Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Monthly Bulletin Published monthly, except in August and September, by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Forbes Street and Bellefield Avenue, Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Pa. President, S. H. Church, Carnegie Library, Forbes Street and Bellefield Avenue; Secretary, J. D. Hailman; Treasurer, James H. Reed, 1027 Carnegie Building; Director, John H. Leete, Carnegie Library, Forbes Street and Bellefield Avenue. Subscription 50 cents a year. Vol. 26 April 1921 Why Read Biography? From Noah Porter's "Books and Reading." No. 4 There is nothing so quickening and elevating to the generous and high-minded as to read a few pages in the biography of one who has been a prince among men for greatness and goodness combined, especially if his life and character are largely interpreted by himself. "No young man can rise from the perusal of such lives as those of Buxton and Arnold without feeling his mind and heart made better, and his best resolves invigorated." "Horner says of the life of Sir Matthew Hale, that it filled him with enthusiasm; and of Condorcet's Eloge of Haller, 'I never rise from the account of such men without a thrilling palpitation about me, which I know not whether I should call admiration, ambition, or despair'." A snatch of such reading is like the injection of fresh and generous blood into the veins, or the drinking a generous and refreshing draught to one who is thirsty and faint, or the breathing copiously of a highly oxygenated atmosphere... In no sense is it so eminently true, that the good which men do lives after them, as when the spirit and essence of their lives are embalmed in a worthy biography. "More sweet than odors caught by him who sails A thousand times more exquisitely sweet, But how is it with the evil which bad men do? Is not this equally powerful to ensnare and corrupt? To this we reply, such evil is not often so frankly and fully exposed, and never by themselves; and herein is very strikingly illustrated the homage which vice pays to virtue. It is rare that a bad man confesses to the world in his letters how bad he is, unless he does it with repentance and shame. It is rarer even that a man writes down in his diary, as an eminent scholar was once in the habit of doing, "This day read the Antigone of Sophocles, after which I was desperately drunk." Or if a man occasionally forgets decency in his letters, and self-respect in his diary, it is rare that his biographer will spread out such revolting details for the perusal of the public. If he is forced to allude to the sins or the foibles of his hero, he usually endeavors to palliate and excuse them. No libertine or drunkard, no unbeliever in duty or denier of God, ever shines attractively in an honestly written life, or inspires his readers with a desire to be like him. But while the lives of bad or imperfect men do not attract, they very often warn... In view of these considerations, we advise for all those who have leisure and opportunity a large and liberal reading of biography. We advise that the taste for this description of reading should be fostered. If fostered, it certainly will grow more active and intense. The study of biography is the study of man. A generous familiarity with the lives of men of all sorts of opinions tends to liberalize the feelings and to enlarge the understanding. Its influence in this regard is like that of a very extended and varied acquaintanceship with living men. Nor need we fear to study the lives or to converse with the characters of men from whom we differ very widely in opinions, or diverge very materially in our sympathies. If our own principles are fixed, we shall find sufficient strength and inspiration from the lives of the men with whom we agree in opinions and character to enable us to withstand, as far as we ought to desire, any counter-influence from the lives of those with whose opinions we do not entirely sympathize. No man of liberal culture can afford to be without-no such person ought to desire to be wholly without-the liberalizing influence which comes from a study of the lives of men of the greatest variety of opinions and characters... Of biographical reading we may say, that the man who has no heroes among the truly noble of the earth, must have either a sordid or a conceited spirit. He must be too ignoble to admire that which is really above himself, or must be too satisfied with himself to care to concern himself with the characters or the claims of others... Two rules may serve in the selection and judgment of biographies. The first is, "see that the man whose life you would read had a marked and distinctive character." The second is, "see that this character be set forth with truthfulness and skill." A man with small individuality, either of gifts or of goodness, is not entitled to have his life written, and certainly has no claim that his life should be read. The circumstance that he held a high position in life, or attracted honor or attention from his wealth or rank or office, is of the slightest possible significance to those who come after him, provided there was nothing in his genius, his industry, or his goodness which entitles him to the consideration of others. Mere goodness which is commonplace, however useful and honorable in the living, cannot shine as an example through a written life, unless there was something distinctive enough to attract the attention and to impress the feelings of lookers-on... It is not enough, however, that the subject of the life should have had something in his character that was so distinctive as to be worth recording. The life should be skilfully set forth by his biographer. The power of seizing the individual characteristics by nice analysis, or of interpreting them by sagacious generalizations, does not "come by nature" to all biographers. The gift of selecting from conversations and correspondence what is worth preserving is not possessedcertainly it is not exercised, by all. To narrate with method and clearness, and also with spirit and life, is not so easy to a writer as it is pleasant to the reader. A few of the many biographical writings-biographies, autobiographies, and letters-published during 1919 and 1920 are given below. This selection does not include all of the good, nor does it even try to present the best. It simply recommends several on varying subjects, which are both interesting and valuable. The Americanization of Edward Bok. Andrew Carnegie's Autobiography. Crowding Memories. By Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Henry James's Letters. A Labrador Doctor. By Wilfred T. Grenfell. Letters of Donald Hankey, “a Student in Arms." The Life of John Marshall. By Albert J. Beveridge. Life of Lord Kitchener. By Sir George Arthur. Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson. By Mrs. Nellie Sanchez. Lord Grey of the Reform Bill. Memories of George Meredith. By George Macaulay Trevelyan. By Alice Mary Butcher. Theodore Roosevelt. By William Roscoe Thayer. Theodore Roosevelt and His Time. By Joseph Bucklin Bishop. Steeplejack. By James Gibbons Huneker. Shakespeare's Place in Life and Literature From Walter Raleigh's "Shakespeare." Every age has its own difficulties in the appreciation of Shakespeare. The age in which he lived was too near to him to see him truly. From his contemporaries, and those rare and curious inquirers who collected the remnants of their talk, we learn that "his Plays took well"; and that he was "a handsome, well shaped man; very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit." The easy-going and casual critics who were privileged to know him in life regarded him chiefly as a successful member of his own class, a prosperous actor-dramatist, whose energy and skill were given to the business of the theatre and the amusement of the play-going public. There was no one to make an idol of him while he lived. The newly sprung class to which he belonged was despised and disliked by the majority of the decent burgesses of the City of London; and though the players found substantial favour at the hands of the Court, and were applauded and imitated by a large following of young law-students and fashionable gallants, yet this favour and support brought them none the nearer to social consideration or worshipful esteem. In the City they were enemies, "the caterpillars of a commonwealth"; at the Court they were servants, and service is no heritage. It was not until the appearance of the Folio Edition of 1623, that Shakespeare's dramatic writings challenged the serious attention of "the great variety of readers." From that time onward, his fame steadily advanced to the conquest of the world. Ben Jonson in his verses prefixed to the Folio, though he makes the largest claims for his friend, yet invokes him first of all as the "Soul of the Age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our Stage." Milton, some nine years later, considers him simply as the author of a marvellous book. The readers of Shakespeare took over from the fickle players the trust and inheritance of his fame. An early example of purely literary imitation, by a close student of his works, may be seen in Sir John Suckling's plays, which are fuller of poetic than of dramatic reminiscence. While the Restoration theatre mangled and parodied the tragic masterpieces, a new generation of readers kept alive the knowledge and heightened the renown of the written word. Then followed two centuries of enormous study; editions, annotations, treatises, huddled one upon another's neck, until, in our own day, the plays have become the very standard and measure of poetry among all English-speaking peoples. |