BIOGRAPHY.

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15033, 2 September 1922, Page 11 (Supplement)

BIOGRAPHY.

I ♦— EXALTED TASTES. , (By "Marama.”) Biography is the best of reading. When we are young we cannot relish anything but Action, and delight in the adventures, the loves, the careers of imaginary beings. Those of us who are fortunate enough to keep some of our youth up to a later date can sliil enjoy a novel, only it is strange how often we 1 go back to an old one. We know its excellences and its shortcomings ,and are not called on to criticise. Lest anyone should pronounce novel reading to be unworthy, We may remind him that Macaulay read novels voraciously, and declared Jane Austen to be better worth reading than any of the classics. Gladstone read novels with avidity, and made the fortune of Robert Elsmere by , his article on it in the Nineteenth Century. Beaconsfleld read “Pride and Prejudice” once a year" throughout his life ,and a great Judge is said to have done the same with “Ivanhoe.” To go back and read the great works, and bring to them the freshness and the enjoyment of youth, would be the fitting reward of a wellspent life. Htfw Did it Happen?

Meantime we feel, as experience grows and the mind stiffens, that we like to, jinow that what, we are reading is--/3omething which actually occurred. Man’s doings are always of interest to man, and it is to history or biography that we look for them. History began as literature, and those who wrote it-endeavoured to produce a book that would attract. They did not consider themselves bound to the truth of detail, and give us conversations that took place privately in times long gone by, and reproduce speeches delivered before shorthand had been thought of. Then historians began to consider such devices beneath their dignity, and looked . for chapter and verse for each of their statements. • Great histories, were produced during such times, and before historians had become strictly scientific ' and ceased to be literary. The most celebrated is Macaulay’s fascinating book. He was a Whig politician, and his history was in consequence subjected to much Tory criticism, without, however, shaking its authority or pointing out .any but trifling mistakes. Macaulay’s error lay in such detestation of one or two scoundrels that he blackens what was already dark enough. He has a series of character sketches of great men and of small men that are amongst the pleasantest part of his book, lie was not a man who analysed character closely, but he gave a striking picture of the man of action, whether he was soldier, statesman, scholar or priest. Hero Worship. The historians have ceased to be ■readable by the man who wants to read with his feet on the fender. Such a man wants a book which he can read as one drinks water, without stopping lo taste, while at the same time, he wants to gain something there|?y, and to have reason to hope that iAat he reads bears some resembl&ifie to truth. Biography, adequately written, comes nearer to this than any other literature, but even then the provision that it must be adequately written too often rules the book out. .One ex-Lord Chancellor wrote the lives-of his predecessors, and thereby, as one of them said, added another terror to death. A later Lord Chancellor has written his own, and included every compliment and civil speech received in the course of a long life. There should be some happy medium*, between the two. A biographer should have some admiration for the subject of his .WOirli, but not enough to blind him to the faults, for which reason biography is seldom well written by relations. Nevertheless, the life of the late Marquis of Salisbury, written by his daughter, is a great work, and bears evidence that she thinks for herself, and occasionally differs from the subject of her book. Lord Money’s “Life of Gladstone” is almost a history of 50 years of the nineteenth century. The subject and the author were happily matched. Lord Morlcy is a consummate literary artist. Gladstone’s was perhaps the fullest life of any of the sons of men. The arrangement anti sequence of such masses of nw/ler of such varied kinds was a Wiumph of workmanship. An Eye for Weakness Only. "Chancellors, statesmen and soldiers fill the public eye, and their doings engross public attention. Everyone is interested more or less in such men, but the interest felt is of various kinds. To meet these many tastes a now description ’of hook has become popular, or perhaps it would be more correct to say an old description lias been Revived. These -books purport to giyeSjthe intimate personal details, Buell as are commonly known only in the family. No man is a hero lo his

•valet, and these hooks leave little that is heroic remaining- to their subjects. They arc unworthy books, appealing to . an unworthy curiosity. Thackeray and Dickens quarrelled on tills point 60 years and more ago. Thackeray objected to a man belonging to his club and writing of the characteristics of his fellow members. He belonged to a generation with a greater sense of dignity. Dickens espoused tile cause of the offendoi. Had Thackeray lived till the present day, his feelings would have been often lacerated by the gentleman with the duster. Another objectionable form of biography is that which Mr Lytton Strachey lias recently made popular, in which lie recounts the career of men who have become famous in one direction, and points out that they fell short' in others. We ; know they do, for man is imperfect, !• jj Ut- to fix" tlie attention on the shortcomings, rather than on the excel- , lence, betrays a poor spirit. The sins of Mr Lvtton strachey, like Lhose of nauVhtv boys, lias found him out. He se t out to write the life of Queen Vichi-ja and was clearly impressed • hv Av qualities, and even more by twflu of the Prince Consort. Nevcr- : tiViess flie soirit of detraction was not In’be curbed, and he could not refrain from jeering at the. life in the Highlands and the domes ic privacy of'the Koval couple. A snob has been defined a.; one who unworthily ad- : mires unworthy objects. Tins is bad enough, but it,is surely worse when ’ J wo shut our .eyes to "bat is admitP able in a great man, and persist in ' seeing either his faults and shoi tcoTilings, as .Mr Lytton Strachey would have us do, or on the lltlle .• lioibles which a mans friends T laiiiih'SiL and love him for, which is ill the method pursued by the gentleman T with the duste.s