagination and thought must sit supine, despairing of new conquests. Their work has all been done before.