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AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. I.

MARCH, 1827.

ART. I.-AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

1.-An American Biographical and Historical Dictionary, &c. By WILLIAM ALLEN, A. M. Cambridge, (Mass.) 1809.

2-A Biographical Dictionary, containing a Brief Account of the First Settlers, and other Eminent Characters in New-England. By JOHN ELIOT, D. D. 3.-Delaplaine's Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans. Philadelphia. 1817. 4.-Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. By JOHN SANDERSON. 6 vols. Philadelphia. 1820-4.

5.-Biographical Sketches of eminent Lawyers, Statesmen, and Men of Letters. By SAMUEL L. KNAPP. Boston. 1821.

6.-A New American Biographical Dictionary; or, Remembrancer of the Departed Heroes, Sages, and Statesmen of America. Compiled by THOMAS J. RODGERS. Third edition. Easton, (Penn.) 1824.

We do not know that better ideas of the true nature and excellence of BIOGRAPHY are any where to be found,-much as has been written on those topics-than in Dryden's Notice of Plutarch, prefixed to the version of Plutarch's Lives, which was published in London near the end of the seventeenth century, and on which forty-one translators had been

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employed. The great master of the English idiom, infused into his sketch of the greatest of ancient biographers, and, perhaps, the most useful of ancient authors, much of the spirit and originality of conception and expression, that distinguish his prose even more than his poetical compositions. In a few pages, he makes the reader well acquainted with the gifted and learned Cheronean, whose "Lives" were said to have parallels, but his own none; and who was one of the three or four "intelligences" that redeemed the Boeotians from the universal reproach of being "gross feeders and fat-witted, brawny and unthinking-just the constitution of heroes, cut out for the executive and brutal business of war.

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Dryden took advantage of the occasion, to trace the lines of distinction between History, properly so called, Commentaries or Annals, and Biography or the Lives of particular men; and to mingle pointed precepts for the management of each of those important branches of human instruction. "Truth of matter, method, and clearness of diction," are his laws of History; of which, however, the first has been so frequently and notoriously violated, that, though it may still be "philosophy teaching by examples," and "a pleasant school of wisdom," it has been declared to be, more than half, sheer romance, Fables Convenues, by principal actors in scenes of public life, who have judged from instances within their own practical knowledge. And it has been further adulterated and rendered liable to wider perversion, since mighty geniuses have made it the basis, or chief ingredient, of narratives, bearing the titles of novels or tales, with an arbitrary combination of interests, characters, events, and passions, not, indeed, always, or even generally improbable and irrelevant, but wholly or in part fictitious, according to the fancy and design of the moment. In every lettered nation, the poets of old had used this license abundantly; the Greek and Roman annalists related with equal gravity fable and fact; and now the masters of the pen, and other seekers of fame or fortune that are not masters, seize emulously upon some critical or pregnant era, some remarkable vicissitude, some definite or curious stage, in the race of a people, as the groundwork of a medley of their own, more or less ample or various, with a new tincture and peculiar influence. If the fashion should endure and extend, scarcely any signal portion or theatre of the human drama, which has been considered as simply real, will escape this kind of sophistication; the more absolute, because it must be more popular than the professed matter of fact production.

Biography neither has nor could experience the treatment

just mentioned, in the same degree; though, in not a few cases, the poets, the novelists, the dramatists, and even the historians, have romanced it outrageously: and we do not allude here only to such as Homer, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch himself, Herodian, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Shakespeare, Milton, Ariosto, Voltaire, Florian, &c. The dii minorum gentium, secondary wits in the world of letters, have taken up specially individuals of the illustrious or memorable dead, to give them adventures, designs, exploits, which it never pleased Providence to assign them, and which they might never have been pleased to choose for themselves. Should it become the rage to subject "the lives of particular men" to the loom of the novelist, no surprise ought to be felt when those of Cotton Mather, or Ezra Stiles, for example, or William Penn, or Whitfield, or Chief Justice Ellsworth, or Henry Laurens, undergo the plastic process. Columbus, Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, Washington too, are already novel and stage worthies. Adams, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Theophilus Parsons, nay, probably, our present generation of statesmen, divines, and lawyers, and warriors, will experience the same fate.

Auto-biography has come into extraordinary vogue; but, as it is prepared now-a-days, it is open to suspicion, stronger and more pervading than that which, for obvious reasons, had ever clung to it. We read with much less of incredulity, Philip de Comines, Froissart, and Monstrelet, than the modern French auto-memoirs, not excepting those of the fair sex, whether of Me. Roland, Me. D'Epinay, the Margravine of Bareith, or Me. de Genlis, with all their naiveté of recital and confession. As to sentiments, intentions, habits, and opinions, we sadly distrust Hume, Gibbon, and even Bishop Watson:-to the theatrical heroes, like Kelly, Reynolds, and O'Keefe, we hardly know when to yield credit, but are sure that they very often invent and embellish.

Of American auto-biography, there is very little that is regular and formal, but it were well if more existed, because we should then possess, along with a moderate share of erroneous representation, colouring, and judgment, a number of authentic and material particulars, which cannot be readily obtained from any other source. There is no dearth, indeed, of personal narratives connected with the settlements of the old and new states and territories, and with the Indian wars and the Revolutionary contest:-we confess, as to these, our inability to "hold each strange tale devoutly true," while we are willing to concede as much as most other confiding and patriotic souls do, to American enterprise, courage, hardihood, fortitude,

dexterity, agility, and so forth; and are aware that many must be the magnanimous undertakings, the singular feats, the terrible rencounters, the hair-breadth escapes, the protracted privations, the extreme trials of both the flesh and the spirit, incident to the exploration and conquest of western wilds, and the strife with their savage tenants, whether biped or quadruped. To return to Dryden,-for a purpose not foreign to our subject. He thus speaks of Biography:

"In dignity, it is inferior to history and annals, as being more confined in action, and treating of wars and counsels, and all other public affairs of nations, only as they relate to him whose life is written, or as his fortunes have a particular dependance on them, or connexion with them. All things here are circumscribed, or driven to a point; so as to terminate in one. Herein, likewise, must be less of variety for the same reason; because the fortunes and actions of one man are related, and not those of many. Biography, however, though circumscribed in the subject, is more extensive in the style than the other two, for it not only comprehends them both, but has somewhat superadded, which neither of them have. The style of it is various, according to the occasion. There are proper places in it for the plainness of narration, which is ascribed to annals; there is also room reserved for the loftiness and gravity of general history, when the actions related shall require that manner of expression. But there is withal, a descent into minute circumstances, and trivial passages of life, which are natural to this way of writing, and which the dignity of the other two will not admit. There you are conducted only into the rooms of state; here you are led into the private lodgings of the hero: you see him in his undress, and are made familiar with his most private actions and conversations. You may behold a Scipio and à Lælius gathering cockle-shells on the shore; Augustus playing at bounding stones with boys; and Agesilaus riding on a hobbyhorse among his children. The pageantry of life is taken away; you see the poor reasonable animal as naked as nature ever made him-you are made acquainted with his passions and his follies, and find the demi-god, a man."

All who acknowledge that biography does differ, specifically, from history, must see, like ourselves, the justness of the foregoing discrimination; and those who are conversant with the "Lives" produced of late years, whether in America or Europe, must know how little it has been regarded in general. Your modern biographer is very far from treating of wars and counsels, and all other public affairs of nations, only as they relate to his hero; or confining himself to the fortunes and actions of one man. He embraces almost every contemporary public concern, event, and character, of chief importance:

he traces pedigrees, and heralds genealogical merits; he prefixes an historical introduction, and happy it is, if his retrospect do not extend to the Deluge, or sweep over the civilized world. He rarely leads you into the private lodgings of the hero-never places before you the poor reasonable animal, as naked as nature made him; but represents him uniformly as a demi-god. For examples of the several mistakes and exorbitances which we have here indicated, we may specify such works as the Life of Lord Nelson, by Clarke; that of the younger Pitt, by the Bishop of Winchester; Marshall's Life of Washington; Johnson's Sketches of Greene; Barton's Life of Rittenhouse; Tudor's Life of James Otis; Wirt's Patrick Henry-all of which contain valuable materials, misplaced however, in good part, and serving to overlay or obscure the individuals designated in the title-pages.

Biography has another less comprehensive form, in set panegyrics, common to antiquity and modern times. In our country, this has been more frequently used, and more extravagantly abused, than in any other. We do not derive it from Great Britain:-among the nations of the European continent, it has been reserved chiefly for learned and religious associations: with us it is so far peculiar, as the employment of it is so much more promiscuous and widely diffused, and characterised by more pompous and luxuriant rhetorical exaggeration. In no other nation has it happened, that when a great man died, his eulogy was publicly and solemnly pronounced by more than one orator. Here, scores, or hundreds, severally ply the task, vying with each other in magnificence of unqualified praise, and carefully avoiding whatever might expose or argue error in the conduct, or infirmity in the nature, of the matchless defunct. The just man is, indeed, made perfect, and "faultless monsters," maugre the assertion of the Poet, have become more common than black swans.

In British literature, Middleton's Life of Cicero, is, dotless, the best specimen of historic biography; and so admirable is the book, that no one should wish it, supposing that it could have been suitably rendered, other than it is. The Roman has had a better lot in British hands, than any domestic orator or statesman. There is no life of either of the Pitts, or of Fox, Burke, or Sheridan, which does them justice, or the world in relation to them-none that would bear a comparison with the specimen just mentioned. The United States have produced, as yet, no work of the kind, which can be styled classical: nor has our literature been enriched with any superior model of that species of biography, which consists in exhibiting the cha

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