SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY.
A periodical critic, probably one of the juniors, has thrown out a startling observation. “There is,” says this literary senator, “something melancholy in the study of biography, because it is—a history of the dead!” A truism and a falsity mixed up together is the temptation with some modern critics to commit that darling sin of theirs—novelty and originality! But we really cannot condole with the readers of Plutarch for their deep melancholy; we who feel our spirits refreshed, amidst the mediocrity of society, when we are recalled back to the men and the women who were! illustrious in every glory! Biography with us is a re-union with human existence in its most excellent state! and we find nothing dead in the past, while we retain the sympathies which only require to be awakened.
It would have been more reasonable had the critic discovered that our country has not yet had her Plutarch, and that our biography remains still little more than a mass of compilation.
In this study of biography there is a species which has not yet been distinguished—biographies composed by some domestic friend, or by some enthusiast who works with love. A term is unquestionably wanted for this distinct class. The Germans seem to have invented a Platonic one, drawn from the Greek, psyche, or the soul; for they call this the psychological life. Another attempt has been made, by giving it the scientific term of idiosyncrasy, to denote a peculiarity of disposition. I would call it sentimental biography!
It is distinct from a chronological biography, for it searches for the individual’s feelings amidst the ascertained facts of his life; so that facts, which occurred remotely from each other, are here brought at once together. The detail of events which completes the chronological biography, contains many which are not connected with the peculiarity of the character itself. The sentimental is also distinct from the autobiography, however it may seem a part of it. Whether a man be entitled to lavish his panegyric on himself, I will not decide; but it is certain that he risks everything by appealing to a solitary and suspected witness.
We have two Lives of Dante, one by Boccaccio and the other by Leonardo Aretino, both interesting: but Boccaccio’s is the sentimental life!
Aretino, indeed, finds fault, but with all the tenderness possible, with Boccaccio’s affectionate sketch, Origine, Vita, Studi e Costumi del clarissimo Dante, &c. “Origin, Life, Studies and Manners, of the illustrious Dante,” &c. “It seems to me,” he says, “that our Boccaccio, dolcissimo e suavissimo uomo, sweet and delightful man! has written the life and manners of this sublime poet as if he had been composing the Filocolo, the Filostrato, or the Fiametta,” the romances of Boccaccio—“for all breathes of love and sighs, and is covered with warm tears, as if a man were born in this world only to live among the enamoured ladies and the gallant youths of the ten amorous days of his hundred novels.”
Aretino, who wanted not all the feeling requisite for the delightful “costumi e studi” of Boccaccio’s Dante, modestly requires that his own life of Dante should be considered as a supplement to, not as a substitute for, Boccaccio’s. Pathetic with all the sorrows, and eloquent with all the remonstrances of a fellow-citizen, Boccaccio, while he wept, hung with anger over his country’s shame in its apathy for the honour of its long-injured exile. Catching inspiration from the breathing pages of Boccaccio, it inclines one to wish that we possessed two biographies of an illustrious favourite character; the one strictly and fully historical, the other fraught with those very feelings of the departed, which we may have to seek in vain for in the circumstantial and chronological biographer. Boccaccio, indeed, was overcome by his feelings. He either knew not, or he omits the substantial incidents of Dante’s life; while his imagination throws a romantic tinge on occurrences raised on slight, perhaps on no foundation. Boccaccio narrates a dream of the mother of Dante so fancifully poetical, that probably Boccaccio forgot that none but a dreamer could have told it. Seated under a high laurel-tree, by the side of a vast fountain, the mother dreamt that she gave birth to her son; she saw him nourished by its fruit, and refreshed by the clear waters; she soon beheld him a shepherd; approaching to pluck the boughs, she saw him fall! When he rose he had ceased to be a man, and was transformed into a peacock! Disturbed by her admiration, she suddenly awoke; but when the father found that he really had a son, in allusion to the dream he called him Dante—or given! e meritamente; perocché ottimamente, siccome si vedra procedendo, segui al nome l’effetto: “and deservedly! for greatly, as we shall see, the effect followed the name!” At nine years of age, on a May-day, whose joyous festival Boccaccio beautifully describes, when the softness of the heavens, re-adorning the earth with its mingled flowers, waved the green boughs, and made all things smile, Dante mixed with the boys and girls in the house of the good citizen who on that day gave the feast, beheld little Bricè, as she was familiarly called, but named Beatrice. The little Dante might have seen her before, but he loved her then, and from that day never ceased to love; and thus Dante nella pargoletta età fatto d’amore ferventissimo servidore; so fervent a servant to love in an age of childhood! Boccaccio appeals to Dante’s own account of his long passion, and his constant sighs, in the Vita Nuova. No look, no word, no sign, sullied the purity of his passion; but in her twenty-fourth year died “la bellissima Beatrice.” Dante is then described as more than inconsolable; his eyes were long two abundant fountains of tears; careless of life, he let his beard grow wildly, and to others appeared a savage meagre man, whose aspect was so changed, that while this weeping life lasted, he was hardly recognised by his friends; all looked on a man so entirely transformed with deep compassion. Dante, won over by those who could console the inconsolable, was at length solicited by his relations to marry a lady of his own condition in life; and it was suggested that as the departed lady had occasioned him such heavy griefs, the new one might open a source of delight. The relations and friends of Dante gave him a wife that his tears for Beatrice might cease.