From Blackwood's Magazine.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY-CHATEAUBRIAND'S MEMOIRS.

Mémoires d'Outre Tombe. Par M. le VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND. 4 vols. Paris, 1846-9.

"At the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable spot-where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell-was at once present to my eyes; and several days of intoxication were lost, or enjoyed, before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation. It was at Rome, on the 15th October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing this Decline and Fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point toward that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work."-Life, p. 198, 8vo edition.

would be contrasted with its subsequent triumphant success. Amidst his many great and good qualities, there is none for which Sir Walter Scott was more admirable than the unaffected simplicity and good sense of his character, which led him to continue through life utterly unspotted by vanity, and unchanged by an amount of adulation from the most fascinating quarters, which would probably have turned the head of any other man. Among the many causes of regret which the world has for the catastrophes which overshadowed his latter years, it is not the least that it prevented the completion of that autobiography with which Mr. Lockhart has commenced his Life. His simplicity of character, and the vast number of eminent men with whom he was intimate, as well as the merit of that fragment itself, leave no room for doubt that he would have

Again, the well-known description of the made a most charming memoir, if he had

conclusion of his labors :

:

"I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion; and that, whatever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious."-Life, p. 255, 8vo edition.

Hume's account of his own life is a model of perspicuity, modesty, and good sense; but it is so brief that it scarcely can be called a biography. It is not fifty pages long. The wary Scotch author was well aware how vanity in such compositions defeats its own object he had too much good sense to let it appear in his pages. Perhaps, however, the existence of such a feeling in the recesses of his breast may be detected in the prominent manner in which he brings forward the discouragement he experienced when the first volume of his history was published, and the extremely limited sale it met with for some time after its first appearance. He knew well how these humble beginnings

lived to complete it. This observation does not detract in the slightest degree from the credit justly due to Mr. Lockhart, for his admirable Life of his illustrious father-in-law: on the contrary, it forms its highest encomium. The charm of that work is mainly owing to its being so imbued with the spirit of the subject, that it may almost be regarded as an autobiography.

Continental writers of note have, more than English ones, fallen into that error which is of all others the most fatal in autobiography-inordinate vanity. At the head of all the delinquents of this class we must place Rousseau, whose celebrated Confessions contain a revelation of folly so extreme, vanity so excessive, and baseness so disgraceful, that it would pass for incredible if not proved by the book itself, which is to be found in every library. Not content with affirming, when past fifty, that there was no woman of fashion of whom he might not have made the conquest if he chose to set about it, he thought fit to entertain the world with all the private details of his life, which the greater prudence of his most indiscreet biographers would have consigned to oblivion. No one who wishes to discredit the Genevese philosopher, need seek in the works of others for the grounds of doing so. Enough is to be found in his own to consign him to eternal execration and contempt. He has told us equally in detail, and with the same air of infantine simplicity, how he committed a theft

* "Il y a peu des femmes, meme dans le haut rang, dont je n'eusse fait la conquete si je l'avais enterprise."-Biographie Universelle, xxxix. 136.

when in service as a lackey, and permitted | horrors of the 10th August.-"Je connais an innocent girl, his fellow-servant, to bear bien les grands, mais jene connais pas les the penalty of it; how he alternately drank petits." He drew the vices of the former the wine in his master's cellars, and made love from observation, he painted the virtues of to his wife; how he corrupted one female the latter from imagination. Hence the abbenefactress who had sheltered him in ex-surdity and unnatural character of many of tremity of want, and afterward made a boast his dramas, which, to the inhabitant of our of her disgrace; and abandoned a male ben-free country, who is familiar with the real efactor who fell down in a fit of apoplexy on working of popular institutions, renders them, the streets of Lyons, and left him lying on despite their genius, quite ridiculous. But, the pavement, deserted by the only friend in the delineation of what passed in his own whom he had in the world. The author of breast, he is open to no such reproach. His so many eloquent declamations against moth- picture of his own feelings is as forcible and ers neglecting their children, on his own ad- dramatic as that of any he has drawn in his mission, when in easy circumstances, and tragedies; and it is far more truthful, for it impelled by no necessity, consigned five of is taken from nature, not an imaginary world his natural children to a foundling hospital, of his own creation, having little resemblance with such precautions against their being to that we see around us. His character and known that he never did or could hear of life were singularly calculated to make such them again! Such was his vanity, that he a narrative interesting, for never was one thought the world would gladly feed on the more completely tossed about by vehement crumbs of this sort which fell from the table passions, and abounding with melodramatic of the man rich in genius. His grand theory incidents. Alternately dreaming over the was that the human mind is born innocent, most passionate attachments, and laboring of with dispositions only to good, and that all his own accord at Dante fourteen hours a the evils of society arise from the follies of day; at one time making love to an English education or the oppression of government. nobleman's wife, and fighting him in the Park, Judging from the picture he has presented of at another driving through France with fourhimself, albeit debased by no education but teen blood horses in harness; now stealing what he himself had afforded, we should say from the Pretender his queen, now striving his disposition was more corrupt than has to emulate Sophocles in the energy of his even been imagined by the most dark-minded picture of the passions, he was himself a livand bigoted Calvinist that ever existed. ing example of the intensity of those feelings which he has so powerfully portrayed in his dramas. It is this variety, joined to the simplicity and candor of the confessions, which constitutes the charm of this very remarkable autobiography. It could have been written by no one but himself; for an ordinary biographer would only have described the incidents of his life, none else could have painted the vehement passions, the ardent aspirations, from which they sprang.

Alfieri was probably as vain in reality as Rousseau; but he knew better how to conceal it. He had not the folly of supposing that he could entertain women by the boastful detail of his conquests over them. He judged wisely, and more like a man who had met with bonnes fortunes, that he would attain more effectually the object of interesting their feelings, by painting their conquests over him. He has done this so fully, so sincerely, and with such eloquence, that he has made one of the most powerful pieces of biography in any language. Its charm consists in the picture he has drawn, with equal truth and art, of a man of the most impetuous and ardent temperament, alternately impelled by the strongest passions which can agitate the breast-love and ambition. Born of a noble family, inheriting a great fortune, His self-love was of a more he exhibited an uncommon combination of domestic kind; it partook more of the patrician tastes and feelings with republican home-scenes of the Fatherland. No one principles and aspirations. He was a demo- will question the depth of Goethe's knowlcrat because he knew the great by whom he edge of the heart, or the sagacity of the was surrounded, and did not know the hum-light which his genius has thrown on the ble who were removed to a distance. He most profound feelings of human nature. said this himself, after witnessing at Paris the But his private life partook of the domestic

VOL XVIII. NO. III.

From the sketches of Goethe's life which have been preserved, it is evident that, though probably not less vain than the French philosopher or the Italian poet, his vanity took a different direction from either of theirs. He was neither vain of his turpitudes, like Rousseau, nor of his passions, like Alfieri.

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they are viewed by the generality of men; he was so deeply imbued with the spirit of his hero, that he had come to regard his errors and vices as not the least interesting part of his life. That they may be so to that class of readers, unhappily too extensive, who are engaged in similar pursuits, is probably true; but how small a portion do these constitute of the human race, and how weak and inaudible is their applause when compared to the voice of ages! What has become of the innumerable licentious works whose existence in antiquity has become known from the specimens disinterred in the ruins of Herculaneum? Is there one of them which has taken its place beside the Lives of Plutarch? Whatever is fetid, however much prized at the moment, is speedily sunk in the waves of time. Nothing permanently floats down its stream but what is buoyant from its elevating tendency.

affections and unobtrusive rest in which it | passions, that he had forgot in what light was passed, exempt alike from the grinding poverty which too often impelled the Genevese watchmaker's son into disgraceful actions, or the vehement passions which drove the Italian nobleman into brilliant crimes. Hence his biography exhibits an extraordinary mixture of lofty feelings with puerile simplicity, of depth of views with childishness, of divine philosophy with homely inclinations. Amidst all his enthusiasm and effusions of sentiment, he was as much under the influence as any man of creature comforts; and never hesitated to leave the most lofty efforts of the muse to participate in the substantial advantages of rich preserves or sweet cakes. This singular mixture arose in a great measure from the habits of his life, and the limited circle by which, during the greater part of it, he was surrounded. Living with a few friends in the quiet seclusion of a small German town, the object of almost superstitious admiration to a few females by whom he was surrounded, he became at once a little god of his own and their idolatry, and warmly inclined, like monks all over the world, to the innocent but not very elevating pleasures of breakfast and dinner. Mahomet said that he experienced more difficulty in persuading his four wives of his divine mission, than all the rest of the world besides; and this, says Gibbon, was not surprising, for they knew best his weaknesses as a man. Goethe thought, on the same principle, his fame was secure, when he was worshiped as a god by his female coterie. He had the highest opinion of his own powers, and of the lofty mission on which he was sent to mankind; but his self-love was less offensive than that of Rousseau, because it was more unobtrusive. It was allied rather to pride than vanityand though pride may often be hateful, it is never contemptible.

From the Life of Lord Byron, which Moore has published, it may be inferred that the latter acted wisely in consigning the original manuscript of the noble poet's autobiography to the flames. Assuming that a considerable part of that biography is taken from what the noble bard had left of himself, it is evident that a more complete detail of his feelings and motives of action would have done anything rather than have added to his reputation. In fact, Moore's Life has done more than anything else to lower it. The poetical biographer had thought and sung so much of the

Boswell's Life of Johnson is so replete with the sayings and thoughts of the intellectual giant, whom it was so much his object to elevate, even above his natural Patagonian stature, that it may be regarded as a sort of autobiography, dictated by the sage in his moments of abandon to his devout worshiper. It is hardly going too far to say that it is the most popular book in the English language. Johnson's reputation now mainly rests on that biography. No one now reads the Rambler or the Idler-few the Lives of the Poets, interesting as they are, and admirable as are the criticisms on our greatest authors which they contain. But Boswell's Life of Johnson is in everybody's hands; you will hear the pithy sayings, the admirable reflections, the sagacious remarks it contains, from one end of the world to the other. The secret of this astonishing success is to be found in the caustic tone, sententious brevity, and sterling good sense of Johnson, and the inimitable accuracy, faithful memory, and almost infantine simplicity of his biographer. From the unbounded admiration with which he was inspired for the sage, and the faithful memory with which he was gifted, he was enabled to commit to paper, almost as they were delivered, those admirable sayings which have ever since been the delight and admiration of the world. We almost live with the members of the Literary Club; we hear their divers sentiments, and can almost conceive their tones of voice. We see the gigantic form of the sage towering above