THE NEW BIOGRAPHY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1539, 7 September 1912, Page 9

THE NEW BIOGRAPHY.

It is not very wonderful that, amid the drums and tramplings of the last decade, the introduction of a new method into so pedestrian an art as biography should have failed to attract any particular attention. And yet we believe that it deserves notice, since the method, whether good or bad, is at least strikingly different from those previously accepted as orthodox. A capacity for judicious selection, an insight into character, and some narrative powers were formerly considered to be part of the essential equipment of a good biographer.- But they are now as superfluous as grammar; and when the writer of to-day has secured a reasonably clean paste-brush and paid his subscription to his favourite press-cutting agency he feels that he has done all that is really necessary to enable him to undertake the life of anybody fcom a Bismarck to a' Meredith. Iα the Victorian epoch, whose character is now so justly blown upon, time'and thought were also foolishly considered to be of value in the making of a book. A decent period used to elapse between death and biography. Nowadays tho announcement of the Life of the eminent Smith, in two volumes octavo, with copious illustrations and a preface by the equally eminent Browne, appears side by side with the nine smudges of printer's ink which your morning paper assures you represent his funeral cortege. When the biographer is afraid, that his subject may gain an unfair advantage by surviving him the biography precedes the funeral. It is then called an "Appreciation," but is otherwise unchanged, except for the pages entitled , "Closing Scenes," in which the subtk hand'of the journalist effectually, struggles to abase the dignity of death. The aim in each case:is to mako you read the life of the eminent Smith before you have' forgotten :wlio tho eminent Smith was. -' And as you are not quite sure whether Smith was (he author of thKF"Essa.v' 6fi r the Tentative ■Method," which yoju have'long been intending to.read whenever you had time, or merely a Scottish' Barrister with a taste for declamation, you determine to put- yourself right with your conscience by finding out. . You instruct the young gentleman' at the circulating library, who is your spiritual director in literature, to procure a copy for you at once. You override his alternative suggestion of the latest American sob ; inspiring fiction; and having attained your desire you sit down' after dinner to enjoy a few hours of intellectual communion with the Mighty Dead.

As you turn, over the pages for a preliminary survey, your mind is strangely recalled to the second-hand bookshops, which, are tho,natural resort of all great and good men'. In their dusty corners, which you have so often ransacked in search of some rare mathematical tract, you have sometimes seen decaying tomes which owe their existence to the obsolete pastime of "Grangerising." .. Tins-quaint amusement was once much cultivated by; well-intentioned persons living, in the suburbs who found time hang heavily upon their hands. They chose 11 favourite author and set themselves with sluggish diligence to collect and paste into volumes every scrap of published matter that had any conceivable bearing on his life and works. For some reason, now lost in the vague realm of hypothesis and conjecture, the poet Cowper was perhaps most often the inoffensive victim of this uncanny pursuit. Upon his harmless themo they wove fantasias extending into countless indestructible quartos. They ravaged the print-shops to secure his portrait in every possible position and by every possible engraver. They filled their scrap-books with views of Olney, and. lithographs of the r Unwins, Lady Hesketh, John Newton, the Throclunortons, and Lady Austen.' They gathered together b.roadshpcts on Thurlow and descriptions of eigh-teenth-century sofas. With an almost incredible malevolence they mutilated rare first editions to odd an autograph to their horrid collectiou. And there can be litt!o reasonable doubt that the existence of the true enthusiast was embittered by tho impossibility of discovering authentic contemporary likenesses of the poet's hares. It is hard to think charitably of these poor creatures; they meant well; but they had three claims, on your sympathy. As a rule they confined themselves to illustration: they did not convey the obese product to a publisher to multiply tho evidence of their iniquity, and they did not call the result a "Life of Coiyper." The volume you have been reading is Sinith/'Grangerised," and you have been defrauded out of the beuelit of your library subscription by the pretence that it is his biography. The'preface is a mass of indiscriminate eulogy. The obituary notice in your daily paper has been watered down to make the dreary "Life Story." The chapters with the vivid intimate titles—The Artist, The Romancer, The Writer of Books, The-Student, His Place in the Century —are compiled of inane clippings from ephemeral journals held together by a glutinous mortar of journalese. If yoii"~aro cast in the heroic mould, and somebody comes, into the room occa- ] sionally to waken you up, you may struggle as far as "Smith-Tho Man." ■ That is'final. , The title iiself is almost a personal insult. It is the base coin of literature, greasy from a thousand clammy handlings; and tho contents are worthy of their heading. The chapter opens with a fervid article by Ono Who Knew Him Well, which originally appeared in "Book Sweepings." "How clearly do I remember meeting tho Master in Trafalgar Square one wet Sunday mornirfs in August when the turrets of tho National Gallery were shrouded in mist, and the manes of Landseor's noblo lions dripped moisture on the glistening pavomeut. He wore his trousers turned up at the ends, and carried an umbrella in his right hnnd. As he.entered the terminus of the Eampstead tube he closed the umbrella and shook some drops, from the ferrule against the tiles of thy subway. How liko him that was!. In that ono moment you had the man complete—his independence of spirit, his freedom from vulgar prejudice, his lack of conventional restraint. He valued the things of this world for what they were worth, not for what others might happen to think about them. To him an umbrella was an umbrella, to be used when wanted, to to be cast aside when the sun shone again. No one ever saw him sitting in a train with an open umbrella above his head. Such petty self-advertising devices wero alien to his austere character." Aud that is all. Not that tho flood of eloquence from One Who Knew Him Well has ceased to flow. On the. contrary he fills nino Bases .with.

the easy grace of an accomplished practitioner; but there is no further information. Apparently he was so carried away by the thought of the umbrella that ho could remember no more. You visualise Smith as a nebulous something, connecting an umbrella with upturned trouserlegs, and hurry on in search of clarifying facts. "Valuable as is the pen-picture left us by One Who Knew Him Well," fays the compiler, "it is surpassed in interest by tho special contribution I have succeeded in securing from Mr. Slope, of tho Chaulk Farm Toilet Saloon and Temple of Fashion." From the twelve pages of Mr. Slopo you gather that he shaved Smith regularly for thirty years, and that The Master had an .intense dislike "for a blunt razor. And that is your last conscious impression beforo you realiso that tho two volumes are lying on tho floor, and tho fire is out, and it is time (o go to bed.

■ It is not thus that great biographies haye been written or ever will bo written. It is not thus that Boswell gives us Johnson at full length, his courage and his fears, his piety and his pride, his acerbity and his tenderness, his humour, his inconsistency, and his great .wholesome wisdom "direct from life, not strained through books." It is not in this way that Lockhart shows us his father-in-law on tho heights and in the depths. No biography on the card-index system' can produce a parallel to the superb scene in the Life of Scott where, for the first and last time, tho determined will that had borne down ill-health, disaster, and the "climbing shadows of buried years" was thwarted by the decay of the feeble body. You must go to Shakespeare for even an approximate equivalent. Macbeth, when his way of life had fallen into tho sere, yellow leaf, could yet oppose to the prodigies of Nature the trained pride of his profession and find'it steady to the test. "Put mine armour on ... at least we'll die with harness on our back." Tho discipline of years had produced a second self to survive tho downfall of the natural man. The habit of.war had drilled him to outface the weakness of the flesh: fighting was his trade, and whatever else happened he could still fight. But even that supreme resource failed Scott in the moment of his need. Only a little while before his death the imperious instinct which bids a fine craftsman -to labour in his vocation till he drops, made him ask to be left alone at his desk with his work before him. But the pencil'slipped from the stammering fingers, and the night came,- and the task was unfinished. That is true tragedy, bitter but tonic. You need an assured touch to sound such notes on the diapason of life. No gleanings from the weekly retailers of printed gossip will serve to recapture' from oblivion the immortal part of the dead, which is the only part that matters. That is what we want to brace us for our own struggles; and we cannot expect to find it in the pages of the New Biography. Journalism, which suffices for the day, perishes with the day. It is powerless to influence and powerless to help.—London "Spectator."