Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 65, No. 400, February, 1849

Are we not right, then, in holding that, under the present system, celebrity is a thing to be eschewed? Why is it that we are so chary of receiving certain Down-Easters, so different from the real American gentlemen whom it is our good fortune to know? Simply because Silas Fixings will take down your whole conversation in black and white, deliberately alter it to suit his private purposes, and Transatlantically retail it as a specimen of your life and opinions. And is it not a still more horrible idea that a Silas may be perpetually watching you in the shape of a pretended friend? If the man would at once declare his intention, you might be comparatively at ease. Even in that case you never could love him more, for the confession implies a disgusting determination of outliving you, or rather a hint that your health is not remarkably robust, which would irritate the meekest of mankind. But you might be enabled, through a strong effort, to repress the outward exhibition of your wrath; and, if high religious principle should deter you from mixing strychnia or prussic acid with the wine of your volunteering executor, you may at least contrive to blind him by cautiously maintaining your guard. Were we placed in such a trying position, we should utter, before our intending Boswell, nothing save sentiments which might have flowed from the lips of the Venerable Bede. What letters, full of morality and high feeling, would we not indite! Not an invitation to dinner – not an acceptance of a tea and turn-out, but should be flavoured with some wholesome apothegm. Thus we should strive, through our later correspondence, to efface the memory of the earlier, which it is impossible to recall, – not without a hope that we might throw upon it, if posthumously produced, a tolerable imputation of forgery.

In these times, we repeat, no man of the least mark or likelihood is safe. The waiter with the bandy-legs, who hands round the negus-tray at a blue-stocking coterie, is in all probability a leading contributor to a fifth-rate periodical; and, in a few days after you have been rash enough to accept the insidious beverage, M'Tavish will be correcting the proof of an article in which your appearance and conversation are described. Distrust the gentleman in the plush terminations; he, too, is a penny-a-liner, and keeps a commonplace-book in the pantry. Better give up writing at once than live in such a perpetual state of bondage. What amount of present fame can recompense you for being shown up as a noodle, or worse, to your children's children? Nay, recollect this, that you are implicating your personal, and, perhaps, most innocent friends. Bob accompanies you home from an insurance society dinner, where the champagne has been rather superabundant, and, next morning, you, as a bit of fun, write to the President that the watchman had picked up Bob in a state of helpless inebriety from the kennel. The President, after the manner of the Fogies, duly docquets your note with name and date, and puts it up with a parcel of others, secured by red tape. You die. Your literary executor writes to the President, stating his biographical intentions, and requesting all documents that may tend to throw light upon your personal history. Preses, in deep ecstasy at the idea of seeing his name in print as the recipient of your epistolary favours, immediately transmits the packet; and the consequence is, that Robert is most unjustly handed down to posterity in the character of a habitual drunkard, although it is a fact that a more abstinent creature never went home to his wife at ten. If you are an author, and your spouse is ailing, don't give the details to your intimate friend, if you would not wish to publish them to the world. Drop all correspondence, if you are wise, and have any ambition to stand well in the eyes of the coming generation. Let your conversation be as curt as a Quaker's, and select no one for a friend, unless you have the meanest possible opinion of his capacity. Even in that case you are hardly secure. Perhaps the best mode of combining philanthropy, society, and safety, is to have nobody in the house, save an old woman who is so utterly deaf that you must order your dinner by pantomime.

One mode of escape suggests itself, and we do not hesitate to recommend it. Let every man who underlies the terror of the peine forte et dure, compile his own autobiography at the ripe age of forty-five. Few people, in this country, begin to establish a permanent reputation before thirty; and we allow them fifteen years to complete it. Now, supposing your existence should be protracted to seventy, here are clear five-and-twenty years remaining, which may be profitably employed in autobiography, by which means you secure three vast advantages. In the first place, you can deal with your own earlier history as you please, and provide against the subsequent production of inconvenient documents. In the second place, you defeat the intentions of your excellent friend and gossip, who will hardly venture to start his volumes in competition with your own. In the third place, you leave an additional copyright as a legacy to your children, and are not haunted in your last moments by the agonising thought that a stranger in name and blood is preparing to make money by your decease. It is, of course, unnecessary to say one word regarding the general tone of your memoirs. If you cannot contrive to block out such a fancy portrait of your intellectual self as shall throw all others into the shade, you may walk on fearlessly through life, for your biography never will be attempted. Goethe, the most accomplished literary fox of our age, perfectly understood the value of these maxims, and forestalled his friends, by telling his own story in time. The consequence is, that his memory has escaped unharmed. Little Eckermann, his amanuensis in extreme old age, did indeed contrive to deliver himself of a small Boswellian volume; but this publication, bearing reference merely to the dicta of Goethe at a safe period of life, could not injure the departed poet. The repetition of the early history, and the publication of the early documents, are the points to be especially guarded.

We beg that these remarks may be considered, not as strictures upon any individual example, but as bearing upon the general style of modern biography. This is a gossiping world, in which great men are the exceptions; and when one of these ceases to exist, the public becomes clamorous to learn the whole minutiæ of his private life. That is a depraved taste, and one which ought not to be gratified. The author is to be judged by the works which he voluntarily surrenders to the public, not by the tenor of his private history, which ought not to be irreverently exposed. Thus, in compiling the life of a poet, we maintain that a literary executor has purely a literary function to perform. Out of the mass of materials which he may fortuitously collect, his duty is to select such portions as may illustrate the public doings of the man: he may, without transgressing the boundaries of propriety, inform us of the circumstances which suggested the idea of any particular work, the difficulties which were overcome by the author in the course of its composition, and even exhibit the correspondence relative thereto. These are matters of literary history which we may ask for, and obtain, without any breach of the conventional rules of society. Whatever refers to public life is public, and may be printed: whatever refers solely to domestic existence is private, and ought to be held sacred. A very little reflection, we think, will demonstrate the propriety of this distinction. If we have a dear and valued friend, to whom, in the hours of adversity or of joy, we are wont to communicate the thoughts which lie at the bottom of our soul, we write to him in the full conviction that he will regard these letters as addressed to himself alone. We do not insult him, nor wrong the holy attributes of friendship so much, as to warn him against communicating our thoughts to any one else in the world. We never dream that he will do so, else assuredly those letters never would have been written. If we were to discover that we had so grievously erred as to repose confidence in a person who, the moment he received a letter penned in a paroxysm of emotion and revealing a secret of our existence, was capable of exhibiting it to the circle of his acquaintance, of a surety he should never more be troubled with any of our correspondence. Would any man dare to print such documents during the life of the writer? We need not pause for a reply: there can be but one. And why is this? Because these communications bear on their face the stamp of the strictest privacy – because they were addressed to, and meant for the eye of but one human being in the universe – because they betray the emotions of a soul which asks sympathy from a friend, with only less reverence than it implores comfort from its God! Does death, then, free the friend and the confidant from all restraint? If the knowledge that his secret had been divulged, his agonies exposed, his weaknesses surrendered to the vulgar gaze, could have pained the living man – is nothing due to his memory, now that he is laid beneath the turf, now that his voice can never more be raised to upbraid a violated confidence? Many modern biographers, we regret to say, do not appear to be influenced by any such consideration. They never seem to have asked themselves the question – Would my friend, if he had been compiling his own memoirs, have inserted such a letter for publication – does it not refer to a matter eminently private and personal, and never to be communicated to the world? Instead of applying this test, they print everything, and rather plume themselves on their impartiality in suppressing nothing. They thus exhibit the life not only of the author but of the man. Literary and personal history are blended together. The senator is not only exhibited in the House of Commons, but we are courteously invited to attend at the accouchement of his wife.

What title has any of us, in the abstract, to write the private history of his next-door neighbour? Be he poet, lawyer, physician, or divine, his private sayings and doings are his property, not that of a gaping and curious public. No man dares to say to another, "Come, my good fellow! it is full time that the world should know a little about your domestic concerns. I have been keeping a sort of note-book of your proceedings ever since we were at school together, and I intend to make a few pounds by exhibiting you in your true colours. You recollect when you were in love with old Tomnoddy's daughter? I have written a capital account of your interview with her that fine forenoon in the Botanical Gardens! True, she jilted you, and went off with young Heavystern of the Dragoons, but the public won't relish the scene a bit the less on that account. Then I have got some letters of yours from our mutual friend Fitzjaw. How very hard-up you must have been at the time when you supplicated him for twenty pounds to keep you out of jail! You were rather severe, the other day when I met you at dinner, upon your professional brother Jenkinson; but I daresay that what you said was all very true, so I shall publish that likewise. By the way – how is your wife? She had a lot of money, had she not? At all events people say so, and it is shrewdly surmised that you did not marry her for her beauty. I don't mean to say that I think so, but such is the on dit, and I have set it down accordingly in my journal. Do, pray, tell me about that quarrel between you and your mother-in-law! Is it true that she threw a joint-stool at your head? How our friends will roar when they see the details in print!" Is the case less flagrant if the manuscript is not sent to press, until our neighbour is deposited in his coffin? We cannot perceive the difference. If the feelings of living people are to be taken as the criterion, only one of the domestic actors is removed from the stage of existence. Old Tomnoddy still lives, and may not be abundantly gratified at the fact of his daughter's infidelity and elopement being proclaimed. The intimation of the garden scene, hitherto unknown to Heavystern, may fill his warlike bosom with jealousy, and ultimately occasion a separation. Fitzjaw can hardly complain, but he will be very furious at finding his refusal to accommodate a friend appended to the supplicating letter. Jenkinson is only sorry that the libeller is dead, otherwise he would have treated him to an action in the Jury Court. The widow believes that she was made a bride solely for the sake of her Californian attractions, and reviles the memory of her spouse. As for the mother-in-law, now gradually dwindling into dotage, her feelings are perhaps of no great consequence to any human being. Nevertheless, when the obnoxious paragraph in the Memoirs is read to her by a shrill female companion, nature makes a temporary rally, her withered frame shakes with agitation, and she finally falls backward in a fit of hopeless paralysis.

Such is a feeble picture of the results that might ensue from private biography, were we all permitted, without reservation, to parade the lives and domestic circumstances of our neighbours to a greedy and gloating world. Not but that, if our neighbour has been a man of sufficient distinction to deserve commemoration, we may gracefully and skilfully narrate all of him that is worth the knowing. We may point to his public actions, expatiate on his achievements, and recount the manner in which he gained his intellectual renown; but further we ought not to go. The confidences of the dead should be as sacred as those of the living. And here we may observe, that there are other parties quite as much to blame as the biographers in question. We allude to the friends of the deceased, who have unscrupulously furnished them with materials. Is it not the fact that in very many cases they have divulged letters which, during the writer's lifetime, they would have withheld from the nearest and dearest of their kindred? In many such letters there occur observations and reflections upon living characters, not written in malice, but still such as were never intended to meet the eyes of the parties criticised; and these are forthwith published, as racy passages, likely to gratify the appetite of a coarse, vulgar, and inordinate curiosity. Even this is not the worst. Survivors may grieve to learn that the friend whom they loved was capable of ridiculing or misrepresenting them in secret, and his memory may suffer in their estimation; but, put the case of detailed private conversations, which are constantly foisted into modern biographies, and we shall immediately discover that the inevitable tendency is to engender dislikes among living parties. Let us suppose that three men, all of them professional authors, meet at a dinner party. The conversation is very lively, takes a literary turn, and the three gentlemen, with that sportive freedom which is very common in a society where no treachery is apprehended, pass some rather poignant strictures upon the writings or habits of their contemporaries. One of them either keeps a journal, or is in the habit of writing, for the amusement of a confidential friend at a distance, any literary gossip which may be current, and he commits to paper the heads of the recent dialogue. He dies, and his literary executor immediately pounces upon the document, and, to the confusion of the two living critics, prints it. Every literary brother whom they have noticed is of course their enemy for life.

If, in private society, a snob is discovered retailing conversations, he is forthwith cut without compunction. He reads his detection in the calm, cold scorn of your eye; and, referring to the mirror of his own dim and dirty conscience, beholds the reflection of a hound. The biographer seems to consider himself exempt from such social secresy. He shelters himself under the plea that the public are so deeply interested, that they must not be deprived of any memorandum, anecdote, or jotting, told, written, or detailed by the gifted subject of their memoirs. Therefore it is not a prudent thing to be familiar with a man of genius. He may not betray your confidence, but you can hardly trust to the tender mercies of his chronicler.

Such are our deliberate views upon the subject of biography, and we state them altogether independent of the three bulky volumes which are now lying before us for review.

We cordially admit that it was right and proper that a life of Campbell should be written. Although he did not occupy the same commanding position as others of his renowned contemporaries – although his writings have not, like those of Scott, Byron, and Southey, contributed powerfully to give a tone and idiosyncrasy to the general literature of the age – Campbell was nevertheless a man of rich genius, and a poet of remarkable accomplishment. It would not be easy to select, from the works of any other writer of our time, so many brilliant and polished gems, without flaw or imperfection, as are to be found amongst his minor poems. Criticism, in dealing with these exquisite lyrics, is at fault. If sometimes the suspicion of a certain effeminacy haunts us, we have but to turn the page, and we arrive at some magnificent, bold, and trumpet-toned ditty, appealing directly from the heart of the poet to the imagination of his audience, and proving, beyond all contest, that power was his glorious attribute. True, he was unequal; and towards the latter part of his career, exhibited a marked failing in the qualities which originally secured his renown. It is almost impossible to believe that the Pilgrim of Glencoe, or even Theodric, was composed by the author of the Pleasures of Hope or Gertrude; and if you place the Ritter Bann beside Hohenlinden or the Battle of the Baltic, you cannot fail to be struck with the singular diminution of power. Campbell started from a high point – walked for some time along level or undulating ground – and then began rapidly to descend. This is not, as some idle critics have maintained, the common course of genius. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth, are remarkable instances to the contrary. Whatever may have been the promise of their youth, their matured performances, eclipsing their earlier efforts, show us that genius is capable of almost boundless cultivation, and that the fire of the poet does not cease to burn less brightly within him, because the sable of his hair is streaked with gray, or the furrows deepening on his brow. Sir Walter Scott was upwards of thirty before he began to compose in earnest: after thirty, Campbell wrote scarcely anything which has added permanently to his reputation. Extreme sensitiveness, an over-strained and fastidious desire of polishing, and sometimes the pressure of outward circumstances, may have combined to damp his early ardour. He evidently was deficient in that resolute pertinacity of labour, through which alone great results can be achieved. He allowed the best years of his life to be frittered away, in pursuits which could not secure to him either additional fame, or the more substantial rewards of fortune: and, though far from being actually idle, he was only indolently active. Campbell wanted an object in life. Thus, though gifted with powers which, directed towards one point, were capable of the highest concentration, we find him scattering these in the most desultory and careless manner; and surrendering scheme after scheme, without making the vigorous effort which was necessary to secure their completion. This is a fault by no means uncommon in literature, but one which is highly dangerous. No work requiring great mental exertion should be undertaken rashly, for the enthusiasm which has prompted it rapidly subsides, the labour becomes distasteful to the writer, and unless he can bend himself to his task with the most dogged perseverance, and a determination to vanquish all obstacles, the result will be a fragment or a failure. Of this we find two notable instances recorded in the book before us. Twice in his life had Campbell meditated the construction of a great poem, and twice did he relinquish the task. Of the Queen of the North but a few lines remain: of his favourite projected epic on the subject of Wallace, nothing. Elegant trifles, sportive verses, and playful epigrams were, for many years, the last fruits of that genius which had dictated the Pleasures of Hope, and rejoiced the mariners of England with a ballad worthy of the theme. And yet, so powerful is early association – so universal was the recognition of the transcendant genius of the boy, that when Campbell sank into the grave, there was lamentation as though a great poet had been stricken down in his prime, and all men felt that a brilliant light had gone out among the luminaries of the age. Therefore it was seemly that his memory should receive that homage which has been rendered to others less deserving of it, and that his public career, at least, should be traced and given to the world.

It was Campbell's own wish that Dr Beattie should undertake his biography. Few perhaps knew the motives which led to this selection; for the assiduity, care, and filial attachment, bestowed for years by the warm-hearted physician upon the poet, was as unostentatious as it was honourable and devoted. Not from the pages of this biography can the reader form an adequate idea of the extent and value of such disinterested friendship: indeed it is not too much to say, that the rare and exemplary kindness of Dr Beattie was the chief consolation of Campbell during the later period of his existence. It was therefore natural that the dying poet should have confided this trust to one of whose affection he was assured by so many rare and signal proofs; and it is with a kindly feeling to the author that we now approach the consideration of the literary merits of the book.

The admiration of Dr Beattie for the genius of Campbell has in some respects led him astray. It is easy to see at a glance that his measure of admiration is not of an ordinary kind, but so excessive as to lead him beyond all limit. He seems to have regarded Campbell not merely as a great poet, but as the great poet of the age; and he is unwilling, æsthetically, to admit any material diminution of his powers. He still clings with a certain faith to Theodric; and declines to perceive any palpable failure even in the Pilgrim of Glencoe. Verses and fragments which, to the casual reader, convey anything but the impression of excellence, are liberally distributed throughout the pages of the third volume, and commented on with evident rapture. He seems to think that, in the case of his author, it may be said, "Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit;" and accordingly he is slow to suppress, even where suppression would have been of positive advantage. In short, he is too full of his subject to do it justice. In the hands of a skilful and less biassed artisan, the materials which occupy these three volumes, extending to nearly fourteen hundred pages of print, might have been condensed into one highly interesting and popular volume. We should not then, it is true, have been favoured with specimens of Campbell's college exercises, with the voluminous chronicles of his family, with verses written at the age of eleven, or with correspondence purely domestic; but we firmly believe that the reading public would have been grateful to Dr Beattie, had he omitted a great deal of matter connected with the poet's earlier career, which is of no interest whatever. The Campbells of Kirnan were, we doubt not, a highly respectable sept, and performed their duty as kirk-elders for many generations blamelessly in the parish of Glassary. But it was not necessary on that account to trace their descent from the Black Knight Of Lochawe, or to give the particular history of the family for more than a century and a half. Gillespic-le-Camile may have been a fine fellow in his day; but we utterly deny, in the teeth of all the Campbells and Kembles in the world, that he had a drop of Norman blood in his veins. It is curious to find the poet, at a subsequent period, engaged in a correspondence, as to the common ancestor of these names, with one of the Kembles, who, as Mrs Butler somewhere triumphantly avers, were descended from the lords of Campo-bello. Where that favoured region may be, we know not; but this we know, that in Gaelic Cambeul signifies wry-mouth, and hence, as is the custom with primitive nations, the origin of the name. And let not the sons of Diarmid be offended at this, or esteem their glories less, since the gallant Camerons owe their name to a similar conformation of the nose, and the Douglases to their dark complexion. Having put this little matter of family etymology right, let us return to Dr Beattie.