We have long admitted, it is true, a certain psychology of eras—a kind of 'soul' of certain times, or 'spirit' of certain ages, manifesting itself diversely in diverse periods. And, quite as the name of an individual not alone summons to the mind that individual and no other, but connotes a particular personality, so such wide phrases as 'The Elizabethan Age,' 'The Renaissance,' 'The Homeric Age,' the 'Age of Chivalry' do not alone designate certain ages, but in each case connote some essential quality which went to render that particular age memorable and significant. This quality is found to be in every instance dependent upon some idea or ideal which, drawing its power often from unremarked and not always discoverable sources, moulds and fashions the thought and motives of the times.
So the art, the science, the religion, the philosophy of any given age, all these do but flower from causes that have their roots deep under the surface; and he who would acquaint himself with any notable period must study, not so much the outward and obvious facts and happenings of that period, as the hidden and subtle forces lying beneath all these.
But if the true history of a people cannot be given, or the true spirit of an era be revealed by a mere citing of events, however important or carefully chosen, what shall be said of the futility of studying that infinitely more delicate thing, the history of a human soul, by method of index and compilation? Yet that is precisely what much of our accepted and well-credited biography amount to, and we have little of what might be called the more modern method. One looks in vain in the average Lives of great men for any careful consideration or analysis of the remote causes or springs of personality.
Certain biographical facts are, it would seem, expected and provided. These facts the average biographer sets out in a perfectly conventional order, somewhat as the host of the conventional inn—I hope I may be forgiven the comparison—sets out the usual table d'hôte in certain courses time-honored and anticipated. If the biographer is a well-known man,—if this be at the sign of Chesterton, or Colvin, or Birrell, or Gosse,—then there will be added, without extra cost, the sprightly light wine of easy style.
In a well-known biography of Hawthorne we have for chapter titles the following: 'Early Years'; 'Early Manhood'; 'Early Writings'; 'Brook Farm and Concord'; 'The Three American Novels'; 'England and Italy'; 'Last Years.'
In an equally well-known life of Keats,—and in lieu of something better it is perhaps the least unsatisfactory of them all,—we have, among other page and chapter headings: 'Leigh Hunt'; 'Determination to Publish'; 'Poems of 1817'; 'Margate'; 'Winter at Hampstead'; 'Doubts of Success'; 'Northern Tour'; 'Absorption in Love and Poetry'; 'Haydon and Money Difficulties'; 'The Odes'; 'The Plays'; 'Recast of Hyperion'; 'Last Days and Death.' It is true that there comes a whole chapter at the very last, under the promising title, 'Character and Genius'; but reading it hopefully, one finds but talk of 'self-control,' 'sweetness of disposition' 'sympathy,' 'good sense,' 'honor,' 'manliness'—with a somewhat hackneyed reference to the Greek purity and the mediæval richness of imagery which characterize Keat's poetry, and a few words concerning his influence on a later age.
Now, considering the vivid and marvelous personality of the man, if these be not the bare bones and laboratory skeletons of biography, then I do not know bare bones or skeletons when I have sight of them.
No one questions that these are helpful if one is studying anatomy; that they may even be admitted as necessary to an understanding of that timely temple of abode in which the fiery spirit for a while took up its residence; but to call this a 'life' of the man, which gives so little knowledge of his spirit's habits of living!
If I turn to a little volume of Shelley on my table, where only eighteen small pages out of five hundred and ninety-two are devoted, as it happens, to the same subject, and only at that to the closing incident of Keats's career,—his untimely death,—I find him spoken of in somewhat more adequate fashion.
I shall not quote the words metred out in verse, as they stand in the volume, but shall ask to be allowed to set them down as if they were mere running prose, as follows:—