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. Acute, keen, and observant, he pierced
the masks of the courtiers, and detected their secrets. The ardour with
which he prosecuted his favourite study of character seemed insatiable,
and even cruel. "The eager anatomist," says Sainte-Beuve, "was not more
ready to plunge the scalpel into the still-palpitating bosom in search
of the disease that had baffled him."

La Bruyere possessed the same gift of accurate and penetrating
observation of character. He watched and studied everybody about him.
He sought to read their secrets; and, retiring to his chamber, he
deliberately painted their portraits, returning to them from time to
time to correct some prominent feature--hanging over them as fondly as
an artist over some favourite study--adding trait to trait, and touch
to touch, until at length the picture was complete and the likeness
perfect.

It may be said that much of the interest of biography, especially of the
more familiar sort, is of the nature of gossip; as that of the MEMOIRES
POUR SERVIR is of the nature of scandal, which is no doubt true. But
both gossip and scandal illustrate the strength of the interest which
men and women take in each other's personality; and which, exhibited in
the form of biography, is capable of communicating the highest pleasure,
and yielding the best instruction. Indeed biography, because it is
instinct of humanity, is the branch of literature which--whether in the
form of fiction, of anecdotal recollection, or of personal narrative--is
the one that invariably commends itself to by far the largest class of
readers.

There is no room for doubt that the surpassing interest which fiction,
whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds, arises mainly
from the biographic element which it contains. Homer's 'Iliad' owes its
marvellous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the
portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his
personages in detail as make them develope themselves by their actions.
"There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and
combination of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind
ever since have not produced any but what are to be found there."

The genius of Shakspeare also was displayed in the powerful delineation
of character, and the dramatic evolution of human passions. His
personages seem to be real--living and breathing before us. So too with
Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though homely and vulgar, is intensely
human. The characters in Le Sage's 'Gil Blas,' in Goldsmith's 'Vicar of
Wakefield,' and in Scott's marvellous muster-roll, seem to us almost as
real as persons whom we have actually known; and De Foe's greatest works
are but so many biographies, painted in minute detail, with reality so
apparently stamped upon every page, that it is difficult to believe his
Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack to have been fictitious instead of real
persons.

Though the richest romance lies enclosed in actual human life, and
though biography, because it describes beings who have actually felt the
joys and sorrows, and experienced the difficulties and triumphs, of real
life, is capable of being made more attractive, than the most perfect
fictions ever woven, it is remarkable that so few men of genius have
been attracted to the composition of works of this kind. Great works of
fiction abound, but great biographies may be counted on the fingers. It
may be for the same reason that a great painter of portraits, the
late John Philip, R.A., explained his preference for subject-painting,
because, said he, "Portrait-painting does not pay." Biographic
portraiture involves laborious investigation and careful collection of
facts, judicious rejection and skilful condensation, as well as the
art of presenting the character portrayed in the most attractive and
lifelike form; whereas, in the work of fiction, the writer's imagination
is free to create and to portray character, without being trammelled by
references, or held down by the actual details of real life.

There is, indeed, no want among us of ponderous but lifeless memoirs,
many of them little better than inventories, put together with the
help of the scissors as much as of the pen. What Constable said of the
portraits of an inferior artist--"He takes all the bones and brains out
of his heads"--applies to a large class of portraiture, written as well
as painted. They have no more life in them than a piece of waxwork, or a
clothes-dummy at a tailor's door. What we want is a picture of a man as
he lived, and lo! we have an exhibition of the biographer himself. We
expect an embalmed heart, and we find only clothes.

There is doubtless as high art displayed in painting a portrait in
words, as there is in painting one in colours. To do either well
requires the seeing eye and the skilful pen or brush. A common artist
sees only the features of a face, and copies them; but the great artist
sees the living soul shining through the features, and places it on
the canvas. Johnson was once asked to assist the chaplain of a deceased
bishop in writing a memoir of his lordship; but when he proceeded to
inquire for information, the chaplain could scarcely tell him anything.
Hence Johnson was led to observe that "few people who have lived with a
man know what to remark about him."

In the case of Johnson's own life, it was the seeing eye of Boswell that
enabled him to note and treasure up those minute details of habit and
conversation in which so much of the interest of biography consists.
Boswell, because of his simple love and admiration of his hero,
succeeded where probably greater men would have failed. He descended to
apparently insignificant, but yet most characteristic, particulars. Thus
he apologizes for informing the reader that Johnson, when journeying,
"carried in his hand a large English oak-stick:" adding, "I remember Dr.
Adam Smith, in his rhetorical lectures at Glasgow, told us he was glad
to know that Milton wore latchets in his shoes instead of buckles."
Boswell lets us know how Johnson looked, what dress he wore, what was
his talk, what were his prejudices. He painted him with all his scars,
and a wonderful portrait it is--perhaps the most complete picture of a
great man ever limned in words.

But for the accident of the Scotch advocate's intimacy with Johnson, and
his devoted admiration of him, the latter would not probably have stood
nearly so high in literature as he now does. It is in the pages of
Boswell that Johnson really lives; and but for Boswell, he might have
remained little more than a name. Others there are who have bequeathed
great works to posterity, but of whose lives next to nothing is known.
What would we not give to have a Boswell's account of Shakspeare? We
positively know more of the personal history of Socrates, of Horace, of
Cicero, of Augustine, than we do of that of Shakspeare. We do not
know what was his religion, what were his politics, what were his
experiences, what were his relations to his contemporaries. The men
of his own time do not seem to have recognised his greatness; and Ben
Jonson, the court poet, whose blank-verse Shakspeare was content
to commit to memory and recite as an actor, stood higher in popular
estimation. We only know that he was a successful theatrical manager,
and that in the prime of life he retired to his native place, where he
died, and had the honours of a village funeral. The greater part of the
biography which has been constructed respecting him has been the result,
not of contemporary observation or of record, but of inference. The best
inner biography of the man is to be found in his sonnets.

Men do not always take an accurate measure of their contemporaries. The
statesman, the general, the monarch of to-day fills all eyes and ears,
though to the next generation he may be as if he had never been. "And
who is king to-day?" the painter Greuze would ask of his daughter,
during the throes of the first French Revolution, when men, great for
the time, were suddenly thrown to the surface, and as suddenly dropt out
of sight again, never to reappear. "And who is king to-day? After all,"
Greuze would add, "Citizen Homer and Citizen Raphael will outlive those
great citizens of ours, whose names I have never before heard of."
Yet of the personal history of Homer nothing is known, and of Raphael
comparatively little. Even Plutarch, who wrote the lives of others: so
well, has no biography, none of the eminent Roman writers who were
his contemporaries having so much as mentioned his name. And so of
Correggio, who delineated the features of others so well, there is not
known to exist an authentic portrait.

There have been men who greatly influenced the life of their time, whose
reputation has been much greater with posterity than it was with their
contemporaries. Of Wickliffe, the patriarch of the Reformation, our
knowledge is extremely small. He was but as a voice crying in the
wilderness. We do not really know who was the author of 'The Imitation
of Christ'--a book that has had an immense circulation, and exercised
a vast religious influence in all Christian countries. It is usually
attributed to Thomas a Kempis but there is reason to believe that he was
merely its translator, and the book that is really known to be his, [1910]
is in all respects so inferior, that it is difficult to believe that
'The Imitation' proceeded from the same pen. It is considered more
probable that the real author was John Gerson, Chancellor of the
University of Paris, a most learned and devout man, who died in 1429.

Some of the greatest men of genius have had the shortest biographies. Of
Plato, one of the great fathers of moral philosophy, we have no personal
account. If he had wife and children, we hear nothing of them. About the
life of Aristotle there is the greatest diversity of opinion. One says
he was a Jew; another, that he only got his information from a Jew: one
says he kept an apothecary's shop; another, that he was only the son of
a physician: one alleges that he was an atheist; another, that he was a
Trinitarian, and so forth. But we know almost as little with respect to
many men of comparatively modern times. Thus, how little do we know of
the lives of Spenser, author of 'The Faerie Queen,' and of Butler, the
author of 'Hudibras,' beyond the fact that they lived in comparative
obscurity, and died in extreme poverty! How little, comparatively, do
we know of the life of Jeremy Taylor, the golden preacher, of whom we
should like to have known so much!

The author of 'Philip Van Artevelde' has said that "the world knows
nothing of its greatest men." And doubtless oblivion has enwrapt in
its folds many great men who have done great deeds, and been forgotten.
Augustine speaks of Romanianus as the greatest genius that ever lived,
and yet we know nothing of him but his name; he is as much forgotten
as the builders of the Pyramids. Gordiani's epitaph was written in five
languages, yet it sufficed not to rescue him from oblivion.

Many, indeed, are the lives worthy of record that have remained
unwritten. Men who have written books have been the most fortunate in
this respect, because they possess an attraction for literary men which
those whose lives have been embodied in deeds do not possess. Thus there
have been lives written of Poets Laureate who were mere men of their
time, and of their time only. Dr. Johnson includes some of them in his
'Lives of the Poets,' such as Edmund Smith and others, whose poems
are now no longer known. The lives of some men of letters--such as
Goldsmith, Swift, Sterne, and Steele--have been written again and again,
whilst great men of action, men of science, and men of industry, are
left without a record. [1911]

We have said that a man may be known by the company he keeps in his
books. Let us mention a few of the favourites of the best-known men.
Plutarch's admirers have already been referred to. Montaigne also has
been the companion of most meditative men. Although Shakspeare must have
studied Plutarch carefully, inasmuch as he copied from him freely, even
to his very words, it is remarkable that Montaigne is the only book
which we certainly know to have been in the poet's library; one of
Shakspeare's existing autographs having been found in a copy of Florio's
translation of 'The Essays,' which also contains, on the flyleaf, the
autograph of Ben Jonson.

Milton's favourite books were Homer, Ovid, and Euripides. The latter
book was also the favourite of Charles James Fox, who regarded the study
of it as especially useful to a public speaker. On the other hand, Pitt
took especial delight in Milton--whom Fox did not appreciate--taking
pleasure in reciting, from 'Paradise Lost,' the grand speech of Belial
before the assembled powers of Pandemonium. Another of Pitt's favourite
books was Newton's 'Principia.' Again, the Earl of Chatham's favourite
book was 'Barrow's Sermons,' which he read so often as to be able to
repeat them from memory; while Burke's companions were Demosthenes,
Milton, Bolingbroke, and Young's 'Night Thoughts.'

Curran's favourite was Homer, which he read through once a year. Virgil
was another of his favourites; his biographer, Phillips, saying that
he once saw him reading the 'Aeneid' in the cabin of a Holyhead packet,
while every one about him was prostrate by seasickness.

Of the poets, Dante's favourite was Virgil; Corneille's was Lucan;
Schiller's was Shakspeare; Gray's was Spenser; whilst Coleridge admired
Collins and Bowles. Dante himself was a favourite with most great poets,
from Chaucer to Byron and Tennyson. Lord Brougham, Macaulay, and Carlyle
have alike admired and eulogized the great Italian. The former advised
the students at Glasgow that, next to Demosthenes, the study of Dante
was the best preparative for the eloquence of the pulpit or the bar.
Robert Hall sought relief in Dante from the racking pains of spinal
disease; and Sydney Smith took to the same poet for comfort and solace
in his old age. It was characteristic of Goethe that his favourite book
should have been Spinoza's 'Ethics,' in which he said he had found a
peace and consolation such as he had been able to find in no other work.
[1912]

Barrow's favourite was St. Chrysostom; Bossuet's was Homer. Bunyan's
was the old legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton, which in all probability
gave him the first idea of his 'Pilgrim's Progress.' One of the
best prelates that ever sat on the English bench, Dr. John Sharp,
said--"Shakspeare and the Bible have made me Archbishop of York." The
two books which most impressed John Wesley when a young man, were 'The
Imitation of Christ' and Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying.' Yet
Wesley was accustomed to caution his young friends against overmuch
reading. "Beware you be not swallowed up in books," he would say to
them; "an ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge."

Wesley's own Life has been a great favourite with many thoughtful
readers. Coleridge says, in his preface to Southey's 'Life of Wesley,'
that it was more often in his hands than any other in his ragged
book-regiment. "To this work, and to the Life of Richard Baxter," he
says, "I was used to resort whenever sickness and languor made me feel
the want of an old friend of whose company I could never be tired. How
many and many an hour of self-oblivion do I owe to this Life of Wesley;
and how often have I argued with it, questioned, remonstrated, been
peevish, and asked pardon; then again listened, and cried, 'Right!
Excellent!' and in yet heavier hours entreated it, as it were, to
continue talking to me; for that I heard and listened, and was soothed,
though I could make no reply!" [1913]

Soumet had only a very few hooks in his library, but they were of the
best--Homer, Virgil, Dante, Camoens, Tasso, and Milton. De Quincey's
favourite few were Donne, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, South,
Barrow, and Sir Thomas Browne. He described these writers as "a pleiad
or constellation of seven golden stars, such as in their class no
literature can match," and from whose works he would undertake "to build
up an entire body of philosophy."

Frederick the Great of Prussia manifested his strong French leanings
in his choice of books; his principal favourites being Bayle, Rousseau,
Voltaire, Rollin, Fleury, Malebranche, and one English author--Locke.
His especial favourite was Bayle's Dictionary, which was the first book
that laid hold of his mind; and he thought so highly of it, that he
himself made an abridgment and translation of it into German, which was
published. It was a saying of Frederick's, that "books make up no small
part of true happiness." In his old age he said, "My latest passion will
be for literature."

It seems odd that Marshal Blucher's favourite book should have been
Klopstock's 'Messiah,' and Napoleon Buonaparte's favourites, Ossian's
'Poems' and the 'Sorrows of Werther.' But Napoleon's range of reading
was very extensive. It included Homer, Virgil, Tasso; novels of all
countries; histories of all times; mathematics, legislation, and
theology. He detested what he called "the bombast and tinsel" of
Voltaire. The praises of Homer and Ossian he was never wearied
of sounding. "Read again," he said to an officer on board the
BELLEROPHO--"read again the poet of Achilles; devour Ossian. Those are
the poets who lift up the soul, and give to man a colossal greatness."
[1914]

The Duke of Wellington was an extensive reader; his principal favourites
were Clarendon, Bishop Butler, Smith's 'Wealth of Nations,' Hume,
the Archduke Charles, Leslie, and the Bible. He was also particularly
interested by French and English memoirs--more especially the French
MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR of all kinds. When at Walmer, Mr. Gleig says, the
Bible, the Prayer Book, Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying,' and Caesar's
'Commentaries,' lay within the Duke's reach; and, judging by the marks
of use on them, they must have been much read and often consulted.

While books are among the best companions of old age, they are often the
best inspirers of youth. The first book that makes a deep impression on
a young man's mind, often constitutes an epoch in his life. It may fire
the heart, stimulate the enthusiasm, and by directing his efforts into
unexpected channels, permanently influence his character. The new book,
in which we form an intimacy with a new friend, whose mind is wiser and
riper than our own, may thus form an important starting-point in the
history of a life. It may sometimes almost be regarded in the light of a
new birth.

From the day when James Edward Smith was presented with his first
botanical lesson-book, and Sir Joseph Banks fell in with Gerard's
'Herbal'--from the time when Alfieri first read Plutarch, and Schiller
made his first acquaintance with Shakspeare, and Gibbon devoured the
first volume of 'The Universal History'--each dated an inspiration so
exalted, that they felt as if their real lives had only then begun.

In the earlier part of his youth, La Fontaine was distinguished for
his idleness, but hearing an ode by Malherbe read, he is said to have
exclaimed, "I too am a poet," and his genius was awakened. Charles
Bossuet's mind was first fired to study by reading, at an early
age, Fontenelle's 'Eloges' of men of science. Another work of
Fontenelle's--'On the Plurality of Worlds'--influenced the mind of
Lalande in making choice of a profession. "It is with pleasure," says
Lalande himself in a preface to the book, which he afterwards edited,
"that I acknowledge my obligation to it for that devouring activity
which its perusal first excited in me at the age of sixteen, and which I
have since retained."

In like manner, Lacepede was directed to the study of natural history
by the perusal of Buffon's 'Histoire Naturelle,' which he found in his
father's library, and read over and over again until he almost knew it
by heart. Goethe was greatly influenced by the reading of Goldsmith's
'Vicar of Wakefield,' just at the critical moment of his mental
development; and he attributed to it much of his best education. The
reading of a prose 'Life of Gotz vou Berlichingen' afterwards stimulated
him to delineate his character in a poetic form. "The figure of a rude,
well-meaning self-helper," he said, "in a wild anarchic time, excited my
deepest sympathy."

Keats was an insatiable reader when a boy; but it was the perusal of the
'Faerie Queen,' at the age of seventeen, that first lit the fire of his
genius. The same poem is also said to have been the inspirer of Cowley,
who found a copy of it accidentally lying on the window of his mother's
apartment; and reading and admiring it, he became, as he relates,
irrecoverably a poet.

Coleridge speaks of the great influence which the poems of Bowles had in
forming his own mind. The works of a past age, says he, seem to a young
man to be things of another race; but the writings of a contemporary
"possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a
man for a man. His very admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his
hope. The poems themselves assume the properties of flesh and blood."
[1915]

But men have not merely been stimulated to undertake special literary
pursuits by the perusal of particular books; they have been also
stimulated by them to enter upon particular lines of action in the
serious business of life. Thus Henry Martyn was powerfully influenced
to enter upon his heroic career as a missionary by perusing the Lives of
Henry Brainerd and Dr. Carey, who had opened up the furrows in which he
went forth to sow the seed.

Bentham has described the extraordinary influence which the perusal of
'Telemachus' exercised upon his mind in boyhood. "Another book," said
he, "and of far higher character [19than a collection of Fairy Tales, to
which he refers], was placed in my hands. It was 'Telemachus.' In my
own imagination, and at the age of six or seven, I identified my own
personality with that of the hero, who seemed to me a model of perfect
virtue; and in my walk of life, whatever it may come to be, why [19said
I to myself every now and then]--why should not I be a Telemachus?....
That romance may be regarded as THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF MY WHOLE
CHARACTER--the starting-post from whence my career of life commenced.
The first dawning in my mind of the 'Principles of Utility' may, I
think, be traced to it." [1916]

Cobbett's first favourite, because his only book, which he bought for
threepence, was Swift's 'Tale of a Tub,' the repeated perusal of
which had, doubtless, much to do with the formation of his pithy,
straightforward, and hard-hitting style of writing. The delight with
which Pope, when a schoolboy, read Ogilvy's 'Homer' was, most probably,
the origin of the English 'Iliad;' as the 'Percy Reliques' fired the
juvenile mind of Scott, and stimulated him to enter upon the collection
and composition of his 'Border Ballads.' Keightley's first reading of
'Paradise Lost,' when a boy, led to his afterwards undertaking his Life
of the poet. "The reading," he says, "of 'Paradise Lost' for the first
time forms, or should form, an era in the life of every one possessed of
taste and poetic feeling. To my mind, that time is ever present.... Ever
since, the poetry of Milton has formed my constant study--a source of
delight in prosperity, of strength and consolation in adversity."

Good books are thus among the best of companions; and, by elevating
the thoughts and aspirations, they act as preservatives against low
associations. "A natural turn for reading and intellectual pursuits,"
says Thomas Hood, "probably preserved me from the moral shipwreck so
apt to befal those who are deprived in early life of their parental
pilotage. My books kept me from the ring, the dogpit, the tavern, the
saloon. The closet associate of Pope and Addison, the mind accustomed to
the noble though silent discourse of Shakspeare and Milton, will hardly
seek or put up with low company and slaves."

It has been truly said, that the best books are those which most
resemble good actions. They are purifying, elevating, and sustaining;
they enlarge and liberalize the mind; they preserve it against vulgar
worldliness; they tend to produce highminded cheerfulness and equanimity
of character; they fashion, and shape, and humanize the mind. In the
Northern universities, the schools in which the ancient classics are
studied, are appropriately styled "The Humanity Classes." [1917]

Erasmus, the great scholar, was even of opinion that books were the
necessaries of life, and clothes the luxuries; and he frequently
postponed buying the latter until he had supplied himself with the
former. His greatest favourites were the works of Cicero, which he says
he always felt himself the better for reading. "I can never," he
says, "read the works of Cicero on 'Old Age,' or 'Friendship,' or his
'Tusculan Disputations,' without fervently pressing them to my lips,
without being penetrated with veneration for a mind little short of
inspired by God himself." It was the accidental perusal of Cicero's
'Hortensius' which first detached St. Augustine--until then a profligate
and abandoned sensualist--from his immoral life, and started him upon
the course of inquiry and study which led to his becoming the greatest
among the Fathers of the Early Church. Sir William Jones made it a
practice to read through, once a year, the writings of Cicero, "whose
life indeed," says his biographer, "was the great exemplar of his own."

When the good old Puritan Baxter came to enumerate the valuable and
delightful things of which death would deprive him, his mind reverted
to the pleasures he had derived from books and study. "When I die," he
said, "I must depart, not only from sensual delights, but from the more
manly pleasures of my studies, knowledge, and converse with many wise
and godly men, and from all my pleasure in reading, hearing, public and
private exercises of religion, and such like. I must leave my library,
and turn over those pleasant books no more. I must no more come among
the living, nor see the faces of my faithful friends, nor be seen of
man; houses, and cities, and fields, and countries, gardens, and walks,
will be as nothing to me. I shall no more hear of the affairs of the
world, of man, or wars, or other news; nor see what becomes of that
beloved interest of wisdom, piety, and peace, which I desire may
prosper."

It is unnecessary to speak of the enormous moral influence which books
have exercised upon the general civilization of mankind, from the Bible
downwards. They contain the treasured knowledge of the human race. They
are the record of all labours, achievements, speculations, successes,
and failures, in science, philosophy, religion, and morals. They have
been the greatest motive powers in all times. "From the Gospel to
the Contrat Social," says De Bonald, "it is books that have made
revolutions." Indeed, a great book is often a greater thing than a great
battle. Even works of fiction have occasionally exercised immense power
on society. Thus Rabelais in France, and Cervantes in Spain, overturned
at the same time the dominion of monkery and chivalry, employing no
other weapons but ridicule, the natural contrast of human terror.
The people laughed, and felt reassured. So 'Telemachus' appeared, and
recalled men back to the harmonies of nature.

"Poets," says Hazlitt, "are a longer-lived race than heroes: they
breathe more of the air of immortality. They survive more entire in
their thoughts and acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much
as if we had lived at the same time with them. We can hold their works
in our hands, or lay them on our pillows, or put them to our lips.
Scarcely a trace of what the others did is left upon the earth, so as
to be visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men,
still breathing and moving in their writings; the others, the conquerors
of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy [19so to speak]
between thought and thought is more intimate and vital than that between
thought and action. Thought is linked to thought as flame kindles into
flame; the tribute of admiration to the MANES of departed heroism is
like burning incense in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with
the progress of time harden into substances: things, bodies, actions,
moulder away, or melt into a sound--into thin air.... Not only a man's
actions are effaced and vanish with him; his virtues and generous
qualities die with him also. His intellect only is immortal, and
bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. Words are the only things that last
for ever." [1918]




CHAPTER XI.--COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE.



          "Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,
          Shall win my love."--SHAKSPEARE.

     "In the husband Wisdom, In the wife Gentleness."--GEORGE
     HERBERT.

     "If God had designed woman as man's master, He would have
     taken her from his head; If as his slave, He would have
     taken her from his feet; but as He designed her for his
     companion and equal, He took her from his side."--SAINT
     AUGUSTINE.--'DE CIVITATE DEI.'

     "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
     rubies.... Her husband is known in the gates, and he sitteth
     among the elders of the land.... Strength and honour are her
     clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth
     her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of
     kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her husband, and
     eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and
     call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."--
     PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.


THE character of men, as of women, is powerfully influenced by their
companionship in all the stages of life. We have already spoken of the
influence of the mother in forming the character of her children. She
makes the moral atmosphere in which they live, and by which their minds
and souls are nourished, as their bodies are by the physical atmosphere
they breathe. And while woman is the natural cherisher of infancy and
the instructor of childhood, she is also the guide and counsellor
of youth, and the confidant and companion of manhood, in her various
relations of mother, sister, lover, and wife. In short, the influence of
woman more or less affects, for good or for evil, the entire destinies
of man.

The respective social functions and duties of men and women are clearly
defined by nature. God created man AND woman, each to do their proper
work, each to fill their proper sphere. Neither can occupy the position,
nor perform the functions, of the other. Their several vocations are
perfectly distinct. Woman exists on her own account, as man does on
his, at the same time that each has intimate relations with the
other. Humanity needs both for the purposes of the race, and in every
consideration of social progress both must necessarily be included.

Though companions and equals, yet, as regards the measure of their
powers, they are unequal. Man is stronger, more muscular, and of rougher
fibre; woman is more delicate, sensitive, and nervous. The one excels in
power of brain, the other in qualities of heart; and though the head may
rule, it is the heart that influences. Both are alike adapted for the
respective functions they have to perform in life; and to attempt to
impose woman's work upon man would be quite as absurd as to attempt to
impose man's work upon woman. Men are sometimes womanlike, and women are
sometimes manlike; but these are only exceptions which prove the rule.

Although man's qualities belong more to the head, and woman's more
to the heart--yet it is not less necessary that man's heart should be
cultivated as well as his head, and woman's head cultivated as well
as her heart. A heartless man is as much out-of-keeping in civilized
society as a stupid and unintelligent woman. The cultivation of all
parts of the moral and intellectual nature is requisite to form the man
or woman of healthy and well-balanced character. Without sympathy or
consideration for others, man were a poor, stunted, sordid, selfish
being; and without cultivated intelligence, the most beautiful woman
were little better than a well-dressed doll.

It used to be a favourite notion about woman, that her weakness and
dependency upon others constituted her principal claim to admiration.
"If we were to form an image of dignity in a man," said Sir Richard
Steele, "we should give him wisdom and valour, as being essential to the
character of manhood. In like manner, if you describe a right woman in
a laudable sense, she should have gentle softness, tender fear, and all
those parts of life which distinguish her from the other sex, with some
subordination to it, but an inferiority which makes her lovely." Thus,
her weakness was to be cultivated, rather than her strength; her
folly, rather than her wisdom. She was to be a weak, fearful, tearful,
characterless, inferior creature, with just sense enough to understand
the soft nothings addressed to her by the "superior" sex. She was to
be educated as an ornamental appanage of man, rather as an independent
intelligence--or as a wife, mother, companion, or friend.

Pope, in one of his 'Moral Essays,' asserts that "most women have no
characters at all;" and again he says:--

          "Ladies, like variegated tulips, show:
          'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe,
          Fine by defect and delicately weak."

This satire characteristically occurs in the poet's 'Epistle to Martha
Blount,' the housekeeper who so tyrannically ruled him; and in the same
verses he spitefully girds at Lady Mary Wortley Montague, at whose feet
he had thrown himself as a lover, and been contemptuously rejected.
But Pope was no judge of women, nor was he even a very wise or tolerant
judge of men.

It is still too much the practice to cultivate the weakness of woman
rather than her strength, and to render her attractive rather than
self-reliant. Her sensibilities are developed at the expense of her
health of body as well as of mind. She lives, moves, and has her being
in the sympathy of others. She dresses that she may attract, and is
burdened with accomplishments that she may be chosen. Weak, trembling,
and dependent, she incurs the risk of becoming a living embodiment of
the Italian proverb--"so good that she is good for nothing."

On the other hand, the education of young men too often errs on the
side of selfishness. While the boy is incited to trust mainly to his own
efforts in pushing his way in the world, the girl is encouraged to rely
almost entirely upon others. He is educated with too exclusive reference
to himself and she is educated with too exclusive reference to him. He
is taught to be self-reliant and self-dependent, while she is taught
to be distrustful of herself, dependent, and self-sacrificing in all
things. Thus, the intellect of the one is cultivated at the expense of
the affections, and the affections of the other at the expense of the
intellect.

It is unquestionable that the highest qualities of woman are displayed
in her relationship to others, through the medium of her affections. She
is the nurse whom nature has given to all humankind. She takes charge
of the helpless, and nourishes and cherishes those we love. She is the
presiding genius of the fireside, where she creates an atmosphere
of serenity and contentment suitable for the nurture and growth
of character in its best forms. She is by her very constitution
compassionate, gentle, patient, and self-denying. Loving, hopeful,
trustful, her eye sheds brightness everywhere. It shines upon coldness
and warms it, upon suffering and relieves it, upon sorrow and cheers
it:--

                          "Her silver flow
          Of subtle-paced counsel in distress,
        Right to the heart and brain, though undescried,
          Winning its way with extreme gentleness
        Through all the outworks of suspicion's pride."

Woman has been styled "the angel of the unfortunate." She is ready to
help the weak, to raise the fallen, to comfort the suffering. It was
characteristic of woman, that she should have been the first to build
and endow an hospital. It has been said that wherever a human being
is in suffering, his sighs call a woman to his side. When Mungo Park,
lonely, friendless, and famished, after being driven forth from an
African village by the men, was preparing to spend the night under a
tree, exposed to the rain and the wild beasts which there abounded,
a poor negro woman, returning from the labours of the field, took
compassion upon him, conducted him into her hut, and there gave him
food, succour, and shelter. [201]

But while the most characteristic qualities of woman are displayed
through her sympathies and affections, it is also necessary for her own
happiness, as a self-dependent being, to develope and strengthen her
character, by due self-culture, self-reliance, and self-control. It is
not desirable, even were it possible, to close the beautiful avenues
of the heart. Self-reliance of the best kind does not involve any
limitation in the range of human sympathy. But the happiness of woman,
as of man, depends in a great measure upon her individual completeness
of character. And that self-dependence which springs from the due
cultivation of the intellectual powers, conjoined with a proper
discipline of the heart and conscience, will enable her to be more
useful in life as well as happy; to dispense blessings intelligently as
well as to enjoy them; and most of all those which spring from mutual
dependence and social sympathy.

To maintain a high standard of purity in society, the culture of both
sexes must be in harmony, and keep equal pace. A pure womanhood must be
accompanied by a pure manhood. The same moral law applies alike to both.
It would be loosening the foundations of virtue, to countenance the
notion that because of a difference in sex, man were at liberty to set
morality at defiance, and to do that with impunity, which, if done by
a woman, would stain her character for life. To maintain a pure and
virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman must be
pure and virtuous; both alike shunning all acts impinging on the heart,
character, and conscience--shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed,
can never be entirely thrown out again, but mentally embitters, to a
greater or less extent, the happiness of after-life.

And here we would venture to touch upon a delicate topic. Though it is
one of universal and engrossing human interest, the moralist avoids it,
the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it. It is almost considered
indelicate to refer to Love as between the sexes; and young persons are
left to gather their only notions of it from the impossible love-stories
that fill the shelves of circulating libraries. This strong and
absorbing feeling, this BESOIN D'AIMER--which nature has for wise
purposes made so strong in woman that it colours her whole life and
history, though it may form but an episode in the life of man--is
usually left to follow its own inclinations, and to grow up for the most
part unchecked, without any guidance or direction whatever.

Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of
love, it might at all events be possible to implant in young minds such
views of Character as should enable them to discriminate between
the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those
qualities of moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a
scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people
to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice
against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its
name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term,
is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness,
is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The
sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration
engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence. It is
the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature."

It is by means of this divine passion that the world is kept ever
fresh and young. It is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds an
effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo round age. It glorifies the
present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by
the beams it casts forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem and
admiration, has an elevating and purifying effect on the character.
It tends to emancipate one from the slavery of self. It is altogether
unsordid; itself is its only price. It inspires gentleness, sympathy,
mutual faith, and confidence. True love also in a measure elevates the
intellect. "All love renders wise in a degree," says the poet Browning,
and the most gifted minds have been the sincerest lovers. Great
souls make all affections great; they elevate and consecrate all true
delights. The sentiment even brings to light qualities before lying
dormant and unsuspected. It elevates the aspirations, expands the soul,
and stimulates the mental powers. One of the finest compliments ever
paid to a woman was that of Steele, when he said of Lady Elizabeth
Hastings, "that to have loved her was a liberal education." Viewed in
this light, woman is an educator in the highest sense, because, above
all other educators, she educates humanly and lovingly.

It has been said that no man and no woman can be regarded as complete in
their experience of life, until they have been subdued into union with
the world through their affections. As woman is not woman until she
has known love, neither is man man. Both are requisite to each other's
completeness. Plato entertained the idea that lovers each sought a
likeness in the other, and that love was only the divorced half of
the original human being entering into union with its counterpart. But
philosophy would here seem to be at fault, for affection quite as often
springs from unlikeness as from likeness in its object.

The true union must needs be one of mind as well as of heart, and based
on mutual esteem as well as mutual affection. "No true and enduring
love," says Fichte, "can exist without esteem; every other draws regret
after it, and is unworthy of any noble human soul." One cannot really
love the bad, but always something that we esteem and respect as well as
admire. In short, true union must rest on qualities of character, which
rule in domestic as in public life.

But there is something far more than mere respect and esteem in the
union between man and wife. The feeling on which it rests is far deeper
and tenderer--such, indeed, as never exists between men or between
women. "In matters of affection," says Nathaniel Hawthorne, "there is
always an impassable gulf between man and man. They can never quite
grasp each other's hands, and therefore man never derives any intimate
help, any heart-sustenance, from his brother man, but from woman--his
mother, his sister, or his wife." [202]

Man enters a new world of joy, and sympathy, and human interest, through
the porch of love. He enters a new world in his home--the home of his
own making--altogether different from the home of his boyhood, where
each day brings with it a succession of new joys and experiences. He
enters also, it may be, a new world of trials and sorrows, in which
he often gathers his best culture and discipline. "Family life," says
Sainte-Beuve, "may be full of thorns and cares; but they are fruitful:
all others are dry thorns." And again: "If a man's home, at a certain
period of life, does not contain children, it will probably be found
filled with follies or with vices." [203]

A life exclusively occupied in affairs of business insensibly tends
to narrow and harden the character. It is mainly occupied with
self-watching for advantages, and guarding against sharp practice on
the part of others. Thus the character unconsciously tends to grow
suspicious and ungenerous. The best corrective of such influences is
always the domestic; by withdrawing the mind from thoughts that are
wholly gainful, by taking it out of its daily rut, and bringing it back
to the sanctuary of home for refreshment and rest:

          "That truest, rarest light of social joy,
          Which gleams upon the man of many cares."

"Business," says Sir Henry Taylor, "does but lay waste the approaches to
the heart, whilst marriage garrisons the fortress." And however the head
may be occupied, by labours of ambition or of business--if the heart
be not occupied by affection for others and sympathy with them--life,
though it may appear to the outer world to be a success, will probably
be no success at all, but a failure. [204]

A man's real character will always be more visible in his household than
anywhere else; and his practical wisdom will be better exhibited by the
manner in which he bears rule there, than even in the larger affairs of
business or public life. His whole mind may be in his business; but, if
he would be happy, his whole heart must be in his home. It is there
that his genuine qualities most surely display themselves--there that
he shows his truthfulness, his love, his sympathy, his consideration
for others, his uprightness, his manliness--in a word, his character. If
affection be not the governing principle in a household, domestic life
may be the most intolerable of despotisms. Without justice, also, there
can be neither love, confidence, nor respect, on which all true domestic
rule is founded.

Erasmus speaks of Sir Thomas More's home as "a school and exercise of
the Christian religion." "No wrangling, no angry word was heard in it;
no one was idle; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without
a temperate cheerfulness." Sir Thomas won all hearts to obedience by his
gentleness. He was a man clothed in household goodness; and he ruled so
gently and wisely, that his home was pervaded by an atmosphere of love
and duty. He himself spoke of the hourly interchange of the smaller acts
of kindness with the several members of his family, as having a claim
upon his time as strong as those other public occupations of his life
which seemed to others so much more serious and important.

But the man whose affections are quickened by home-life, does not
confine his sympathies within that comparatively narrow sphere. His
love enlarges in the family, and through the family it expands into the
world. "Love," says Emerson, "is a fire that, kindling its first embers
in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out
of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams
upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all, and
so lights up the whole world and nature with its generous flames."