V
The observations I have suggested are here touched on but lightly, and in passing. I have made no profound study of them, or of the infinitely subtle psychology which, without doubt, underlies such hauntings of the spirit. I have but known these men from childhood and from early youth: have watched with them in many watchings. If there be one boast left me when I also shall go down into the darkness to which they have so long lent splendor, it may well be that these I have loved and have cherished with a whole heart, and would have served them if I could, than Horatio not less eager: 'Here, sweet lord, at your service.'
But be all that as it may, I am yet persuaded that it is by some such means as I have here touched on that all biography of the better sort must in time be written. Turn where we will among the great, we find facts of date and birth and schooling and death and all outward circumstance to have been the lesser factors. All these Time at last—the only lastingly considerable biographer—rejects and throws away. That which Time retains as precious and imperishable is rather some fine essence of the spirit, some essential personality built up and moulded by preferences, predilections, and prepossessions of a most highly spiritual order. The loves, the desires, the dear delights of men; the returning dreams, the recurrent longings that will not be gainsaid; the dead and long-lost dreamings that revisit the glimpses of our moon—these are indeed the spirits of us, and our immortalities.
Nor is it only as aids to a more just analysis of the great that these infinitely subtle influences may be considered. Plus on connait de langues plus on est de personnes. If the knowledge of another language gives one another life, as it were,—makes of one yet another person,—what may not be said to be added unto us by the knowledge—not the mere speculation, but the intimate knowledge—of another soul, and that soul one of the great ones of the earth?
This can be had only by an intimate companionship, not with the mere flagrant facts, but with the spiritual visitings, the dear desires and predilections, which haunt all rich lives significantly, perpetually, even as they haunt life itself.
For life is but an infinitely ancient abode, haunted by recurring presences surpassingly spiritual; as he knows who has seen death pass in and out of the ancient chambers in the night watches, or who has heard the autumn rains how reminiscent in patient woodlands, or who has been aware of lovely springs long-gone keeping tryst at certain seasons with the evening star in the twilight, or has felt them stealing back, ghostly and exquisite, when the April crescent hangs thoughtful and remote above dark apple-boughs.
In life as in lives, the presences move dark and dread or shining and lovely; and in the lives of the great as in life itself the shining and lovely would seem to be the more constant visitants. It is not to be forgotten that, though Banquo knocks his fearful summons, and the murdered Dane speaks with hollow mouthings, yet drifting forms dance no less gayly and delicately on midsummer nights in woodsy hollows by the moon.
It is noteworthy and remarkable that even those among the great whose lives have been sombre with tragedy have been visited—indeed they often more than others—by recurring influences of a most haunting beauty, like Beethoven, who with ears dull yet heard high symphonies, and Milton, who with sight closed to all outward loveliness saw yet in the darkened chambers a vision as of squadrons of bright-harnessed angels ranged in order serviceable, and knew the pastures and the silent woods to be full of sweet voices and light steps:—
| Oh, friend, I hear the tread of nimble feet, |
| Hasting this way! |
It is of all such haunting and recurrent presences, be they dread or lovely, that he who most knows life is most aware, and that he who would know the lives of great men must be most sensitively observant. These are the things that must be watched for faithfully and with a whole heart and a single devotion: 'Here, sweet lord, at your service!' Leaving all prejudice or interest of our own, it is for us, in studying the lives of great men, to make their affair ours as wholly as may be; and to forget ourselves in a knowledge so much more dearly to be desired.
And by no means, I believe, may this be done so surely as by a patient study of those high elections, those persistent hauntings of mind and spirit which have influenced and, it may be, in so large a measure directed the lives of all great men; giving their mind its bent, their personality its leanings; often guiding, it must be, their motives, and suggesting their high behaviors; laying upon them, as the ghost upon Hamlet, purposes and duties thence never to be avoided, inevitably to be discharged; lending to their speech its lovely and broidered figures, or to the work of the hand its so memorable distinctions, and to all their activities that which we call 'characteristic'—something particularly and peculiarly their own; some chosen and essential and precious manner of expression which, mortal though they be, lives on, surviving them; and which is not to be found elsewhere in its kind or measure throughout all the rich and inexhaustible ages.
