We have thus given a cursory survey of these volumes. We do not think Buckle's philosophy sound, his method good, or his doctrines tenable. Yet we cannot but sympathize with one who has devoted his strength and youth with such untiring industry to such a great enterprise. And we must needs be touched with the plaintive confession which breaks from his wearied mind and exhausted hope in the last volume, when he accepts the defeat of his early endeavor, and submits to the disappointment of his youthful hope. We should be glad to quote the entire passage,[33] because it is the best in the book, and because he expresses in it, in the most condensed form, his ideas and purposes as an historic writer. But our limited space allows us only to commend it to the special attention of the reader.
[VOLTAIRE][34]
Mr. Parton has given us in these volumes[35] another of his interesting and instructive biographies. Not as interesting, indeed, as some others,—for example, as his life of Andrew Jackson; nor as instructive as his lives of Franklin and of Jefferson. The nature of the case made this impossible. The story of Jackson had never been told till Mr. Parton undertook it. It was a history of frontier life, of strange adventures, of desperate courage, of a force of character which conquered all obstacles and achieved extraordinary results; a story
"Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe."
No such interest attaches to the "Life of Voltaire." His most serious adventure was being shut up in the Bastille for a pasquinade, and being set free again on his solemn protestation, true or false, that he never wrote it. It is an old story, told a thousand times, with all its gloss, if it ever had any, quite worn off. The "Life of Franklin," which, on the whole, we think the best of Parton's biographies, was full of interest and instruction of another kind. It was the life of a builder,—of one who gave his great powers to construction, to building up new institutions and new sciences, to the discovery of knowledge and the creation of national life. Voltaire was a diffuser of knowledge already found, but he had not the patience nor the devotion of a discoverer. His gift was not to construct good institutions, but to destroy bad ones,—a work the interest of which is necessarily ephemeral. No wonder, therefore, that Mr. Parton, with all his practiced skill as a biographer, has not been able to give to the story of Voltaire the thrilling interest which he imparted to that of Franklin and of Jackson.
We gladly take the present opportunity to add our recognition of Mr. Parton's services to those which have come to him from other quarters. A writer of unequal merit, and one whose judgment is often biased by his prejudices, he nevertheless has done much to show how biography should be written. Of all forms of human writing there is none which ought to be at once so instructive and so interesting as this, but in the large majority of instances it is the most vapid and empty. The good biographies, in all languages, are so few that they can almost be counted on the fingers; but these are among the most precious books in the literature of mankind. The story of Ruth, the Odyssey of Homer, Plutarch's lives, the Memorabilia of Xenophon, the life of Agricola, the Confessions of Augustine, among the ancients; and, in modern times, Boswell's "Johnson," the autobiographies of Alfieri, Benvenuto Cellini, Franklin, Goethe, Voltaire's "Charles XII.," and Southey's "Life of Wesley" are specimens of what may be accomplished in this direction. It has been thought that any man can write a biography, but it requires genius to understand genius. How much intelligence is necessary to collect with discrimination the significant facts of a human life; to penetrate to the law of which they are the expression; to give the picturesque proportions to every part, to arrange the foreground, the middle distance, and the background of the panorama; to bring out in proper light and shadow the features and deeds of the hero! Few biographers take this trouble. They content themselves with collecting the letters written by and to their subject; sweeping together the facts of his life, important or otherwise; arranging them in some kind of chronological order; and then having this printed and bound up in one or two heavy volumes.
To all this many writers of biography add another fault, which is almost a fatal one. They treat their subject de haut en bas, preferring to look down upon him rather than to look up to him. They occupy themselves in criticising his faults and pointing out his deficiencies, till they forget to mention what he has accomplished to make him worthy of having his life written at all. We lately saw a life of Pope treated in this style. One unacquainted with Pope, after reading it, would say, "If he was such a contemptible fellow, and his writings so insignificant, why should we have to read his biography?" Thomas Carlyle has the great merit of leading the way in the opposite direction, and of thus initiating a new style of biography. The old method was for the writer to regard himself as a judge on the bench, and the subject of his biography as a prisoner at the bar. Carlyle, in his "Life of Schiller," showed himself a loving disciple, sitting at the feet of his master. We recollect that when this work first appeared there were only a few copies known to be in this country. One was in the possession of an eminent professor in Harvard College, of whom the present writer borrowed it. On returning it, he was asked what he thought of it, and replied that he considered it written with much enthusiasm. "Yes," responded the professor, "I myself thought it rather extravagant." Enthusiasm in a biographer was then considered to be the same as extravagance. But this hero-worship, which is the charm in Plutarch, Xenophon, and Boswell, inspired a like interest in Carlyle's portraits of Schiller, Goethe, Richter, Burns, and the actors in the French Revolution. So true is his own warning: "Friend, if you wish me to take an interest in what you say, be so kind as to take some interest in it yourself"—a golden maxim, to be kept in mind by all historians, writers of travels, biographers, preachers, and teachers. A social success may sometimes be accomplished by assuming the blasé air of the Roman emperor who said, "Omnia fui, nihil expedit;" but this tone is ruinous for one who wishes the ear of the public.
Since the days of Carlyle, others have written in the same spirit, allowing themselves to take more or less interest in the man whose life they were relating. So Macaulay, in his sketches of Clive, Hastings, Chatham, Pym, and Hampden; so Lewes, in his "Life of Goethe;" and so Parton, in his various biographies.