Books and how to make the most of them

by James Hosmer Penniman

“The great man,” says Carlyle, “does in good truth, belong to his own age—nay, more so than any other man; being properly the synopsis and epitome of such age with its interests and influences; but belongs likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was transitory in him passes away and an immortal part remains, the significance of which is in strict speech inexhaustible—as that of every real object is. Aloft, conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, serene, unaltering; silently addresses to every new generation a new lesson and monition. Well is his life worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever, in the new dialect of new times, of rewriting and reinterpreting;” and he adds, “as the highest Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of every good man still an indubitable Gospel.”

There is an obvious similarity between the biography of a great man by a great man and the portrait of a great man by a great artist. The National Portrait Gallery in London makes real to us the men who have been England’s glory in peace and war. No one can leave it after looking on the faces of Gladstone and Tennyson and Sir John Franklin and the hundreds of others who scorned delights and lived laborious days without having a higher estimate of humanity and being nerved to new efforts, and we may obtain the same effect in a more detailed manner by reading the best biographies.

The number of great men who are alive at any one time is small, and they are too much occupied to see any but those who have important business with them, but we may study them at our leisure in their biographies, and go over the events of years in a few hours.

A knowledge of the life of an author always adds interest to the perusal of his books and is frequently of value in explaining them. The study of the noble life in connection with the works of the noble mind is one of the best foundations for liberal culture. Consider the influence of an acquaintance with the entire works of Longfellow or Lowell, read in connection with the life of the former by his brother, or with the biography of the latter by Scudder. To know the atmosphere which surrounded such men, the things towards which their interest went out, the sources from which they drew their inspiration, the way in which the common experiences of life, so familiar to us all grew beautiful under their poetic imagination; a familiarity with all these things will elevate a man’s whole life.

The light too which is thrown by biography on the conduct of life is very great. Theory, philosophizing, opinions, reasoning, are of little worth when compared with the actual facts of the life of a man who has attained distinction in any department of human achievement. Reading of this kind teaches us that chance is only to a small extent an element of success, that nothing is attained by the brightest minds without that infinite patience and labor which in itself is genius. To think of the brave way in which such men met the trials that they were called upon to endure is a most healthful remedy for warped and selfish ideas of life.

Take the life of Scott by Lockhart; note the domestic tastes of the author of Waverly, his kindly interest in the humblest persons around him, the heroic way in which he nerved himself to meet single-handed the overwhelming catastrophe of the failure of Constable, the way in which, while struggling with physical weaknesses that would have rendered another conscious only of his own sufferings, he retained his simplicity and gentle thoughtfulness for others,—all these lessons may be learned from that noble biography.

We should take a sympathetic interest in the lives of high-minded men, and note how in spite of obstacles and failures they have accomplished their purposes and how some have been great because they nobly tried and in spite of the fact that they nobly failed. Nothing is more helpful than to see that our ills are not peculiar to ourselves, but that others have overcome the same difficulties that are perplexing us.

Biography teaches us to look at life from many points of view. In reading biography, said Dr. Andrew Peabody, “I find myself translating a life unlike what mine can ever be into terms of my own life, shaping from it analogies, equivalents, and parallels for my own aims and endeavors, studying modes of embodying its underlying principles in forms, it may be of which he whose experience suggests them could never have dreamed.”

Learn to make a distinction between the essential and fundamental characteristics of a great man and such gossipy details as what he had for breakfast and how he wore his hair. “It is the great error of thoughtless biographers,” says Ruskin, “to attribute to the accident which introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances of character which gave the accident importance.”

When a great man has written the story of his own life the result is a book of double value. Emerson and George Eliot agreed in considering the Confessions of Rousseau the most interesting book they had ever read. Franklin’s Autobiography is a model of keen and accurate observation expressed in the clearest and simplest language.