The Romance of Biography Volume I Part 1

The Romance of Biography.

Vol 1.

by Anna Jameson.

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

These little sketches (they can pretend to no higher t.i.tle,) are submitted to the public with a feeling of timidity almost painful.

They are absolutely without any other pretension than that of exhibiting, in a small compa.s.s and under one point of view, many anecdotes of biography and criticism, and many beautiful poetical portraits, scattered through a variety of works, and all tending to ill.u.s.trate a subject in itself full of interest,--the influence which the beauty and virtue of women have exercised over the characters and writings of men of genius. But little praise or reputation attends the mere compiler, but the pleasure of the task has compensated its difficulty;--"song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy," these "flowers of Paradise," whose growth is not of earth, were all around me; I had but to gather them from the intermingling weeds and briars, and to bind them into one sparkling wreath, consecrated to the glory of women and the gallantry of men.

The design which unfolded itself before me, as these little sketches extended gradually from a few memoranda into volumes, is not completed; much has been omitted, much suppressed. If I have paused midway in my task, it is not for want of materials, which offer themselves in almost exhaustless profusion--nor from want of interest in the subject--the most delightful in which the imagination ever revelled! but because I desponded over my own power to do it justice. I know, I feel that it required more extensive knowledge of languages, more matured judgment, more critical power, more eloquence;--only Madame de Stal could have fulfilled my conception of the style in which it ought to have been treated. It was enthusiasm, not presumption, which induced me to attempt it. I have touched on matters, on which there are a variety of tastes and opinions, and lightly pa.s.sed over questions on which there are volumes of grave "historic doubts;" but I have ventured on no discussion, still less on any decision. I have been satisfied merely to quote my authorities; and where these exhibited many opposing facts and opinions, it seemed to me that there was far more propriety and much less egotism in simply expressing, in the first person, what I thought and felt, than in a.s.serting absolutely that a thing _is so_, or _is said to be so_. Every one has a right to have an opinion, and deliver it with modesty; but no one has a right to clothe such opinions in general a.s.sertions, and in terms which seem to insinuate that they are or ought to be universal. I know I am open to criticism and contradiction on a thousand points; but I have adhered strictly to what appeared to me the truth, and examined conscientiously all the sources of information that were open to me.

The history of this little book, were it worth revealing, would be the history, in miniature, of most human undertakings: it was begun with enthusiasm; it has been interrupted by intervals of illness, idleness, or more serious cares; it has been pursued through difficulties so great, that they would perhaps excuse its many deficiencies; and now I see its conclusion with a languor almost approaching to despair;--at least with a feeling which, while it renders me doubly sensitive to criticism, and apprehensive of failure, has rendered me almost indifferent to success, and careless of praise.

I owe four beautiful translations from the Italian (which are noticed in their proper places,) to the kindness of a living poet, whose justly celebrated name, were I allowed to mention it, would be subject of pride to myself, and double the value of this little book. I have no other a.s.sistance of any kind to acknowledge.

Will it be thought unfeminine or obtrusive, if I add yet a few words?

I think it due to truth and to myself to seize this opportunity of saying, that a little book published three years ago, and now perhaps forgotten, was not written for publication, nor would ever have been printed but for accidental circ.u.mstances.

That the t.i.tle under which it appeared was not given by the writer, but the publisher, who at the time knew nothing of the author.

And that several false dates, and unimportant circ.u.mstances and characters were interpolated, to conceal, if possible, the real purport and origin of the work. Thus the intention was not to create an illusion, by giving to fiction the appearance of truth, but, in fact, to give to truth the air of fiction. I was not _then_ prepared for all that a woman must meet and endure, who once suffers herself to be betrayed into authors.h.i.+p. She may repent at leisure, like a condemned spirit; but she has pa.s.sed that barrier from which there is no return.

C'est a.s.sez,--I will not add a word more, lest it should be said that I have only disclaimed the t.i.tle of the _Ennuye_, to a.s.sume that of the _Ennuyeuse_.

CHAPTER I.

A POET'S LOVE.

Io ti cinsi de gloria, e fatta ho dea!--GUIDI.

Of all the heaven-bestowed privileges of the poet, the highest, the dearest, the most enviable, is the power of immortalising the object of his love; of dividing with her his amaranthine wreath of glory, and repaying the inspiration caught from her eyes with a crown of everlasting fame. It is not enough that in his imagination he has deified her--that he has consecrated his faculties to her honour--that he has burned his heart in incense upon the altar of her perfections: the divinity thus decked out in richest and loveliest hues, he places on high, and calls upon all ages and all nations to bow down before her, and all ages and all nations obey! wors.h.i.+pping the beauty thus enshrined in imperishable verse, when others, perhaps as fair, and not less worthy, have gone down, unsung, "to dust and an endless darkness." How many women who would otherwise have stolen through the shades of domestic life, their charms, virtues, and affections buried with them, have become objects of eternal interest and admiration, because their memory is linked with the brightest monuments of human genius? While many a high-born dame, who once moved, G.o.ddess-like, upon the earth, and bestowed kingdoms with her hand, lives a mere name in some musty chronicle. Though her love was sought by princes, though with her dower she might have enriched an emperor,--what availed it?

"She had no poet--and she died!"

And how have women repaid this gift of immortality? O believe it, when the garland was such as woman is proud to wear, she amply and deeply rewarded him who placed it on her brow. If in return for being made ill.u.s.trious, she made her lover happy,--if for glory she gave a heart, was it not a rich equivalent? and if not--if the lover was unsuccessful, still the poet had his reward. Whence came the generous feelings, the high imaginations, the glorious fancies, the heavenward inspirations, which raised him above the herd of vulgar men--but from the enn.o.bling influence of her he loved? Through _her_, the world opened upon him with a diviner beauty, and all nature became in his sight but a transcript of the charms of his mistress. He saw her eyes in the stars of heaven, her lips in the half-blown rose. The perfume of the opening flowers was but her breath, that "wafted sweetness round about the world:" the lily was "a sweet thief" that had stolen its purity from her breast. The violet was dipped in the azure of her veins; the aurorean dews, "dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn," were not so pure as her tears; the last rose-tint of the dying day was not so bright or so delicate as her cheek. Her's was the freshness and the bloom of the Spring; she consumed him to languor as the Summer sun; she was kind as the bounteous Autumn, or she froze him with her wintry disdain. There was nothing in the wonders, the splendours, or the treasures of the created universe,--in heaven or in earth,--in the seasons or their change, that did not borrow from her some charm, some glory beyond its own. Was it not just that the beauty she dispensed should be consecrated to her adornment, and that the inspiration she bestowed should be repaid to her in fame?

For what of thee thy poet doth invent, He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.

He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give, But found it in thy cheek; he can afford No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.

_Then thank him not for that which he doth say, Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay!_

SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS.

The theory, then, which I wish to ill.u.s.trate, as far as my limited powers permit, is this: that where a woman has been exalted above the rest of her s.e.x by the talents of a lover, and consigned to enduring fame and perpetuity of praise, the pa.s.sion was real, and was merited; that no deep or lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in fiction; that truth, in short, is the basis of all excellence in amatory poetry, as in every thing else; for where truth is, there is good of some sort, and where there is truth and good, there must be beauty, there must be durability of fame. Truth is the golden chain which links the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets the seal of heaven on the things of this earth, and stamps them to immortality. Poets have risen up and been the mere fas.h.i.+on of a day, and have set up idols which have been the idols of a day: if the wors.h.i.+p be out of date and the idols cast down, it is because these adorers wanted sincerity of purpose and feeling; their raptures were feigned; their incense was bought or adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may eclipse another--one coquette may drive out another, and tricked off in airy verse, they float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam of genius has tinged with a transient brightness: but let the heart once be touched, and it is not only wakened but inspired; the lover kindled into the poet, presents to her he loves, his cup of ambrosial praise: she tastes--and the woman is trans.m.u.ted into a divinity. When the Grecian sculptor carved out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous and G.o.d-like shapes, impersonations of ideal grace unapproachable by modern skill, was it through mere mechanical superiority? No;--it was the spirit of faith within which shadowed to his imagination what he would represent. In the same manner, no woman has ever been truly, lastingly deified in poetry, but in the spirit of truth and of love!

CHAPTER II.

LOVES OF THE CLa.s.sIC POETS.

I am not sufficiently an antiquarian or scholar, to trace the muses "upward to their spring," neither is there occasion to seek our first examples of poetical loves in the days of fables and of demi-G.o.ds; or in those pastoral ages when shepherds were kings and poets: the loves of Orpheus and Eurydice are a little too shadowy, and those of the royal Solomon rather too mixed and too mystical for our purpose.--To descend then at once to the _cla.s.sical_ ages of antiquity.

It must be allowed, that as far as women are concerned, we have not much reason to regard them with reverence. The fragments of the amatory poetry of the Greeks, which have been preserved to our times, show too plainly in what light we were then regarded; and graceful and exquisite as many of them are, they bear about them the taint of degraded morals and manners, and are utterly dest.i.tute of that exalted sentiment of respect and tenderness for woman, either individually or as a s.e.x, which alone can give them value in our eyes.

I must leave it then to learned commentators to explore and elucidate the loves of Sappho and Anacreon. To us unlearned women, they s.h.i.+ne out through the long lapse of ages, bright _names_, and little else; a kind of half-real,--half-ideal impersonations of love and song; the one enveloped in "a fair luminous cloud," the other "veiled in shadowing roses;" and thus veiled and thus shadowed, by all accounts, they had better remain.

The same remark, with the same reservation, applies to the Latin poets.

They wrote beautiful verses, admirable for their harmony, elegance and perspicuity of expression; and are studied as models of style in a language, the knowledge of which, as far as these poets are concerned, were best confined to the other s.e.x. They lived in a corrupted age, and their pages are deeply stained with its licentiousness; they inspire no sympathy for their love, no interest, no respect for the objects of it.

How, indeed, should that be possible, when their mistresses, even according to the lover's painting, were all either perfectly insipid, or utterly abandoned and odious?[1] Ovid, he who has revealed to mortal ears "all the soft scandal of the laughing sky," and whose gallantry has become proverbial, represents himself as so incensed by the public and shameless infidelities of his Corinna, that he treats her with the unmanly brutality of some street ruffian;--in plain language, he beats her. They are then reconciled, and again there are quarrels, coa.r.s.e reproaches, and mutual blows. At length the lady, as might be expected from such tuition, becoming more and more abandoned, this delicate and poetical lover requests, as a last favour, that she will, for the future, take some trouble to deceive him more effectually; and the fair one, can she do less? kindly consents!

Cynthia, the mistress of Propertius, gets tipsey, overturns the supper-table, and throws the cups at her lover's head; he is delighted with her _playfulness_: she leaves him to follow the camp with a soldier; he weeps and laments: she returns to him again, and he is enchanted with her amiable condescension. Her excesses are such, that he is reduced to blush for her and for himself; and he confesses that he is become, for her sake, the laughing-stock of all Rome. Cynthia is the only one of these cla.s.sical loves who seems to have possessed any mental accomplishments. The poet praises, incidentally, her talents for music and poetry; but not as if they added to her charms or enhanced her value in his estimation. The Lesbia[2] of Catullus, whose eyes were red with weeping the loss of her favourite sparrow, crowned a life of the most flagitious excesses by poisoning her husband. Of the various ladies celebrated by Horace and Tibullus, it would really be difficult to discover which was most worthless, venal, and profligate. These were the refined loves of the cla.s.sic poets!

The pa.s.sion they celebrated never seems to have inspired one enn.o.bling or generous sentiment, nor to have lifted them for one moment above the grossest selfishness. They had no scruple in exhibiting their mistresses to our eyes, as doubtless they appeared in their own, degraded by every vice, and in every sense contemptible; beings, not only beyond the pale of our sympathy, but of our toleration. Throughout their works, virtue appears a mere jest: Love stript of his divinity, even by those who first deified him, is what we disdain to call by that name; _sentiment_, as we now understand the word,--that is, the union of fervent love with reverence and delicacy towards its object,--a thing unknown and unheard of,--and all is "of the earth, earthy."

It is for women I write; the fair, pure-hearted, delicate-minded, and uncla.s.sical reader will recollect that I do not presume to speak of these poets critically, being neither critic nor scholar; but merely with a reference to my subject, and with a reference to my s.e.x. As monuments of the language and literature of a great and polished people, rich with a thousand beauties of thought and style, doubtless they have their value and their merit: but as monuments also of a state of morals inconceivably gross and corrupt; of the condition of women degraded by their own vices, the vices and tyranny of the other s.e.x, and the prevalence of the Epicurean philosophy, the tendency of which, (however disguised by rhetoric,) was ever to lower the tone of the mind; considered in this point of view, they might as well have all burned together in that vast bonfire of love-poetry which the Doctors of the Church raised at Constantinople:--what a flame it must have made![3]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I need scarcely observe, that the following sketch of the lyrical poets of Rome is abridged from the a.n.a.lysis of their works, in Ginguen's Histoire Littraire, vol. 3.

[2] Clodia, the wife of Quintus Metellus Celer.

[3] "J'ai oui dire dans mon enfance Demetrius Chalcondyle, homme trs instruit de tout ce qui regarde la Grce, qui les Prtres avaient eu a.s.sez d'influence sur les Empereurs de Constantinople, pour les engager brler les ouvrages de plusieurs anciens potes Grecs, et en particulier de ceux qui parlaient des amours, &c. * * * Ces prtres, sans doute, montrrent une malveillance honteuse envers les anciens potes; mais ils donnrent une grande preuve d'intgrit, de probit, et de religion."--ALCYONIUS.

This sentiment is put into the mouth of Leo X. at a time when the mania of cla.s.sical learning was at its height.--See Roscoe, (Leo X.) and Ginguen.

CHAPTER III.