N° LXXXVII. Lives of Literary Men abundant in Materials for ΤΟ THE Biography. RUMINATOR. NEVER, Surely, was there any remark more unfounded than that the lives of literary men cannot afford materials for biography. This assertion has been already refuted by the RUMINATOR. But an expression in one of the three epistolary fragments of M. A. R. seems to me to place the subject in rather a new point of view, and very forcibly to expose the fallacy of this exploded opinion. "The life of a person of morbid sensibility may be termed a PERPETUAL WARFARE. Every day, every night, every hour, presents trials of his patience and fortitude more than equal to those which, to an individual less tremblingly alive, are caused by the dangers and hardships of a campaign." The gift of exquisite sensibility generally proves a blessing or a curse, according as it is regulated. But, endow a human being with a degree of morbid irritability sufficiently acute, and no rules, no caution can save him; the bodily frame perishes under the restless dominion of the mind; and the mind is then also overthrown by the influence of bodily suf fering. He is at perpetual variance with all who are around him; with every rule and habit of ordinary society and ordinary life. Every character by whom he is environed is uncongenial, and therefore inimical; every voice thrills his frame with painful sensation; every eye is as a dagger; every countenance a spectre. he is at war not only with the living, but even with the dead: he is a lonely and blasted tree on the heath, or rather a shipwrecked mariner contending with the ocean. Neither with those who have preceded him in the world, nor with its present inhabitants, with their manners, their feelings, their habits, their mode of living, has he one single chord in his frame to vibrate in unison. Besides this, he has to combat, every hour and every moment, with a thousand secret springs of unhappiness and disease that are peculiar to himself; and in which conflicts he can meet neither with support nor with sympathy. If it were possible to prevent the existence of such evils, the remedy, as I have said in a former letter, must be sought for in the influence of early education. But such a protection is, of necessity, in the power but of a very few: these few in consequence become the luminaries of the world; poets, orators, philosophers, statesmen, and heroes. Are not the annals of such conflicts, the delineations of genuine emotions, of the infinite varieties of real feeling, as valuable and interesting as the history of battles and shipwrecks, and mighty vicissitudes, and "hair-breadth 'scapes by sea and land?" Such incidents necessarily occur but seldom, and to a very few individuals; but the delineations of a private and domestic life, such as that of Cowper, find, at some time or another, a "mirror in every bosom." It has often occurred to me, that if every man gifted with sensibility could make a practice of employing a few of his best hours daily, in retracing the events, and above all the feelings of his own life, and at the same time indulge himself in throwing over them a colouring of romance, it would form at once the most interesting and truly useful pursuit in which he could be engaged. There are individuals indeed, whose idiosyncrasies are such as never can inspire sympathy. To me Rousseau and Montaigne appear of this class, but to a different reader their Confessions may appear in a very different light. It is obvious that all modern romances are interesting, or otherwise, exactly in proportion to the degree of identity which has existed between the author and his hero. Were the real feelings of a person of genius and sensibility arrested and ascribed to romantic characters, incidents and situation, it would render the wildest and most improbable adventures valuable and interesting. On the contrary, the best possible tale, told by a cold and unfeeling author, falls dead and lifeless on the ear of his auditor. How much is it to be wished (as I think it has already been observed by the Ruminator) that Gray had more frequently possessed, or exercised that power of arresting his own emotions, which he has evinced in the Odes to Spring and Eton, the matchless Elegy, and perhaps in some parts of his Letters, and the Journal of an Autumnal Tour in Wales! How beautiful are the delineations of real feeling, which appear in some of the prefaces to Marmion! At this moment, when the mists of a November morning are spread over the scenes, and roll in heavy volumes over the brown and faded heath, and on the dark waters of the lake, how forcibly, even though suffering from extreme illness, do I feel the correctness and beauty of the descriptions contained in the beginning of the two letters, dated "Ettrick Forest, November." But I have somewhat wandered from my subject, on which, however, I had only further to observe, what almost all must have experienced, that there are moments at which even the most trifling sight or sound, which at other times would pass altogether unnoticed; the voice of a redbreast, the scream of a falcon, the moan of an autumnal gale, or a few bars of music, have the power of calling forth a train of romantic remembrances, long and delightful. Such moments ought not to be neglected. To commit their visions to paper would form an employment at once entertaining, and in its results far from unimportant. < H. F. A. * See this subject amply discussed, in Foster's Essays, Oxford, 1811. |