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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Large crown 8vo, S2.00,
net. Postage extra.
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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A CRITICAL AND COMPARA
TIVE STUDY ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
BT
ANNA ROBESON BURR

BOSTON AND NEW TOEK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
m>t Bi'aexfibe pxt0 CambtifiB?
1909

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ANNA ROBESON BURR
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October iqoq

PREFACE
No one will deny that the pleasure of writing such a
book as this depends very largely on one's experience of
libraries and of librarians. In this respect, the writer
has been not a little fortunate. To Mr. George Maurice
Abbot, Mr. Knoblauch, and staff, of the Philadelphia
Library, and to Dr. Morris Jastrow, Miss Gawthorp, and
staff, of the Library of the University of Pennsylvania
her thanks are due, first and foremost, in the warmest
measure. There has not been a moment during the
entire journey when her most unreasonable demands
have not been met with cheerfulness, and she has
been urged upon her way with books in every lan
guage. The names of these institutions, and of their
benign directors, are surely to be found engraven upon
her heart. Other debts there are to be acknowledged.
Thanks are due Mr. Bunford Samuel for his special aid
in search through the hoarded riches of the Loganian.
The writer turns also with gratitude to Dr. Francis B.
Gummere, of Haverford College, who knows so well
how to communicate to the student the spirit of his
enthusiasm and his ideals. As for that best friend, who
has been ever at hand to aid, whether to encourage or

vi PREFACE
to restrain; who has never lacked conviction, — to him,
indeed, the debt is one the writer would not discharge
if she could. It represents but part of an increasing
burden of obligation, under which she is joyfully
content to rest.

CONTENTS Part I
I. Introductory 3
II. Classification and the Autobiographi
cal Intention 13
III. History 31
IV. Sincerity 43
V. The Autobiography, the Diary, and
the Letter 56
VI. The Three Great Archetypes 74
VII. Jerome Cardan's "De Vita Propria
Liber" 86
VIII. Influence and Imitation 129
IX. The Autobiography in its Relation
TO Fiction 148
X. The Autobiographical Group 169
Part II
XI. Nationality and Profession 191
XII. Memory 212
XIII. Religion 228

viii CONTENTS
XIV. The Nervous Systems of the Past 266
XV. The Relations of the Sexes 288
XVI. Humor 314
XVII. Self-Esteem 331
XVIII. Work and Aims 352
XIX. Genius and Character 376
XX. Conclusion 401
APPENDIX : 409
A. Reasons for Writing 411
B. Groups of Autobiographers 413
C. Professions and Occupations 422
D. Memories 424
E. Bibliography of Autobiographical
Writings 425
INDEX 441

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY PART I

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
A CRITICAL AND COMPARATIVE STUDY

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Reasons for undertaking an inquiry into any depart
ment of literature are not far to seek; it were perhaps
banal to dwell upon them. Upon most of us the liter
ary and personal charm of the memoir and the auto
biography has long laid hold. Any aspect of the human
creature has its poignant interest. But only as chance
willed, in the hurried moments of choice upon a library
shelf, have we now and again found an acquaintance or
gained a friend. The attempt in the following pages
has been, first of all, to carry the reader more easily into
the midst of a broad and general society. With him
we have planned to meet a number of interesting men
and women of high and low degree, of many professions
and occupations; and the significant thing is that we
are to meet them just as we would meet them in
life. Under the same impressions, and with the same
reticences; with the same small graces, poses and insin
cerities, such as tend to vanish as we become better

4 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
acquainted, we shall meet them; and yet always with
that one privilege, which life itself might not have
granted us, the opportunity to make them our friends.
This the printed page has done for them and us; this
is, after all, the one clear benefit of their having written
their lives for us, that they have thus perpetuated our
opportunity, so that death has not deprived us of a
friend. Here we may choose friendship as we should choose
it in life, you one, I another; you Augustin, let us say,
and I Alfieri. And it is in order that you may meet
your friend, from whom business, environment, or the
irritating futilities of the card-catalogue, have separated
you hitherto; that you may not pass through the world
without him any longer, that these pages have, first
of all, been written.
That a thoughtful observer of people should tend to
make comparisons of individual character and thus
draw his conclusions as to the laws underlying human
nature, is almost a truism to the sociologist. As one
advances in the study of autobiography, as document
after document lies before one, as acquaintances multi
ply and friend after friend is made, the importance to
science, the value to psychology, of such a self-revela
tion of humanity, is brought home to the most un
scientific of literary students. Perceptions of certain
truths become inevitable; the logic of certain conclu
sions carries its own force. And, as he reads, the

INTRODUCTORY 5
student seems to bpcome a passive spectator rather
than an active enquirer. So, at least, has it been with
the present writer. A task begun in the enthusiastic
spirit of pure friendliness, with some wish, perhaps, of
providing congenial readers with a sort of catalogue
raisonni of the more important and agreeable memoirs,
has developed wider hopes. Details concerning many
of these matters which to-day especially occupy the
psychologists' attention, were found in abundance, and,
having been found, tended to comment upon or to
confirm one another. The obscure and important ques
tions of the subjective tendency in private history, of
the standards of sincerity, and of the relative value
of the deliberate self-study and the unconscious self-
revelation, offered themselves as novel and fascinating
paths for the reader's foot; and the fact that no
authoritative statements have previously been made
upon the subjective autobiography, has acted as a
challenge. Many writers have been critics or commentators upon
the personal record, many have had that partiality for
the memoir "which in me amounts to a passion," as
John Addington Symonds ' has declared it. That
Symonds was aware of the work to be done in this field
is shown by the incomparable distinction and accuracy
of his translations, and by his passing reference to
the "case of misinterpreted observation," in Cellini, to
' Introduction to the Memoirs of Carlo Gozzi.

6 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
which we shall again refer. But our obligations to him
end there. No writer has shown a keener sense of the
friendliness of the memoir, yet of the possibilities under
lying a comparative study of such documents, he is
unaware. In the same manner we find the idea of
comparative study wholly absent from the work of that
Frenchman who shared the passion, and who pursued
the memoire during his literary life with all the hunter's
and collector's ardor. We mean, of course, Sainte-
Beuve. No reader of the Causeries or of the Nou-
veaux Lundis needs to be reminded of the proportion
of such books discussed therein. In works of refer
ence the phrase " Consulter Ste.-Beuve " is, again and
again, the only bibliographical note. Yet, Sainte-
Beuve never lays those cases side by side with a view to
any comparison of the individual, or to any definite
line of investigation. The same points do not recur to
him in succession during each critique; his analyses,
undertaken from different aspects, might often lead
one wrongly to suppose the objects wholly deficient in
points of contact. With all his great allusiveness,
direct comparisons are, broadly speaking, few. Each
essay is separate and complete; it carries all the force
and exercises all the fascination due to this critical and
exclusive treatment. No one can doubt that the value
of Sainte-Beuve's work is increased by his ability to
give himself up, in entire sympathy, to one subject at
a time; but it is necessary to dwell upon the fact in

INTRODUCTORY 7
explanation of what would otherwise seem vieux jeu.
His name is the foremost, and rightly, to occur to any
one opening a book which professes to treat of the
memoire, domestic, historical, or religious, who, there
fore, would be inclined to greet the attempt with a
disconcerting "why?"
Why, then, the critical work of such writers as
Symonds and Sainte-Beuve does not forestall the ob
ject of the present study, — and it has not done so
in any particular, — is a question to be reasonably
satisfied before one proceeds further. In the first place,
there was much less temptation to the critic of the
early nineteenth century, to utilize his material as an
aid to science. We forget, so rapidly do we assimilate
results, that psychology, as we now know it was not then
in being to jog Sainte-Beuve's elbow with a constant
appeal to workers in all these fields for more facts. The
suggestiveness of the modern psychological laboratory
was wholly lacking to the historian and the antiquarian.
There was no more than a hint that along certain lines
criticism might approach research. Had there been,
no doubt the deepest-dyed litterateur would have seen
the opportunity afforded by this mass of various com
mentary. That Sainte-Beuve has not done so, is of use
as a reminder of the youth of the whole tendency. So
entirely has modern psychology revolutionized the
teaching of what used to be called metaphysics, that
one forgets this science is hardly fifty years old.

8 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
It is natural that all science should begin at the
beginning; the child and the savage have received
hitherto the major part of the psychologist's attention.
Recently there has been a sporadic outburst of interest
in man as he is at the very latest moment, with theo
retical explanations of his present condition and theo
retical forecasts of his future tendency. The work of
Nordau, Lombroso, and others, belongs to this class, as
do certain late sociological and pathological studies.
But, as a whole, the evolution of modern man, — of
man, that is, since he has assumed the civilized aspect
with which we are familiar, and the mental and emo
tional development which we may regard with res
pect, — has been very scantily handled. There are
cogent reasons for this neglect.
"The formation of the mental constitution of a
people," says Gustave Le Bon,' "does not demand, as
does the creation of animal species, those geological
periods whose immense duration defies calculation.
Still, the time it demands is considerable." The varia
tions during a lapse of ten centuries, in what Le Bon
further terms ^ "the congeries of sentiments, ideas,
tendencies, and beliefs, which form the soul of a col
lectivity of men, " may be slight and of narrow range, as
a whole, but at times, as he also points out, they may be
very rapid and very far-reaching. We have all experi
enced the shock which this fact makes apparent in the
"PsychologiedesPeuples,"pp.ll, 12. » /6ja., pp. 17, is.

1 "

INTRODUCTORY 9
pages of certain books; and we all realize the difficulty
of studying such variations from trustworthy sources.
Evidently, a chief source of study must be the indi
vidual; and, if so, the great question of sincerity, of the
reliability of personal testimony, is here to be faced at
the outset. Moreover, the statistician distrusts a study
of the individual. Quetelet's work. On Man, written in
1835, is definite on this head, declaring that the study
of the individual does not permit a proper conception of
general laws. Individual man, he thinks, must be re
garded only as a fraction of the species, and any per
sonal idiosyncrasies must be eliminated in order to
arrive at general results. Francis Galton, working
with composite photographs and statistics of family
groups, arrived at much the same opinion; yet there
is a suggestive point of view in Cousin's remark ' that
he regards the important individual as the essence
of his epoch. " Give me the series of great men,"
Cousin says practically, "and I will tell you the
history of the race; because history is best repre
sented by important individuals." Candolle, in his
Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux
Sitcles,' alludes directly to the immense value of and
the general interest in the autobiography. The delicate
points of selection and reliability will always, he thinks,
make it difficult to choose testimony; a difficulty which
seems insuperable to the reader plunging, without guide
' Quoted by Quetelet, "Sur I'Homme, " p. 281. ' Page 13.

10 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
or standard, into an indiscriminate mass of personal
documents. We now see clearly the attitude of the statistician,
and can readily comprehend that he offered no sugges
tions to the literary critic, writing at the time of Sainte-
Beuve, to regard his work from any other than the
literary standpoint. But the feeling has changed; and
we find M. Ribot insisting on the value of memoires as
data, and even comparing them to the laboratory
experiment which inspires such unshakeable faith.
" L'^volution des sentiments," he asserts, " dans le
temps et I'espace, h travers les siecles et les races, est
un laboratoire qui opSre depuis les millions d'ann^es,
sur les millions d'hommes, et dont la valeur documen-
taire n'est pas mediocre. Ce sera pour la psychologic
une grande perte de n^gliger ces documents." *
Not only does M. Ribot make these general state
ments, but he does not hesitate to use concrete examples.
In his Essai sur I'Imagination Creairice, he suggests
the value of collating such details as the hizarreries of in
ventors, the idiosyncrasies of poets or painters during
inspiration, in order that we may intimately penetrate
their individualities. And he intimates that a systema
tic classification of such data is necessary before we
commit ourselves to the pathological view of genius
as some of his fellow-scientists have done.
He, himself, on such a point as the effect on the im-
' "Psyeh. des Sentiments," pp. 195, 196.

INTRODUCTORY ll
agination during puberty, instances the visionary lady
love of the youthful Chateaubriand described in the
Memoires d'Outre-Tombe. But even to so cultured
a scientist as M. Ribot, the task of finding valuable
matter in this heterogeneous mass would be tedious, if
not impossible. "They manage these things better in
France," it is true; but even in France there appears
to be no systematic and satisfactory bibliography of
memoires. Under our present cataloguing system in
the libraries, no means exist of finding what important
persons have written of themselves and what their
writings are worth, save by an actual shelf-to-shelf hunt.
Is your psychologist going to pause in his work on
generalization to make this shelf-to-shelf hunt? Not
while he has possible material in the shape of modern
personal witnesses, together with sheets of general statis
tics. And, yet, if we believe, with M. Cousin, that the
great man represents the quintessence of his epoch, an
autobiography possesses the strong advantage of supe
rior quality. A sincere, full autobiography is not writ
ten save by an important man; and, in truth, one of
the tokens of his importance is the seriousness that such
a work appears to have for him. The quality of our
witness, therefore, as against the quantity of the
statistician, is our first claim; the ore from this mine
must assay to a certain degree of value. For the his
torical element of the historical commentary, or me
moire, this has been successfully undertaken. Who

12 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
writes of Louis XIV without Saint-Simon, of mediffival
Rome without Ammianus Marcellinus? For years the
objective record has furnished material to the historian.
There He in the subjective record equally as many data
for the psychologist. If it is true, as Quetelet asserts,
that man is tending toward a common type; that the
oscillation of his elements is becoming less and less ex
treme, then the comparative study of individuals in the
past furnishes us with an immense illumination on the
subject of character. Into this unmapped field of auto
biography we are about to enter. If we would not
wander aimlessly, the material must submit itself to an
attempt at classification.

CHAPTER II
CLASSIFICATION AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
INTENTION
All literary records are of unequal value, and while
they are being sifted they must also be judged. Men
tion must be made at once of that which may be
unreservedly eliminated. If we repeat and emphasize
the ideal of friendship, it is not only because there is no
friend like your autobiographer, but also because only
by keeping it before one's mind will the limitations
of this study be wholly understood. The scandalous
memoir, written for an ulterior purpose, apart from
any revelation of human life, has but a negligible value
to us here. So also is it with the teeming thousands of
commonplace, modern imitations, from which is absent
every trace of serious intent. The cases remaining
must conform to a certain standard, must establish,
as it were, their right to be heard, ere their testimony
can be accepted. For the whole value of personal
testimony lies in the quality of the witness, and the
special danger attending the study of self-revelation
lies in treating all self-revealers alike, in giving an
equal weight to all. In the treatment of the religious
confession this fact has been more often forgotten, just
where it should have been most often remembered.

14 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
There are definite, positive reasons why the religious
confession increases in value by a regular progression
for every century that we go back into the past. The
Quaker journal of 1650 is worth more to us than the
Methodist journal of 1750; the mediaeval chronicle of
1400-1500 still more; and the work of Augustin, of
Paulinus, most of all. The nearer we approach to the
source of an emotion, the more fresh, the more vital is
the creative impulse it inspired.
When that which was a fresh and vital creative
impulse has become a mere fashion in writing, one
cannot deny that its value as evidence is lowered. This
is reason enough why it were a waste of time to attempt
a study of all the ephemeral issues in autobiographical
form during the last hundred years. "The Lights and
Shadows of my Pastorate" type of record, so common
in the '50s, has been merely turned over and allowed to
resume its slumber undisturbed upon the dusty shelf
of the library. It has been likewise with the narratives
of travellers, showmen, conjurers, — P. T. Barnum,
Signer Blitz, and others, — whose aim is merely to set
forth certain actions in unfamiliar fields, and who
furnish us with nothing of their minds and characters.
Some modern documents, of course, such as Herbert
Spencer and Mrs. Oliphant, tower head and shoulders
above the ruck of cheap egotisms, like giant trees
above a secondary growth; and these have been fully
considered. Records of to-day have been freely used

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 15
to point a contrast, to illustrate a comparison; but
the attempt at a thorough survey of subjective study
does not go beyond the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The reader may be sure that the omission
of a work simply means that it contains no definite
matter worth noting in the following pages, and for
this same reason there have been included one or two
works apparently otherwise negligible.
When one chooses a friend between the deliberate
covers of a book, he is chosen for some salient or appeal
ing quality. Propinquity, the worldly jostle, reasons of
policy, have no effect on the relation. And it is partly
for this reason — although only partly — that the whole
of that class recognized as the frankly-scandalous it
has seemed wiser to omit. No doubt some student, of
a stronger stomach than the present writer, will one
day examine comparatively such famous examples as
de Choisy, Lauzun, Casanova, and their no less famous
imitators, Faublas, du Bois, du Tilly, down through the
spurious phases of this mode, to the so-called Memoires
of Ninon de I'Enclos, Mesdames du Barri and Lamotte-
Valois, and give us his conclusions on the curious
psychology of erotics. It is a book for the clinic, which
will some day be written. Meanwhile, guided by our
hopes of friendship, our rules are those which govern
any broad and intelligent society. In the event of a
personal introduction to M. de Lauzun, or M. le Comte
Jacques de Casanova de Seingalt, should we be likely

16 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
to broach, during our chat, the subject of their bonnes
fortunes f Topics there are more interesting, and, more
over, it would imply a certain degree of intimacy.
And do we really wish to be intimate with M. de Lauzun,
or M. de Casanova? Most of us, it may be said without
contradiction, would choose our friends elsewhere. Un
fortunately, these ladies and gentlemen have so little
to give us.
This is to be noted especially when one comes to the
greater self-students, who, vices and all, are so emi
nently worthy of friendship. For this omission is not
a question of the proprieties, but rather of what is
worth while. There may be an evil side to many great
lives; the vices and appetites of a vital nature must not
be left out in any estimate of that nature's development.
The less worthy part of our friend may occupy our
attention so long as it is but a part. If, in unveUing the
darker corners of his life, he is moved by sincerity, by
the deep-rooted desire to appear as he really is, an
entire creature; then it is as an entire creature we must
study him, omitting nothing. But the moment his
vice becomes his major topic, dwelt on with enjoyment,
and written to give enjoyment to creatures like him
self, then he forthwith passes out of our hands into
those of the pathologist. We do not go to the sani
tarium in quest of friendship, although we may
loyally accompany our friend thither, once we have
come to know and love him when he was well. A man's

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 17
attitude toward his own evil, so vital, so explanatory,
is a potent factor in determining his standing for all
time. Rousseau draws perilously near condemnation
by it; if he escapes, it is because of the sheer lifting-
power of his peculiar genius. One cannot help won
dering if the autobiography of Byron, which Moore
destroyed, might not have cast a final light, by its
attitude in this regard, on that protean character.
Before we begin our attempt at a necessary classifi
cation, it wUl be well to glance for a moment at certain
varieties of autobiographical writing which have a
particular tendency, or a special significance. The field
is so wide, its characteristics so diverse, that a simple
and elastic grouping of what is surveyed becomes
necessary in order that the methods of the student
shall be understood. For instance, autobiography in
the form of fiction, while not deserving of an especial
study, cannot be wholly ignored. Cases of this class
readily occur to the mind. Alfred de Musset's Con
fessions d'un Enfant du Sihcle is a well-known exam
ple; also the curious Memoires de Madame d'Epinay
(which we shall later find valuable on another count) ;
and the celebrated Memoires du Seigneur de Fleu-
range, called Le Jeune Aventureux, which are his
own work, although he makes use of the third per
son. The historical commentary of Jacques Auguste
de Thou represents another variation; in it he uses the
first person, whereas in his Vita Sua he uses the third.

18 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Both of these works are written with an historical object.
De Thou seems to be editing his own work by trans
position to the third person; and his example has been
followed, much to our regret, by other laborious editors,
who seem to fancy that they have dignified a personal
memoir by this transformation. The learned Dr. Ed
mund Calamy has done this for Richard Baxter's lAje
of Himself. It is an infallible way to lend an air of
utter untrustworthiness to the case; but it is not the
only wrong the self-student has had to suffer at the
hands of the editor. Because a man writes of himself
it appears to be taken for granted he knows nothing
of the subject; his work is ruthlessly condensed, trans
posed, and cut, without acknowledgment, and thus
often presents a wholly one-sided view. Mr. W. D.
Howells sins almost beyond pardon in this respect in
his series of Great Autobiographies, which should be
valuable. The omissions in the case of Herbert of
Cherbury, to take a single instance, would lead one
to overlook all that curious and significant candor with
which Herbert explains his attitude toward marital
faithfulness, an attitude so illuminative of his type of
mind. But even Mr. Howells, hard as it is to forgive the
loss of time and trust betrayed, — even Mr. Howells is
not so trying as those children and grandcliildren who
gayly edit the autobiographies of their parents. The
honest toiler's heart sinks within him at the mere sight
of those words on the title-page, " edited by his son."

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 19
He knows that he wiU come upon the statement that
only "matters of interest to the public" have been
retained; that all famUy and private matters have been
omitted. He is lucky if the omission goes no further.
The editor is apt to fear to wound the feelings of some
extant third cousin, and so has cut out the personal
description; or has found his progenitor tedious in de
tails as to his constitution, methods of work, personal
habits, dreams, and what not, and so has firmly excised
them. Bare, garbled, bereft, the document lies before
us, shorn of the rich minutiae which might have
given material to the psychologist, suggestions to the
sociologist, or aid to the imagination in forming a pic
ture of the past. Surely it is not for one close to the
biographer to determine his value, and a reader will
always prefer to do his own skipping. We can only be
thankful that Jerome Cardan's children were too igno
rant to lay hands on the De Vita Propria Liber.
The memoir as fiction and the memoir transposed by
another hand, walk the paths of autobiography, loiter
ing, to use a police phrase, in a suspicious manner. En
wrapped as they are in veils and disguises, one has
to be particularly careful as to identification before
using their material. For this reason they are more
subtly dangerous than the frankly spurious class. The
spurious autobiography is the refuge of both the scio
list and the literary charlatan. Once thrown upon life,
difficult to avow, impossible to recall, it lurks about

20 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
the decent society of books like some base-born adven
turer, communicating evil and distrust. In the past
its examples followed n the footsteps of the scandalous
and salable volume. The Hterature of roguery is full
of the spurious confession. Henry Vaux, thief and
forger. Captain Thomas Ashe, who dedicated his per
formance to Lord Byron, both bear internal evidence
of deliberate manufacture. Any one chancing upon
those mimoires bearing the names of le comte de
Rochefort, J. B. la Fontaine, le marquis de Montbrun,
la marquise de Fresne, le comte de Vordan, la Feuillade,
or le chevalier de Rohan, knows that he has before him
one of the innumerable forgeries of the ingenious
Courtilz de Sandraz et de Verge, to whom also we owe
the immortal d'Artagnan. Somewhat higher in the scale
of fraudulency is the careful volume forged out of a mo
saic of letters and anecdotes in the manner of a period,
like a piece of furniture or a tiara of Saitaphernes.
It is often so vivaciously done that it appears to be
real; and indeed serves the same purpose, by imparting
an air of culture to the boudoirs of the wealthy.
Not the commercially but the seriously spurious
memoir, it is so hard to forgive. When the original cir
cumstance of its -nl^riting is forgotten, it becomes listed
under biography in the libraries. In another generation
some one stumbles unaware upon the autobiography of
Abraham Lincoln, let us say, gets it down in a fine
glow of surprised reverence, wastes an hour reading it

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 21
only to be finally exasperated by the printed lie. One
might suppose that a sense of humor, if not of reverence,
would prevent a writer's giving occasion for so much
malediction. That ingenious lunatic who, in 1857, pub
lished the Autobiography of Jesus Christ deserves, on
the other hand, rather to be classed with those mediaeval
heralds who designed coat-armor and escutcheons for
Adam and Eve.
When we come to consider autobiography from the
beginning, it must be remembered that the term memoire
is exceedingly loose, and in no sense a definition. Only
in recent times has it come to have a personal, much less
a biographical significance. Beaumarchais' Memoires
are a series of legal tracts or briefs. Used in its major
sense of record, we find " memoirs" on sugar and corn,
on decrees and historical events. In a personal sense a
memoire may be the life of a man by himself, or by
some one else, or written in the first person wholly
around a second person, and secondarily, if at all, auto
biographical. Such is Sully's Les Economies royales et
les Servitudes loyales, which is a memoire, written in the
first person by Sully's secretaries from his dictation,
dedicated to Henri IV, concerning Henri IV, and with
the object of rousing that monarch's tardy gratitude by
a statement of what had been accomplished. The man
ner is autobiographical, but neither the matter nor the
purpose. Many court mimoires are written about the
monarch or some court-figure, and contain nothing auto-

22 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
biographical whatever except the first person. Several
of these are in the Louis XIV group, — Madame de
Motteville's for instance; and they constitute the
Napoleonic, for such as those of Dumouriez, Grouchy,
Ney, Lavalette, Fouch^, Marmont, TaUeyrand, Rovigo,
Rapp, Rimini, Bourrienne, Marbot, are avowedly written
for or against or about that great central figure.
The function of these narratives, which we may
broadly class as the objective, belongs primarUy to his
tory. It is the sense of aiding history which moves the
pens of Madame de Motteville, Saint-Simon, SuUy,
d'Argenson. After a page or two of self-introduction,
we find the writer's personality submerged in the event,
and rising to the surface only when the event carries him
there. The reason for writing furnished by these me-
moiristes is clearly the historical influence. Saint^Simon
states: —
"What I read of my own accord of history and above
all of the personal memoirs of the time since Fraufois I,
has bred in me the desire to write down what I might
myself see."
The same avowedly historical purpose moves such
salient figures as Cheverny, Comines, VHlehardouin,
JoinviUe, Pierre de I'Estoile, Richelieu, in France;
Bishop Burnet, in England; Catherine II of Russia; and
the Hindu emperors, Timur, Baber and Jahangir. His
tory has long since made use of this material, which has
furnished the indispensable and picturesque requisite

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 23
of an individual point of view. There is little for us to
do in this work with what may be classed as objective
memoirs. But when we come to consider the equaHy large mass
of documents to be classed broadly as subjective, we find
ourselves upon uncharted seas. The rise and tendency
of self-study remains to be analyzed, and ideas on the
subject, for want of any comparative data, have been
entirely vague.* The only type of subjective autobio
graphy which has received any attention whatever at
the hand of the scientist, is the religious confession, and
that largely by way of illustration. As a special and
important section of the subjective record, it will here
receive separate classification and consideration. Of
course, the subjective matter contained in objective
documents has been used. Human personality is hard
to down, and all memoir writers are not so consistent as
Saint-Simon or d'Argenson. Sometimes a vigorous mind
will turn itself inward for study, even without the wish
to do so; and it is equally true that a very subjective
intention may bring us only a barren record of politi
cal facts.
Nicholas de NeufviUe, Seigneur de VUleroy, in his
Mimoires d'Estat, sets out with the observation: "Le
plus grand contentement que puisse avoir un homme
de bien, apr&s celuy que luy rend sa conscience . . .
' Since these words were written the voluminous work of
Professor Georg Misch, "Geschichte der Autobiographien," has
been issued in its first volume.

24 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
est d'etre tenu pour tel qu'il est . . . "a statement
which appears to promise a study as subjective as
Cardan's or Alfieri's. Instead of which we find a histori
cal tract wherein he never mentions himself, and does
not let us know what actions were his own, nor even
which concerned him. On the other hand, Blaise de
Monluc, in Les Commentaires declares that " Le plus
grand capitaine qui ayt jamais est4, qui est Cesar, m'en
monstre le chemin," and gives one of the most minute
and thorough pieces of self-study in existence, the most
un-Caesarian personal picture that ever professed the
Roman for a model. To go to the document itself,
therefore, in the face of these inconsistencies, is our only
course; to gather and to collate such subjective data as
the autobiographical impulse has caused the historian
to insert, albeit unconsciously, in his narrative, since the
gift of self-revelation may develop under the most un
likely forms. Classification cannot be made strictly
according to the reason for writing, — although it may
generally be so made, — but must remain elastic, to per
mit of a flexible passing from one division of the subject
to another. Our concern lies with that mass of heteroge
neous subjective data up to the present ungathered, un
classified, and unregarded. Here we are interested in
what people have been, in what they have thought
themselves and why, and in the methods by which they
display the materials of their self-introspection.
What causes a man to write a study of himself which

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 25
shaU truly reveal him? When we ask this question we
strike at once into obscure deeps. Rousseau imagined:
"Je forme une entreprise qui n'eut jamais d'exemple
et dont I'ex^cution n'aura point d'imitateur." Both
statements we now know to be rhetorical rather than
true, for Rousseau had notable examples and has had
notable imitators. Two hundred years earlier Cardan
began his book with the following sentence: "Since
among all the things which mankind has been given to
follow there is nothing more worthy or pleasing than a
knowledge of the truth ... we have been led to write
this book of our own life."
Benvenuto Cellini, a notable example of the same
. date, expresses his conviction that " all men of whatso
ever quality they be, who have done anything of excel
lence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty,
to describe their life with their own hands."
Here are two reasons as cogent and as valid as Rous
seau's: "Si je nevaux pas mieux,aumoins je suis autre,"
which has usurped attention on this subject; and they
must be emphasized, because Rousseau has stood so
long as the one type of the subjective autobiographer
that he positively hinders us from taking a broad view.
His Confessions were written during a period of great
individualism and self-affirmation, and they gave a
crystallizing touch to the many tentative ideas of an age
of theory. They were, moreover, permeated with emo
tion, an emotion expressed with the voice and accent of

26 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
genius; and the impression which they made was — if
one may put it so — almost a religious impression. So
entirely did they fiU the skies at the time, that men
forgot their idea was by no means original, — a revived
literary mood rather than a fresh Uterary impulse.
The whole subjective idea has thus, because of Rous
seau, been connected in our minds with the eighteenth
century, and has received consideration as an expression
of eighteenth-century moods and tendencies. To carry
the reader back of Rousseau to the earHer mani
festations of this impulse must be the first step; for a
right understanding of the Confessions demands that
they should be placed in their proper relative position
toward other great self-studies.
There have been quoted above certain reasons for
writing given by three marked and definite characters.
A fuller comparative inquiry into such reasons wUl be
found, together with other considerations on sincerity,
in the chapter devoted to that purpose. But they can
not wholly escape mention here if the reason for writing
one's own life springs from any recognizable psychologi
cal condition. The whole subject of self-observation
is exceedingly obscure, and has been studied only in its
abnormal manifestations. It has been difficult to find
more than the most casual references to this inteUec
tual condition. In a recent German treatise * there is
the following suggestive paragraph:
' Otto Weiniger, "Sex and Character," p. 125.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 27
" It wUl now be seen why (if neither vanity, desire for
gossip nor imitation drives them to it) only the better
men write down recoUections of their lives; and how I
perceive in this a strong evidence of the connection be
tween memory and giftedness. It is not as if every man
of genius wished to write an autobiography: the incite
ment to autobiography comes from special, very deep-
seated psychological conditions."
Study of the reasons for writing autobiography would
seem to throw some light upon these conditions. They
form a part of Fichte's recommendation to the student
in his introduction to The Science of Knowledge : *
"Attend to thyself; turn thy glances away from all that
surrounds thee and upon thine own innermost self.
Such is the first demand which phUosophy makes of its
disciples. We speak of nothing that is without thee, but
wholly of thyself."
Since this is phUosophy's first demand of its disciples,
we comprehend more clearly why an autobiography is so
apt both to precede the mental changes in an intellect of
the first order, and to follow them. The whole philosophi
cal trend in such a mind moves in the direction of better
self -understanding; the "attend to thyself" becomes an
imperious command, acting upon a new and sensitive
humUity. A man says to himself something like this:
" Behold, I understand nothing, not even myself. With
what shall I begin, now that my desire for study is
' Benjamin Rand, " Modem Classical Philosophers."

28 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
aroused? With myself." And thus the conditions gov
erning the incitement to autobiography are formed;
serious conditions, as Fichte perceived, and indicative
of the position of that man's mind toward phUosophy at
that time.
To the student, moreover, by acknowledging and
defining a special, deep-seated psychological condi
tion, further classification of this heterogeneous mass
of records is made possible. One is thus enabled
to separate the document written with a "desire for
gossip or imitation" from that which is the outcome
of a governed impulse which we have ventured to
call the autobiographical intention. The weight and
value of a case wiU be found in direct proportion to the
exactness and the seriousness of its autobiographical
intention. Vanity as an element in nuUifying the value
of a case is by no means established. Crude cases of
vanity, such as Charlotte Charke, the Margravine of
Anspach, the Ahh6 de Choisy, wUl remain, of course, un
important; but to dissever the deep-seated, obscure
vanity of the genuine self -student from his austere au
tobiographical intention, is well-nigh impossible. The
whole question of subjectivity, with its mingled threads
of egotism, vanity, and humUity, remains a tangled
skein for us. Even in its effect on the smcerity of a case,
vanity cannot be accurately determined, for there are
exceedingly vain autobiographers Hke James Hogg, the
Ettrick Shepherd, who have been minutely, exquisitely

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INTENTION 29
sincere. The effect of vanity may lie in its proportion
to the intellectual force of the self-student, just as cer
tain chemical combinations must remain in solution or
the combination cannot be maintained.
At the moment it were well to understand the limits
of the autobiographical intention, since conformation
to them is to be so largely our standard of value. The
best definition obtainable is to be found in a case other
wise unimportant, the Journal d'une Jeune Artiste of
Marie BashMrtsev. As a book, its startling egotisms
gave it a fleeting vogue, but its absence of simplicity,
sensational style, and lack of mental and nervous bal
ance render it as evidence completely nugatory; since,
contrary to general opinion, it is not necessarily the
emotional and neurotic person who becomes the note
worthy self-student. The curious thing about Marie
Bashkirtsev is her extraordinary perception of the value
of self-study, which gives a dignity to the sentences of
her preface : " If I should not live long enough to become
famous," she writes, " this journal will be interesting to
psychologists. The record of a woman's life, written
down day by day, without any attempt at concealment,
as if no one in the world were to read it, yet with the
purpose of being read, is always interesting. If this book
is not the exact, the absolute, the strict truth, it has no
raison d'etre."
Like the living human being, the autobiographer
must come to stand for what he is. So this young

30 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
woman's exact, absolute, strict truth simply shows her
to us for what she was, an unbalanced neurasthenic.
Yet in the itaHcized phrases she has furnished a defi
nition of the autobiographical intention which it is
impossible to better. It must be remembered in making
an estimate of every document of this kind. Its two
parts become the first and second canon for the classic
autobiographer. Written "as if no one in the world
were to read it, "i. e., with the utmost candor, is the first
requisite; but it would apply to the diary as well, if it
were not for the second canon, "yet with the purpose
of being read." It is this purpose which adds to the
impulse dignity and measure, and which, as we shall
see, tends to establish and confirm its sincerity. This
"purpose of being read" raises a merely evanescent
mood of introspection to a point where it may generate
power. The great pieces of self-study not only wholly
fulfill these canons, but they are raised above the
mediocre efforts of the same kind because they do so.
We find Augustin, Cardan, Rousseau, MUl, Franklin,
writing "as if no one in the world were to read it, yet
with the purpose of being read."
Now that we are provided with a standard for our
material, we are the better able to approach the material
itself, asking not only what caused a man to write of
himself, but when and under what influences did he
begin to do so.

CHAPTER III
HISTORY
Since any historical survey, however brief, should
have a. starting-point, ours may be said, without fear
of contradiction, to be the Christian era. No history
of the subjective trend in literature appears to have
been written; * its origins are complex and obscure and
are ignored by students of the period during which it
began. Throughout Gibbon's analysis of the influence
which Christianity exercised upon Roman life, there
is no mention of this element which it introduced into
thought. Yet, lest the mind should take it for granted
that in this case, as in many others, an apparently new
literary movement is, in reality, an old forgotten one, we
cannot emphasize too strongly that autobiography as
we know it, and in its full sense, does not exist before
Christ. If there is one fact which history succeeds
in making completely convincing, one broad difference
which it underlines as dividing our intellectual life from
the inteUectual life of elder civUizations, it is their com
parative objectivity. This difference separates the an
cient world from the modern as tangibly as a wall or a
ditch. It has been stated and approached in a hundred
' The appearance of Professor Georg Misch's first volume
would seem to require some modification of this statement.

32 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ways: from the phUosophical, literary and artistic points
of view. It has been mentioned as evidence of youth;
as evidence of a barbaric and warlike period; as evi
dence of the influence of the agricultural stage of man's
development. We find the objectivity of early art,
literature, and thought insisted on by every historian
of these subjects. In religion the keynote of the ritual
is command and exhortation as to act and deed. The
Old Testament and the New, laid side by side, afford
the most striking proof of this change of ideal. Poetry,
also, Dr. Gummere says, " Poetry begins with the im
personal, with communal emotion." '
Individualism, of course, is a later development in
literature. The early Biblical writings were communal;
any one was at liberty to add to an existing narrative,
to interpolate his own ideas and variations, as is seen
in the books of Genesis and Job. Individualism must
invariably precede any subjective trend; and thus it is
comparatively late that we find pieces of Hterary work
signed and accredited to some given author.
In the earlier narratives of history — and it is history
which comes nearest to the personal memoir — it is a
matter of literary etiquette to keep the objective point
of view completely in mind. It did not seem to Hero
dotus or Xenophon that their personal attitude held
any interest for the reader. The whole literary tradition
and equipment of the Greek turned him away from
' " The Beginnings of Poetry."

HISTORY 33
introspection; his preference for the imaginative in
terature kept his eye upon the outside world. This
oes not mean that in occasional scattered pieces
f writing one may not find an unconscious subjec-
Lve spirit. It is strong in certain pages of Plato,
rhose "Know thyself," indeed, would seem to refute
s, were it not preceded by the command, " Do thine
wn work." The great religious reformers before Christ
ontain detached passages and religious moods of great
abjectivity, as all religious leaders must. But never,
1 any consecutive manner, does Plato, or Confucius,
r Buddha, or any other leader or reformer before
esus Christ suggest that what a man is, is more im-.^
lortant than what he does; or that duty obliges him
0 study himself with care and candor, that by such
tudy he may assist other blind creatures like himself.
"0 miseras hominum mentes! 0 pectora caeca!"
ries Lucretius; and the lament has a poignancy the
Qore readily understood.
The past, however, contains the seed of the present,
,s well as those favorable influences which cause it to
pring into leaf. Where, then, is to be found the germ
if autobiographical writing? Egyptian literature con-
ains records of the individual; even as early as the
!ixth Dynasty are those of Una and Abeba. A papyrus
if the Twelfth Dynasty contains a partially autobio-
jraphic, romantic narrative by a soldier named Suneha,
md similar statements with the names of Ameni and

34 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Kuhmhetp. And in the Eighteenth Dynasty, be
sides the general Aahmes, more definite types of such
records are credited to Thothmes III and to the great
Rameses II.
It is rare when a literary movement of significance
starts from the throne; for Nature loves to mock the
grandeur of kings by seeing to it that enduring and in
fluential waves shaU start from the people. But here,
in the subjective tendency, we have a distinct develop
ment of self-assertion; and for literary manifestations
of the instinct of self-assertion, the people, in the early
civilizations, were ill-placed. So it is that in the inscrip
tions of bygone rulers and conquerors the "I" first
stands definitely forth.
"I became king; I enslaved such a people; my wis
dom and beneficence accomplished this and that." The
evolution of this inscription explains itself. On the clay
cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar, found by Sir Henry Raw-
linson at Birs-Nimrud, are recorded sentences of simple
self-glorification, as follows: —
"Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, the rightful
ruler, the expression of the righteous heart of Marduk,
the exalted high priest, the beloved of Nebo, the wise
prince — am I."
Compare this opening, and the bald phrases of de
scription which foUow it, with the opening paragraphs
of the Monumentum Ancyranum translated by Momm-
sen. The deeds of Augustus, recited in the first

HISTORY 36
person, are given a manner of detail and weight not at
ill unlike the historical memoirs of De Thou. Before
this, Caesar's Commentaries show us the inscription
placed by a wise man upon a more enduring medium
than stone; and we are told of certain similar docu
ments left by consuls, such as the lost commentaries of
Sulla (under whose influence Caesar must have written),
svhich show the change in operation. The inscrip
tion has become a document. The stonecutter's tran
scription from the hand of some flattering high priest
tias gone back to the chief person concerned. The king,
the consul, or the emperor has felt the wish to justify
[limself, to take himself with seriousness; he no longer
permits some priest or secretary to put words into his
mouth, he writes them himself. Rameses is satisfied if
his statue bear the royal insignia, though it be hard to
tell from that of his father, Seti; but this does not con
tent Caesar or Augustus". The ruler no longer desires to
De conventionalized, but to be individual. Thus the
.dea of leaving individual records is pleasing to the
sovereign. The example of Caesar and Augustus is fol-
owed by most of their successors; and we find Tiberius,
I!laudius, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Severus, and
i^urelian leaving similar commentaries of a wholly
listorical nature.
All this is purely objective, — the evolution of the his-
iorical and political record. From the vainglorious in-
jcription on tile or monolith, it has moved down for two

36 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
thousand years, tiU it reaches the Roman Empire in the
expanded form of commentary. Up to Augustus the
evolutionary process had been slow, and only directly
influenced, it would seem, by an increased facility in
methods of writing. In Hebrew literature the personal
memoir, more or less authentic, fiUed the place of the
novel; and Renan points to the books of Nehemiah and
Esdras as bearing somewhat the same relation. The
primitive book of Tobias had the form of souvenirs
de famille. But the movement was neither definite
nor serious. It did not affect the attitude of Josephus,
whose memoir partakes of the Roman form. The words
of Josephus boldly accent the objective note in the
reason he states for writing his own life: —
"This is an account of the actions of my life. And
let others judge of my character by them as they
please." Nothing could be more typical than this of the pre
vailing tone in the historical record or commentary.
The attitude of Nebuchadnezzar is stUl, in essentials,
the attitude of Josephus: "These are my deeds; judge
by them." But now appears an entirely new conception,
a conception altering the whole subject, and developing
so rapidly that scarcely three hundred years after
Josephus we may place beside his pages the first pages
of Augustin's Confessions: —
"This is the fruit of my confessions, not of what I was
but of what I am, that I may confess this not before

HISTORY 37
Thee only, but in the ears also of the believing souls
of men. ... To such, therefore, whom Thou com-
mandest me to serve, will I declare not what I was,
but what I now am, and what I still am. But
neither do I judge myself. Thus then I would be
heard." When analyzing our mental development, psycholo
gists have divided it into two broad stages: the objec
tive stage of chUdhood preceding the subjective stage
of maturity. We are fond of recurring to this idea; and
it is generally assumed that what is true of the individual
development wUl hold good for the development of the
race. Nevertheless, when examined closely, these sen
tences of Augustin's will be found to sound a new note,
a music which has not before struck on "the ears also
of the believing souls of men."
Here, surely, is not a slow development from youth
to manhood; but rather the sudden introduction of a
novel and violent influence. From the date of the
Birs-Nimrud inscription to that of the Monumen
tum Ancyranum is a space of something over two
thousand years: whUe from the typical reason of Jose
phus to the equally typical reason of Augustin is a
little less than three hundred years. Surely, no simple
process of mental development can account for so great
a difference in attitude in a time so comparatively short.
Josephus did not write the last historical memoir; yet
Augustin did write the first complex, subjective auto-

38 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
biography. What influence, at this point, upon man's
inner life has caused the change?
Although it has been Httle studied, the theory of the
subjective influence of Christianity on Hterature is not
a new one. Writers like Gibbon, Boissier, DiU and
others, touch on it with reserve, more inclined to accept
the broad principles which psychology has laid down
for them than to attempt a modification on so scanty
an amount of data. Matthew Arnold becomes ex
tremely suggestive when he analyzes the ethical effects
of Jesus' teaching: —
"To find his own soul, his true and permanent self,
becomes set up, in man's view, as his chief concern."
And, again, —
"Instead of attending so much to your outward
acts, attend, he [Jesus] said, first of aU to your in
ward thoughts and to the state of your heart and
feelings." These sentences cast so clear a Hght upon the com
pared reasons of Josephus and Augustin as to render any
further comment superfluous. No doubt the knowled'^e
that a man's actions do not always spring from his "true
and permanent self" helped the reaction. No doubt
when the soldier-historian wrote, "Let others judge of
my character by my deeds as they please," he knew that
others could not know the whole self of Flavins Jose
phus, not, as Augustin was to phrase it, "what I now
am, and what I stiU am." But the Hterary conven-

HISTORY 39
tions of his day forced Josephus to be content; and
hence the defiant, "Judge me as you please!" He was
attending to his outward acts, not to his inward
thoughts and the state of his heart and feehngs.
The idea of the value of introspection once started
in the world of thought, developed rapidly into a stand
ard. Monastic life tended to increase its force. In
Thomas h Kempis, whose expression reflects the ideals
of mediaeval piety, it is clearly stated that "a humble
knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep
search after learning."
" It is better for a man to live privately and to have a
regard to himself, than to neglect his soul though he
should work wonders in the world."
When a new influence acting upon thought turns it
into new channels, much may be involuntarUy swept
along in the flood. When an intellectual change is in
the air, even those whoUy outside its direct influence
may yet submit to its effects. The most violent antago
nist to the modern scientific doctrines, yet finds his
whole Hfe and methods of thought insensibly altered by
them. And thus, when once the subjective idea had be
come prevalent, it was not only the devout Christian
who experienced its power. The Meditations of Mar
cus Aurelius Antoninus are his personal record, just as
the Monumentum Ancyranum was that of Augustus.
But the change is already at work; the difference is
something beyond the mere difference between an essen-

40 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
tial ruler and an essential phUosopher. When Marcus
Aurelius starts by paying tribute to his teachers, de
scribing his faults, his virtues, his most private acts, he
stands under the new order. His work is not complete,
not systematic self-study, it is fragmentary, detached,
and not clear as to the autobiographical intention. But
his underlying idea is nearer to Augustin than to Jose
phus; and although a manual of stoic phUosophy and
written by an enemy of Christianity, it comes so near
Christ's doctrine in its subjectivity as to be the favorite
reading of Christians. It marks the moment of change
in the whole trend of the personal record.
We noted that Josephus did not write the last
historical memoir, and that we find from now onward
the two forms of personal record about equaUy in
use. In Italy and Her Invaders, Mr. Hodgkin shows
that the chronicle and commentary had become the
fashion in later Roman literature. The celebrated pas
sage in the Agricola of Tacitus is worthy of quota
tion to show the attitude toward them : " In former
times, as there was a greater propensity and freer scope
for the performance of actions worthy of remembrance,
so every person of distinguished abUities was induced by
the consciousness of doing right alone, without regard
to favor or interest, to record examples of worth. And
many considered it rather as a proof of the confidence
of virtue, than of arrogance, to become their own bio
graphers. Of this RutiHus and Scaurus are instances,

HISTORY 41
who yet neither underwent reproach nor suspicion of
want of fidelity on this account."
Here the enthusiasm of the historian, eager for mate
rial, is seen; nor was such material denied him, for be
sides RutUius Rufus the Consul, and Emilius Scaurus,
whose three books of his own life are addressed to
L. Fufidius, we hear also that Quintus Lutatius Catulus
addressed his autobiography to A. Furius, the poet,
and read the names of Valerius Messala Corvinus, and
of Commodion, author of a Carmen apologetica. These
documents appear to be largely mere courtier's imita
tions of throne records. Later, and under the direct in
fluence of Augustin, came the Prefatio of Prudentius,
and that other curious autobiographical poem by Pauli
nus of Pella, the grandson of the poet Ausonius.
The Eucharisticos de Vita Sua was written at eighty-
three; it omits politics, events, wars, etc., and confines
itself to describing Paulinus's mental and religious con
dition. He recalls his education; how he began Plato
and Homer at five years of age; his parents' care to pro
tect his innocence, and his matter-of-course amours
with the slaves of the house. Paulinus tells of Ul-health,
and the out-of-door regimen which cured it. He does
not leave unmentioned minor characteristics such as
his extravagance; and he calls himself " sectator deli-
ciarum." In brief, the Eu£haristicos is a methodical
piece of self-study, showing the effect of Augustin, and
an advance in fullness and method upon the scattered

42 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
notes of Marcus Aurelius. As evidence it serves at
least to confirm our conclusion that the impulse to
serious introspection, to self -study, made its appearance
in the world of thought between 100 and 400 a.d.,
during the period when the Christian faith was taking
a firm hold upon society.

CHAPTER IV
SINCERITY
Our reason for making this brief historical survey
may not have been apparent to the reader. It is neces
sary, since by this gradual route we approach the great
problem of the trustworthiness of the personal record.
This is a question with which nine people out of ten
viU greet such an attempt as the present study, and
nost of them wiU be ready with an answer before a
page has been read. What warrant have we, they wUl
isk, of the sincerity of this testimony?
Before we can meet this question on a field where we
lave many and stout antagonists, we must have gained
some notion from what the autobiographical impulse
sprang, and what influences caused it to become sub-
ective. If it seems impossible to make a complete
nduction from the evidence at our disposal, there are
it least a few suggestive points which are shown by the
listory of the tendency toward subjectivity. If Chris-
ianity is not wholly responsible for the subjective
irend of literature and thought; if it is not that, indeed,
vhich we mean when we say such a thing is modern,
ve have at least determined its partial responsibUity.
iVe have noted the appearance of this subjective trend
!oincident with the time in which Christian ideas were

44 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
at work upon men's thought. It is not, therefore, too
much to insist at the outset on the seriousness of the
self-study. And when an examination is made of the
early cases and their influence, the very existence of
that influence has point for us. One man writes of
himself because another writes; personal impressions are
repeated in a practically unbroken chain. Few, if any,
important autobiographies have been lost, and this is,
in itself, an Uluminative circumstance. With the ex
ception of Sulla's Commentaries, whose effect upon
Caesar was noted by his contemporaries, the capital au
tobiography has survived, and preserved its fresh effect
on later minds, more than any other type of Hterary
work. To what vital quality do we owe this tenacious
survival? We reply: sincerity.
This brings us at once face to face with the task for
which our little historical axe has cleared the ground.
How can we best estimate the sincerity of the subjec
tive record? It is doubted upon every hand. With the
litterateur this doubt has become axiomatic. Mr.
Andrew Lang speaks with contempt of "anecdotes
which people tell about their own subjective experi
ences." George Eliot, in Theophrastus Such, says: "In
all autobiography there is, nay, ought to be, an
incompleteness which may have an effect of falsity. We
are each of us bound to reticence by the piety we owe to
those who have been nearest to us . . . and, most
of aU, by that reverence for the higher efforts of our

SINCERITY 45
common nature, which commands us to bury its low
est faculties, its invincible remnants of the brute, its
most agonizing struggle with temptation, in unbroken
sUence." This view not only expresses a doubt of sin
cerity but appears to give insincerity an ethical value,
as if the record both could not and should not be vera
cious and complete. Mr. Augustine Birrell has the same
cautious attitude, when he says that, " ' Rousseau's
Confessions' ought never to have been written; but
written they were, and read they always will be."
To some minds, the fact that a book will always be
read constitutes a proof of its value, but Mr. Birrell's
opinion of the Confessions is a very common one. A
great autobiographer is perpetually shrouded in a veil
of comment and contradiction, and followed by a
crowd of acquaintances, correspondents, and distant
relatives, clamoring to give him the lie. Rousseau is a
notable case in point. It has taken one hundred years
to discover that the pink-and-silver ribbon he stole from
a fellow-servant was not a diamond nor a sUver dish,
but just a ribbon of pink-and-sUver. Pages have been
written about the error he made in the date of his
christening, which error has been made to serve as a text
to show his general unreHabUity. Any chance witness of
genius in some one of its passing moods is sure to take
such mood for a permanent characteristic, and trium
phantly to point out that it is not shown in the auto
biography. " Not to be relied on": the book is waved

46 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
aside; "A man's estimate of himself, you know," and
so on.
To the serious student of the personal record it would
seem that there lay an injustice in the point of view.
What, on the whole, do we require from the autobio
grapher as an excuse for his existence? That he should
tell us the detailed facts which others might as easUy
give, or that he should flash on the canvas some aspect of
the human figure which he alone knows? Accuracy as to
dates is needful in writing anybody's life, but more need
ful still is a vital picture of the creature as he lived.
Contemplating human nature in an introspective mood,
one must be prepared to find in self-study a certain
looseness as to exterior matters. The eye cannot look
both in and out at the same time. Many important
autobiographers avoid even the pretext of attention to
date and event. Augustin is by no means clear as to
the passage of time, but the value of his self-revelation
is not thereby lessened. The corrective of supplemen
tary study is readUy appHed to amend the autobio
grapher in his — one might almost say essential — ¦
errors of memory, to balance and counteract his em
phasis on certain stages of his intellectual and emotional
progress. These mistakes become unimportant in pro
portion as the main work is important. The object of
-the autobiographer must be to concentrate on that
which he alone knows — the real man. As Professor
James says, he aims to discover primarUy states of con-

SINCERITY 47
sciousness. If Jean Jacques Rousseau in the Confes
sions be the Jean Jacques as he lived, what matter the
date of his christening?
Whether the aim of the self-student, moved by the
autobiographical intention, is to present such a figure,
and how far his aim is realized — this is our theme. It is
surely worth whUe to consider; our friends' sincerity is of
deep importance to us. Comparisons of personality and
method, examination of motives and their fulfillment,
cannot faU to be instructive. They wUl help to show
us whether, in the main, one can rely on the autobio
grapher. For, if the autobiographical intention springs
from deep-seated psychological conditions, then an
avowed reason for writing possesses a value it has not
had before, as showing the seriousness and the motive
power of such an intention.
It was seen a few pages back how suggestive was the
comparison of Cardan's reason for writing with Cellini's,
and that of Augustin with Josephus's. A table placed
in the Appendix will show at a glance certain similar
comparisons on a broad scale, using as a basis about
265 capital autobiographies.*
Out of the 265 cases, 38 write without any given
reason at aU; 52 write frankly for amusement, to recaU
the past, or to record some extraordinary event; 64
write in the interest of self-study and of science; 42 aa
religious testimonials; 26 for the use of chUdren or de-
' See Appendix A, "Reasons for Writing."

48 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
scendants; 15 at the request of friends; 12 because no
one else is Hkely to do it; 11 from apologetic motives;
1 " to emblazon the power of opium "(De Quincey);
1 from pride of birth; 1 for self-abasement; 1 for money;
1 to study his own case of insanity; and 1 to polish his
Latin. It becomes at once apparent that the serious and
laudable motives for writing are in the ascendant. Of
the 52 whose reason is purely objective, a subdivision
has been made, showing that a certain proportion ful
fill in their task the main requirements of scientffic
self-study. The request of friends, which, at first sight, one would
have supposed to have actuated by far the larger num
ber, is the given reason of only 15. Such weighty mo
tives as sciences, religion, or the benefits to descendants,
move 126 on this list. Yet Lombroso ' speaks of the
"rare instances" when vanity permits men of genius
to yield spontaneous revelations of themselves!
Among those writing frankly in the interests of
truth, we find such persons as Alfieri, Gibbon, Cardan,
Egerton Brydges, Mill, Goethe, Rousseau, George Sand,
Descartes, Erasmus, and Herbert Spencer. The simpli
city of Charles Darwin includes him among those who
write for pastime, together with La Grande Mademoi
selle, Sir Kenelm Digby, Madame Roland, etc. Seriously
affectionate persons such as Marmontel, Franklin, and
> "Man of Genius," Part VI.

SINCERITY 49
Agrippa d'AubignS write to aid or warn their chUdren.
The diverse religious views of Newman, Augustin, and
George Fox, Annie Besant, Tolstoi, and Teresa, have
inspired personal testimony. Extremes of fortune are
told by CoUey Cibber, Trench, Latude, Hans Andersen:
apologies for ill behavior by such as Ireland and Psal-
manazar. Oddly enough, there is but one person of all
this noble company who writes avowedly for money.
It is John Gait, the novelist, and he adds that "it is not
a very gentlemanly occupation." This attitude is but
a part of his whole contempt of literary pursuits, which
he quite openly despised, always hoping that he might
do something more useful than "stringing blethers into
rhyme, or writing clishmaclavers in a closet." There is
nothing more irritating to the reader than the success
of this person, who left business, he tells us, "suUenly "
to devote himself to "the fancy-work of letters." One
even feels unsympathetic when reading that Gait's
later years were clouded by an obscure nervous disease.
If sincerity seems to have been promised by the large
number of autobiographies seriously conceived and ex
ecuted in the interest of self-study and scientific truth,
it may be well to note how deep an impression the need
for candor has made upon the mind of the writer. His
style here, his tone and accent, the weight of the initial
motive, are aU of value, and, perchance, may serve to
do away with such an airy scorn as Mr. Lang's.
"Truth, naked, unblushing truth," said Gibbon, "the

60 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
first virtue of serious history, must be the sole recom
mendation of this personal narrative."
"To speak, and therefore even more to write of oneself
springs doubtless from self-love," declares Alfieri, " and
the scope of a work Hke this is the study of mankind. Of
what man can he better or more wisely speak than him
self — what other has he studied so weU? "
" Private History," in the estimate of Sir Egerton
Brydges, "enables us to ascertain our author's sincer
ity; and that is essential to the authority of his opinions.
I labor, therefore, to estimate with rigid and stern en
quiry what faculties of the mind ought most to prevaU."
The lively Bussy-Rabutin furnishes us with a reason
for entire sincerity which is that of a man of the world:
" Je ne serai ni assez vain ni assez ridicule pour me louer
sans raison; mais aussi n'aurai-je pas une assez sotte
honte pour ne pas dire de moi des choses avantageuses
quand ce seront des v§rit6s," he writes; and this state
ment is doubly interesting when we find how very few
" choses avantageuses " to himself he finds to teU !
Charles Darwin, who writes because " I have thought
the attempt might amuse me or might possibly interest
my chUdren," goes on to say: "I have attempted to
write the following account of myself as if I were a
dead man in another world looking back at my own
life." Even Gozzi, who took memoir writing so lightly
that he names his book "Memorie inutUi della vita di C.

SESrCERITY 51
Gozzi, pubbllcate per umilti," yet speaks of "the
detailed portrait I intend to execute of myself."
Haydon, the painter, has left us one of the most sug
gestive autobiographies that was ever placed side by
side with the journals which furnished its material.
It is one to which we shall have much occasion to refer,
and here it were well to cite one sentence, in its original
typographical form: " . . . A biography derives its sole ,
interest and abUity from its Exact Truth."
The reason which Mademoiselle d'Orl^ans gives for her
faithful and valuable record, is the frank ennui that
she felt when banished from court life. " It is hard to
conceive," she maintains, " with what things the mind
of a person accustomed to court can occupy itself when
reduced to living in the country! . . . But I shall bring
to these pages all I can remember from my childhood
to this hour, as exactly as is possible to me." And she
keeps her word.
Compare Mademoiselle with another French woman,
one who understood the power and the limitations of the
autobiography as perhaps none other.
" Pour certains esprits," says George Sand, " se
connaitre est une gtude fastidieuse et toujours incom
plete." And the Histoire de ma Vie she declared to be
"une §tude sincere de ma propre nature, et un examen
attentif de ma propre existence."
These examples have been gathered at random, and
enough have been shown to serve our purpose. One

62 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
might go on and cite as many more if space permitted.
The above wUl show, at least, that the psychologist and
scientist who takes the memoir seriously is more reason
able than the litterateur who derides its truth. Surely,
if a purpose and an ideal of sincerity have been found
in autobiographers so unHke in temperament, gifts,
and character as these, one may infer that they form a
part of the autobiographical intention, when that is
strong and definite.
But here we are interrupted by our cynical litt&ra-
teur. "Ah," he cries, "what avaUs protest? The asser
tion that one means to tell the truth is nothing!"
"According to your own lights, cher monsieur," we
may fitly reply, "Hghts cast from scattered and often
trivial reading, you have cause to think so. Single
cases of protest would have little significance and less
value. The assertion from John Stuart MiU, let us say,
that he intends to be truthful, would simply increase
your own feeling of self-distrust. Would you teU how
you cheated at school and won the prize? Or that
in your heart of hearts you hourly desire the death of
the stupid elder brother who stands in your way of
the dukedom? Certainly not; you would die first ! Ergo
neither would John Stuart MUl . . . But, then, cher
monsieur, you have not the autobiographical intention.
You are not, be it said with all due respect, an important
person. You are neither Alfieri, Charles Darwin, Car
dan, nor Rousseau. The imperious lash of Truth upon

SINCERITY 53
the neck of the great, that fretful urging to candor,
is one of the many differences between them and
ourselves. And when we observe it acting as an in
fluence, not upon one able person, but (to take only
one group) upon 61 able persons, we may believe that
it forms a component part of some quahty to which,
as the mediocre, we are forced regretfully to renounce
all claim, but which we must, nevertheless, recognize
in action, and respect in result."
It is time we dropped our glib generalizations, and
acknowledged the different standards of greater men.
A superior sincerity, a more penetrative candor, —
these are tokens of their greatness and a reason for
their survival. Yet the reader must not jump to the
conclusion that we do not differentiate between accu
racy in detaU and accuracy in portraiture. It is not for
a single instant asserted that Rousseau gave the correct
date of his christening; that George Sand felt for
Fr6d6ric Chopin only "une passion maternelle tr^s
vive, trSs vraie," as the Histoire de ma Vie asserts;
that Guibert de Nogent's mother struggled all night
with a demon who upset the furniture; or that Jerome
Cardan learned Greek in a dream. But it is claimed,
and it would seem capable of proof, that the personali
ties of those autobiographers whose work is inspired by
a serious intention, and executed by an able hand, are,
in their main aspects, truthfuUy portrayed. Further,
that they are more truthful, more complete, than the

54 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
same figures drawn by an outside pencU. And this is
logical. What makes BosweU so great a biographer, but
the ability to let his hero reveal himself at every turn,
in every event and mood?
Before leaving this aspect of the subject it were weU
to see whether biography, as a whole, supports or
contradicts the autobiographer. To name a life of every
one of our chief cases is, of course, out of the ques
tion; we must restrict ourselves to the more saHent
figures. Let us only ask the cher monsieur, so sceptical
of the whole business, to name a life of Rousseau, in
which the personality differs as a personality from
that drawn in the Confessions. The standard Hves
of Alfieri, Goldoni, Mill, Mademoiselle d'Orleans —
great autobiographers all — rely completely and naively
upon them for all intimate aspects of the subject.
Watson's life of George Fox avowedly draws its
matter from the Journal. Morrison's life of Edward
Gibbon does the same. The figure of Benvenuto
Cellini stands out unchallenged, in all its vigor and
color, through the centuries. Jerome Cardan's bitterest
enemies refer to the De Vita Propria Liber, as an
exact picture of his extraordinary personality. Even
in the case of George Sand's Histoire de ma Vie — a
book wherein we know there has been a hiatus, and in
which the central figure, though perfect in parts, is un
deniably mutUated — there has recently been conclu
sive testimony. In the preface to her Hfe by Wladimir

SINCERITY 55
Kar^nine, and that to the volume entitled George
Sand et sa Fille, by Samuel Rocheblave, we find the
authors declaring that by the most minute researches
they have been unable to alter the personal impression
of the Histoire in a single material particular. Simi
larly, in a well-balanced English biography of George
Sand, the author speaks of "the profound truth of the
spirit of the narrative," and acknowledges it as "the
important source" of all accounts of her early life.
What the student and biographer has done, you and
I may do without distrust. It seems undeniable that
the majority of capital autobiographies have been
written in the interest of truth, and are the outcome of
serious intention, the result of a deep-seated psycho
logical impulse, which, as a whole, makes for the truth.
The figures which are drawn under these conditions,
therefore, we believe to be, in the main, the figures of
the persons as they lived.

CHAPTER V
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, THE DIARY, AND THE
LETTER
It is George Sand who stands beside the reader to
remind him that " 1' etude du coeur humain est de teUe
nature que plus on s'y absorbe moins on y voit clair."
Self-distrust, appreciation of the danger and deceits of
self-contemplation, has inspired certain generaHz ations
which pass about easily from lip to lip, until mere repe
tition seems about to make truths of them. It is in the
letter and the diary, rather than in the deliberate auto
biography, that we are told to look for the valuable
self-revelation. Everybody has heard the phrases into
which this idea has been cast: " Not written for the
public eye, but in the privacy of the closet. — In his
letters a man lets himself go."
It seems almost inconsiderate to deprive conversa
tion of its conveniences by introducing the element of
thought. The stupid and the banal are cut off from
their part in it when the question is asked: " Is this
true? " But one has entered here a field where the duU
and the trite have rioted for years without contradiction.
This is a pet topic, a stronghold of the inept. Should
anyone doubt this, let him make a remark about the use
of self-study in any mixed assemblage, not too young.

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 57
He is sure to hear the phrases just quoted, to catch the
name of Rousseau, — fondly believed to be the parent of
this iniquity, — and to note much head-wagging over
the deceitfulness of the human heart. It were perhaps
cruel to remind these respectable persons that their own
self-analysis might have a less value and sincerity than
that of Augustin, or Herbert Spencer; or that the desire
to see oneself clearly is part of an intellectual initiative
from which they are free. The factor which gives value
to personal evidence is the relative importance of the
subject; and it is the sense of his own inadequacy
which causes I'homme sensvsl moyen to cry out so
loudly against the whole business.
L'homme sensual moyen, having no reason to sup
pose that posterity has any concern with him, can
imagine himself jotting his introspections upon a diary
in a corner of the billiard-room, over a glass of
brandy-and-soda, when the idea of self-study in writing
his life would seem factitious. Does this same attitude
prevail with those individuals whose gifts make the
judgment of posterity inevitable? We are here to de
cide. The case of the conscious vs. the unconscious
self-revelation, must be heard and dismissed before we
can reach the further point toward which we aim.
The partisans of the diary and the letter claim that
their very ephemeral character causes them to be the
more trustworthy media of the writer's individuaUty.
Yet examination in sequence of a series of important

58 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
journals does not, by any means, corroborate this view.
Had Saint-Simon published only those journals which he
later revised and bound into a coherent narrative, how
much of his personality might not have been lost ! Such
diaries as Evelyn's or Greville's aim chiefly at presenting
the daily historical and political events of their time.
Neither contains self-revelation of any real importance.
As for the inestimable Pepys, whom a grateful reader
would not undervalue, his glance goes not beyond the
day. The man is shown to us in pieces, fragments
thrown into the occurrences which he describes; his eye
is on the event; and, although we deHght in the picture,
we know that much has been lost. That first volume of
Fanny Burney's Journal conveys most of its total effect,
and is weighted with a distinct autobiographical in
tention, which is not, however, sustained. And in pro
portion as this idea was abandoned, and the mere daUy
jottings kept, the work loses in vigor and in vividness.
The constructive touch is needed here, as in other liter
ary work, to carry conviction. Scott's Journal contains
the noble record of his adversity, but it was taken up too
late in life to serve us as a satisfactory picture of his char
acter, had we not been fortunately able to supplement it
by the fragment of Autobiography with which Lockhart
begins the Life. It is to this, not to the Journal, we owe
our knowledge of the fundamentals of Scott's character.
In Moore's Journal we are perpetually troubled by a
sense of the trifling details and happenings which come

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 59
in a cloud between us and the figure of the kindly, little
man, and which, in a deliberate narrative, would have
been put aside as unimportant. In his unfinished
memoirs they are so put aside. This has brought us to
the first point, that the main difference between diary
and autobiography Hes in an increased sense of pro
portion in the latter, whose first object is to clear away
everything which may come between you and the sub
ject. Also it is interesting that Moore's editor, Lord
Russell, should remark on the fact that Moore's ideal
of himself as a literary figure caused his journal to be
filled with London visits and suppers with celebrities, so
that one might suppose his time far more occupied
with them than was really the case. The well-balanced
account of his childhood and youth in the Memoir falls
into no such error, since the desire here is of self-study,
not merely to recall an amusing story, or to record a
gay evening, or to see in one's diary the names of per
sons prominent in literature.
When we examine correspondence, we find no cause to
change this impression; it is, indeed, the usual attitude
of the more scrupulous commentator. Readers of the
great letter-writers, of Voltaire and Goethe, of Petrarch
and Cicero, of Madame de Sevign6 and Madame du
Deffand, do not need to be reminded of the warnings
they have received from the editors of these collections
not to allow themselves to be hurried away too quickly
by their sympathy with the writer. Words are an effer-

60 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
vescence of mood thrown hastily upon paper, often the
result of a desire to experiment with oneself, to create
a non-existent feeling, to rouse a dormant emotion,
or to prick some mere vexation into active anger. Here
is matter for exaggeration and with no corrective. For
in the page of the diary or the letter a man may indulge
himself — he may, in the ordinary phrase, " let himself
go." And if the reader is tempted to think that the
truth is more apt to come to the surface when a man
" lets himself go," we can only beg him to apply the
same standard to himself in a simiHar case. The pre
dominance of mood, the lack of self-restraint, which
means the " letting oneself go," form, in themselves,
a onesidedness, which is a kind of insincerity. Lavater's
Journal, which he called The Secret History of a Self-
observer, is a notable example of such disproportion.
His perpetual self-questioning provoked no truthful
replies in his soul. And when his servant-maid is
sullen on being summoned, and his comment is, " Her
answer did not provoke me, and it made me quite
proud I was not angry," the reader is convinced neither
that the introspection is true, nor valuable, nor even that
Lavater was not provoked, nor proud that he was not.
But when the letter- writer or journalist sits to ex
plain himself to the audience of posterity, or to plead
his cause before the jury of the coming generations, has
he not a powerful incentive to ask: " Is this true?
Was this vexation of mind whoHy real — was the true

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 61
inwardness of my wounded feeling made plain to me
when I wrote under its sting ? "
In other words, is not the autobiographical intention
a weighty corrective to bring hasty moods into measure?
This whole question of imagination in the letter-
writer and its exaggeration of the fleeting mood is dis
cussed with fullness and finish by M. Gaston Boissier,
in his fascinating volume on Cicero and his Friends.'^
It is impossible to express better than he does how
these fugitive thoughts are " only flashes . . . fixed
and accentuated by writing, they acquire a clearness,
a relief and importance which they had not in reality."
If this be true of all written self-revelation, then, surely
the existence of a powerful motive to act as corrective
comes to have a deeper significance.
However, the examination of single examples of
diarist and letter-writer cannot be conclusive. The best
method of estimating comparative sincerity is surely to
take cases like Scott or Moore in which exist both the
autobiography and the journal from which its material
was drawn, so that we may contrast our impressions.
These are not so rare as one would think.
No one can forget the quarrel between Rousseau and
Madame d'Epinay, nor could anything be more suggest
ive as an Ulustration of this point than a comparison
of the Confessions, the Memoires de Madame d'Epinay,
and their letters on the subject. The entire corre-
1 "Cic6ron et ses Amis," Introduction.

62 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
spondence has been preserved, and letters passed be
tween the two insulted dignities with the fullness and
frequency to which annoyance spurs the literary habit.
In these letters we find Jean Jacques breathing out
raged sensibility and insulted affection. To hear him,
one would believe the difference arose from the righteous
wrath of a finally-roused patience, and had its root in
complicated spiritual misunderstandings, such as cloud
the pages of Mr. Henry James. With both the correspon
dents, those large words, sensitiveness, friendship,
loyalty, obligation, appear in every other sentence.
Hear the chdtelaine de I'Ermitage in her own defense,
prefacing that her Memoires, written under the form of
fiction, have no serious intention, but are a mere stage-
setting for her idea of her own romantic situation. She
suggests, however, in her comments on the letters, the
fact that Rousseau's lack of business sense made any
satisfactory arrangement between them impossible; and
her attitude is that of a patroness whose good humor
has been taken for granted once too often. There is
not a hint of sentiment.
Knowing Jean Jacques, we expect the Confessions
to give fuHy his own side of the quarrel. Surely, he
wUl not abate the majestic attitude! On the contrary,
we find him describing the difference exactly as it was;
the contest of two greedy vanities, having its origin in a
dispute as to which should pay the gardener's wages.
Is it necessary to say that the gardener, in se, is

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 63
practically suppressed in the letters? He has become
symbolized, he is servitude, he is obligation. By the
pen of Madame, whose intention is not serious, the
vague, general reference to a financial origin of their
difference is yet made, notwithstanding that it de
tracts from her romantic position. And in the Confes
sions, result of a powerful autobiographical intention,
powerfully executed, the whole truth is written out,
no matter what light it casts upon the large terms in
the letters. To those of us who know Jean Jacques,
which aspect of the quarrel is the more convincing?
One example more: in the Tom Taylor edition, the
autobiography of Benjamin Robert Haydon is bound
up with the journals which were its source. Now, with
Haydon mood is everything; his intensity of thought
and expression wraps him in it, and his lack of measure
is an inherent quality. He is also a man with a
grievance; he lived in terrible financial straits; he ended
in delusions of persecution, in madness, in suicide.- His
is a case which will either make or break us, for he has
little self-control; he turns with a fierce, stern pleading,
and begs us to see and to understand. He has no
superficial cleverness, he wUl stand or fall alone. Dur
ing a crisis in his affairs and whUe he is finishing a
cartoon, Haydon speaks, in the Autobiography, of his
" gasping anxiety" at this time, and writes: " My mind
wanted the discipline of early training." As the work
grows, Haydon gives us the prayer of his soul: " Never

64 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
have I had such irresistible and perpetual urgings of
future greatness; whUe I was painting, writing or think-
uag, beaming flashes of energy foUowed and impressed
me. 0 God, grant they may be the fiery anticipations
of a great soul born to realize them! "
This is painfully intense, in truth, yet compare it
with the Journal of the same period: —
"How delightfully time flies when one paints," he
jots on one page. The succeeding entry is: "Painted
in delicious and exquisite misery." Then: " Thank God
with all my soul the very name of high art — the very
thought of a picture — gives my chUdren a hideous and
disgusting taste in the mouth."
And, the next day: "Huzza! huzza! huzza! my car
toon is up!"
If self-control counts as an element in a writer's sin
cerity, if there is any value in the study of om- past
moods and feelings, it is not lightly indicated in this
comparison. The horrible alternations of poor Hay-
don's mood, intensified and exaggerated by the self-
indulgence of his diary, are brought into some degree
of measure and understanding when he comes to put
them before the public eye. The mere fact of an
audience causes him to examine them more nearly, to
remember and bring forward that lack of discipline from
early training which accounts for the lack of balance.
The desire of candor and of completeness has laid hold
of him. So we have found the autobiographer reveal-

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 65
ing weaknesses and errors which he has sedulously con
cealed in his intercourse with friends, in his diary or
letters, and which need never have been known at all
but for the prick of this influence. Sometimes these
are frank sins; sometimes merely such ungraciousnesses
as do a man no credit for avowing. Why was Gibbon
at such pains to tell us, on the occasion of his father's
death: "The tears of a son are seldom lasting. Few,
perhaps, are the chUdren who after the expiration of
many months would sincerely rejoice in the restoration
of their parents," except that he believed it to be the
truth? In her autobiography, Catherine II of Russia plainly
states that the father of her son and heir, Peter, was
Soltykov, a fact about which there was much discussion
and which was of great political importance. Yet she
commits it to paper, although it was the very last thing
one could imagine her admitting. The Cardinal de
Retz says: "Je pris, apres six jours de reflexion, le parti
de faire le mal par dessein . . . ce qui est sans com-
paraison le plus criminel devant Dieu, mais sans doute
le plus sage devant le monde."
The mention by Benjamin Franklin of certain
offences which he caUs errata, is not only perfectly
gratuitous, but distinctly calculated to lower that
public esteem for which he had striven. Acts like
Cellini's stab of a comrade in the back, the gambling
transactions of Cardan, and minor meannesses of Rous-

66 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
seau, would never have risen to the surface at aU had
their authors chosen to keep sUence. No diary pre
served them, one may be sure. Nor does a morbid
strain, the lack of sense of humor, account for their
appearance. One could hardly call Franklin, Cellini,
or Catherine II morbid; and if Gibbon lacked humor,
it chances to be definitely present in Cellini, Cardan, and
de Retz.
No; the endeavor to stand for what we are, springs
from a deeper motive, a more serious psychological con
dition, than the litterateur is wUling to aUow. Robert
Louis Stevenson, for instance, writing on Pepys, com
ments on his subject's candor with amazement. He
cannot understand why Pepys recorded actions avow
edly best left unrecorded, and he speaks of him as an
isolated phenomenon. This is only another case to
prove how much the critic has need of the psychologist.
He would, otherwise, faU to note an influence present
as a motive-power in natures ethically deficient, such
as Cellini, de Retz, or Psalmanazar, the impostor. It
acts as corrective to the religious fanatic who wishes to
show you a miserable sinner transformed into a saint,
yet who feels obliged to tell you, like George Fox, that
even before his conversion people loved him for his
"innocency and honesty." Trembling, as she beHeves,
upon the brink of heU-fire, Teresa gives us the brU
liant portrait of her girlish self, whom everyone always
saw with pleasure, — "on m'a toujours vu avec plaisir."

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 67
It is this which, in the deliciously naive memoirs of
Mary Robinson (Perdita, the actress), causes her to
break off short at the moment of her capitulation to
George IV, although she has gone along swimmingly
up to that pomt. One reads her inabUity to lie about it,
and her faUure to find an excuse for it, in every broken
line. The case of Perdita, just cited, brings us to the
obscure and difficult group of the partially sincere cases.
Up to this moment, we have dealt with those master
examples over whom the autobiographical intention
has had a fuU sway, and whom it has influenced to
a full sincerity. But there are, of course, many self-
students in whom this influence is defective, weakened,
or counteracted, and it were not amiss to glance at
some of the chief causes which stand in the way of its
normal operation. There are intellectual causes and
emotional causes working against the autobiograph
ical intention. Of the intellectual, the chief is the ob
jective cast of mind. This causes the writer to be
particular about acts, dates, events, and other persons,
while he himself remains mistaken and obscure. He
may thus write a useful work for history, which has no
value for us here, although it must not be supposed that
this is necessarily the case. Saint-Simon would seem to
contradict us ; what he writes of himself is true. But who
can assert that Guizot's memoirs, or Lord Brougham's,
have aided us to understand their character?

68 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The chief cause for partial or defective sincerity,
leading to a lower value in the finished work, is the
sentimental point of view. It is most strikingly present
in the German examples, among whom it would be fair
to include Hans Andersen and Holberg. Sentiment, the
sentimental attitude toward what concerns oneself,
hangs like a hazy cloud over the narrative, obscuring
facts, distorting experience. This disfigurement in
jures the psychological value of Jean Paul Richter, of
Lavater's Journal, of Kotzebue, of Karoline Bauer,
and of Georg Ebers, even of the infinitely greater case
of Goethe. The Wahrheit und Dichtung is the weakest
autobiography the world has ever had from so strong
a hand. Enthusiasts over it are almost invariably to
be found among those persons who think a sincere
self-revelation pernicious and undesirable. It has not
contributed in any material degree to our idea of the
writer. Goethe's age at the time it was written, his
secure consequence in a world where he saw no need
for explanation or justification, and, above ever3rthing,
his mental habit of confusing sentiment with fact, have
all helped to lower its value. Pages there are of such
magnificent and penetrating criticism as make us feel
the deeper regret that this is so. It is hard to pardon
George Sand for telling us that she felt for Fr^d^ric
Chopin "une passion materneUe tr^s vive, tres vraie";
but what can we reply to Goethe, when he asks us to
believe of his early love-affair that "the first propensi-

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 69
ties to love in uncorrupted youth take altogether a
spiritual direction"? George Sand, as a woman, is in
an anomalous position, and if she omits the entire sub
ject of her sex-life, she amply atones by the most minute
and thorough study of her intellectual and imaginative
development. So clear, orderly, vivid, and full is she
on this side, that every worker, and one might almost
say every woman, must benefit. Goethe would be
forgiven had he been equally full respecting his mental
growth. But he only mentions that he dreamed of "the
laurel garland to adorn the poet's brow."
Fortunately, that extraordinary figure was so long
prominent upon our stage, that we have not had to
depend upon the Wahrheit und Dichtung. If we had, a
shadowy and meditative youth, of low vitality, given to
platonic amourettes, would have taken the place of that
splendid embodiment of young manhood. But Goethe,
whose ability for science and love of it was marked,
let slip the opportunity to make use of it when he came
to writing about himself, and so lost to psychology for
ever the chance of gaining any classified and thorough
information as to the mental processes of that man who
has served to show, above any other modern, what man
may become.
The results of the sentimental attitude in minor cases
of autobiography are more violent, if less important.
In Hans Andersen's Das Mdrchen meines Lebens, the
actual facts are like morsels of quicksilver in the

70 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
hand — one cannot lay hold of them. Kotzebue,
who imitates Goethe, laments the death of his wife
in terms of frenzy. Ten years later, by date on the
manuscript, occurs his terrific agitation at being
separated a few months from a wife, who, of course,
is number two, but who has not appeared before. In
Richter's Truth from My Own Life, facts, reflections,
feehngs, are hopelessly entangled. To take an English
book of a similar type. Sir Kenelm Digby, writing
definitely with the purpose of clearing his wife's good
name, becomes so sentimentally rhapsodical as to their
relations before marriage, that we are quite as doubtful
as to the Lady Venetia Stanley's reputation as was
contemporary society. So fatal is this flaw that the de
gree of its absence becomes almost a standard of value.
One cannot turn away finally from the partially con
structive, partially candid autobiographies without ob
serving those cases of definite faUure — not in intention
but in execution — from simple lack of writer's gift.
Every now and then, one happens on a volume wherein
the intention is deep and expressed, and the subject
wholly ignorant as to how it must be carried out. In
fifty-four pages of introduction, Dr. Caldwell gives the
clearest rules for scientific self-study, which he at once
proceeds to disregard. Notwithstanding aU he has said
about motives and springs of action, he gives practically
no data, mentions few characteristics, and of chUdhood
notes nothing but his industry. A more modern book

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 71
by John Beattie Crozier is entitled My Inner Life:
A Chapter in Personal Evolution. Here would seem to
be the autobiographical intention in its most definite
form; yet the work contains little but opinions, and
the description of a background. One does not hear if
the author is tall or short, healthy or fragUe, indolent
or energetic, phlegmatic or sensitive. Although appre
ciating the value of autobiography, the writer is wholly
unequipped for the task.
To the sentimentalist and to the plainly inadequate,
must be added one more example, though interesting
perhaps to the pathologist only. The rogue and the
charlatan have been lately examined by Professor
Chandler in his Literature of Roguery, where their
confessions receive due consideration. Oddly enough,
there are to be found valuable moments of frank self-
revelation in these documents — moments sometimes
unknown to the virtuous. These single flashes of truth
and sincerity cannot be passed over, for they are fre
quently significant. The case of George Psalmanazar is
a typical Ulustration. He was an eighteenth century
impostor who pretended to have come from Formosa, and
to know the language of that island, which, of course,
he invented. He numbered among his victims the fore
most intellects of the day. His memoirs, reputed to be
the result of his rehgious conversion and repentance,
are fulsome and affected, but most striking when we
come to his own analysis of the imposture. It sprang.

72 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
he says, " from my vanity and senseless affectation of
singularity, as that was my predominant passion."
The phrase is a text to impress on us that since there
is a soul of truth in aU error, few personal records can
be safely ignored. For Psalmanazar has furnished us
here with the mot d'enigme to a certain type of clever
cheat, in all its different manifestations, from CagHos-
tro and the Abb6 de Choisy to the Sar Peladan and
Oscar Wilde.
To sum up, if one can indeed sum up human nature,
whence springs this deeply rooted desire to stand for
what we are? Since we find it unquestionably present
in greater or less measure through this mass of records,
may we not therefore urge them the more confidently
on the attention of the psychologist? An impulse to
ward the truth exists, it would seem, in natures con
scious of no ethical reason for it. To what is it due?
Is it, as Marcus Aurelius believes, " man's reverence
for the ruling faculty, the divinity within him"? Or
is it an aesthetic impulse based on the artist's desire
for perfection? Perchance to Cellini the writer, the
figure of himself stood forth to be wrought with the
same minute perfection be would accord to a king's
chalice or a pope's button. And so nothing is omitted;
hidden things are dragged forth, that the work may be
complete. Who shall decide what has caused to speak
truthfully such various tongues of men? Not we in this
place; we can do no more than point out the existence

THE DIARY AND THE LETTER 73
of this vein of gold running through the dross.
Point to it we must before we leave broad generalities
and come to persons and to personalities. So we direct
attention to the fact, somewhat in the same manner
as Lord Brougham prefaced his autobiography with a
note to his executors, the capitals of which are his
own: " The narrative is to be printed AS I HAVE
WRITTEN IT. ... I alone am answerable. ... I
desire . . . [it] .... shall be published as exclusively
MY OWN."
Ego sum. Here it is, the " I am " of humanity: first,
and perhaps last, word in the book which has never been
completed. If some pages of it have been opened to the
reader he should be content. He must not ask us yet
for definitely crystallized conclusions. Ours has been
merely the long ramble of two intimates over a new
country. We have gone out together for the sake of
the walk and of the friends whom we should meet by
the way.

CHAPTER VI
THE THREE GREAT ARCHETYPES
If Rousseau had been right when he declared, "Je
forme une entreprise qui n'eut jamais d'exemple,"
we should have felt no such security regarding the
ground we tread as now forms our basis for the general
and particular study of sincerity. But the Confes
sions served merely to give a powerful impetus and
re-animation to a movement started centuries before the
days of Jean Jacques. Three masters have successively
contributed to this movement: these were Caesar,
Augustin, and Cardan. Our historical survey leads us
directly to these three names as the predominant influ
ences upon all later manifestations of autobiographical
writing. It seems plain to us to-day that Caesar's Commen
taries are not autobiographical, yet they have inspired
later autobiography to an extent almost incalculable.
To what degree they themselves are inspired by those
non-extant commentaries of Sulla we cannot estimate.
But the influence of Caesar is traceable and direct. " Ce
grand capitaine, qui est C&ar," says Monluc, " m'en
monstre le chemin"; and he stands as but one of
hundreds to whom the Roman has shown the road.
It is hard to find a single objective historical record for

THE THREE GREAT ARCHETYPES 75
eight hundred years which does not avow that its inspi
ration came from Caesar's Commentaries. Their con
ciseness, their balance and directness, major qualities
of an historian, appear to have been the model for
these later private historians. This recognized fact is
aptly expressed in a paragraph quoted by BosweU *
from the observations ^f the Critical Reviewers: —
" We may reduce the egotists to four classes. In
th« first we have Julius Caesar; he relates his own
transactions, but he relates them with peculiar grace
and dignity, and his narrative is supported by the
greatness of his character and achievements. In the
second class we have Marcus Antoninus; this writer
has given us a series of reflections on his own life; but
his sentiments are so noble, his morality so sublime, that
his meditations are universally admired. In the third
class we have some others of tolerable credit, who have
given importance to their own private history by an
intermixture of literary anecdotes and the occurrences of
their own times — the celebrated Huetius has published
an entertaining volume upon this plan. In the fourth
class we have the journalists, temporal and spiritual;
EHas Ashmole, WiUiam LUly, George Whitefield, Wesley,
and a thousand other old women and fanatic writers of
memoirs and meditations."
It is interesting here to see that the writer of the
paragraph has formed an idea of classifying this spe-
' BosweU (Hill), III, p. 195 (on Dr. Rutty).

76 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
cies of document, however different this classification
would be from our own. The " but " apologizing for
Caesar and Marcus Aurelius is significant of the dis
credit passed upon the whole matter, which is further
shown by the " universal admiration" which he thinks
justifies the latter. And lastly we see the more sub
jective personal documents classed with the old women
and fanatics. We feel otherwise toward the "journaHsts,
temporal and spiritual," to-day; but the preeminence
of Caesar, his grace and dignity, his " greatness of char
acter and achievements," make him stiU the model.
He stands at the head, he remains the type.
In his turn, the influence of Augustin is no less marked,
no less enduring. Moreover, the vital freshness, the orig
inality of Augustin constitute a force in themselves.
To analyze, to study one's self for the glory of God, the
humUiation of one's own sin, and the aid of other poor
stumbling creatures, — this is Augustin's great thought;
so far as we can trace it, it belongs whoUy to him. It
is gloriously full and perfect; it strikes a note at once
intimate and uplifting — that " he who humbleth him
self shall be exalted." The vigor, the poignant strength
of this conception, helped to restore self-respect to
those natures whom the early Christian tenets had
depressed and debased untU they were both passive
and useless. Augustin realized that the doctrine of
original sin tended in certain temperaments to eat
away like some corrosive acid the very springs of action,

THE THREE GREAT ARCHETYPES 77
thus kUling manhood and strength and leaving only a
lax inertia. By turning the eye inward to examine
with reverent study the creature that he reaUy was,
Augustin thought to freshen and revive the activities
of the religious man. He was beyond measure success
ful. On the sensitive, emotionally religious person the
fascination of Augustin's Confessions is hypnotic. It
may be seen at work in Teresa, in Robert Blair, in Gui
bert de Nogent, in Bishop Huet of Avranches, and in
Jeanne de la Mothe-Guyon. Just as we may trace the
influence of Caesar on the memoir so-called, so has
the religious confession been influenced by Augustin.
And from exactly opposite causes. The reticent
brevity of the commander is antagonistic to the Bishop
of Hippo. His very strength lies in his fullness; it is
the same later on with Rousseau. Health and help
lie for some natures in complete avowal, in seeing aU
our torment and trouble, "the invincible remnants of
the brute, the agonizing struggle with temptation,"
through the medium of another's mind and character.
We are dragged out of our singularity, we are measured
up to greatness; a strong hand holds us. Augustin's
vitality is high; and he was not born with any more
delicate sense of values, of justice, of proportion, than
the rest of us. He is humanly tormented, humanly
released. He has the common moral inconsistencies;
he classes the sins of stealing and concupiscence along
with the Manichaean heresy. Later biographers take him

78 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
to task for exaggeration as to his faults. Father Joseph
McCabe stigmatizes the ethics of the Confessions as
" utterly false," because in the light of his conver
sion Augustin " is sternly bent on magnifying his mis
deeds." In our opinion, this biographer seems to
forget that Augustin is writing to aid others from the
standard of the ideal moralist, and that, from this
view-point, stealing and concupiscence were not, after
all, such trifling errors. The early life led by Augustin
would be condemned by the community to-day; why
then is he exaggerating when he condemns it? There
are those to whom an utter and fundamental sincerity
appears as indecent; their candor must be always
clothed. To others, naked sincerity has a nobUity and
beauty like the naked body. M. Gaston Boissier com
ments on this quality of the Confessions, declaring that
he knows no work possessing it to the same degree.'
" II a voulu etre vrai, et pour I'essentiel U I'a ^t^."
Life ran generously through Augustin's veins. He takes
first one side of himself, then the other to show us. As
a boy he disliked study and preferred to play ball. " So
smaU a boy, so great a sinner! . . . Deceiving with
innumerable lies both tutor and masters and parents,
from love of play, a desire to see frivolous spectacles,
and a stage-struck restlessness."^ But he aUows: "I
lived and felt, I learned to take pleasure in truth,
• "La Fin du Paganisme," I, pp. 340-342.
' "Confessions," I, 18.

THE THREE GREAT ARCHETYPES 79
I was averse to being deceived; I had a vigorous
memory." It is in these balancing statements that we see self-
study, that we note the first great self-student. Able
autobiography may contain much self-revelation, which
is not self-study. Cellini is no self-student, nor Goldoni,
nor Madame de Staal-Delaunay. The psychological
value of their work is not thereby impaired; but their
influence, their authority, is limited because of the
unconscious character of their self-revelation. In this,
as in other studies, one must feel that authority and
influence belong rather to the deliberate, conscious,
coherent observation, than to the spontaneous, uncon
scious manifestation of natural proclivities. Augustin,
Cardan, and later Rousseau and Mill, — these are the
autobiographers who have influenced others, and these
are the great self-students.
Such a work must have a value beyond any question
of religion, above even its mere devotional beauty. Too
often has this latter quality in Augustin been made the
subject of cult; too often is he treated as a penitential
handbook, as an k Kempis with the self-study left out.'
If we believe with Taine, "The more a book repre
sents important sentiments, the higher is its place in
literature," we see where one should rank the authori
tative self-student. Taine, indeed, renders the whole
subject more lucid in some further sentences of his
' References here are to the full, patristic edition.

80 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Introduction to the History of English Literature,
sentences invaluable for the crystallization of one's
thought. "A literary work," he says, "is not a mere
individual play of imagination . . . but a transcript
of contemporary manners, a manifestation of a certain
kind of mind. . . . Behind the document there is a
man." Here should be, unquestionably, our view of
the Bishop of Hippo, as of the later cases we know him
to have inspired. Looking upon each autobiography,
first, sociologically, as " a transcript of contemporary
manners," second, psychologically, as " the manifesta
tion of a certain kind of mind," we find the great self-
student himself appreciating the fact that, as Taine
says, "the outer man is only a clew," and so spending
his energy in "visualizing the inner man."
Of many natures is this inner man. When Augustin
wrote of his sin: "It was foul; I loved it; I loved to
perish," there seemed only one motive in the world for
making such an avowal, — religion, — and only one force
in a man's life which could produce this naked candor, —
the force of religious emotion. But when we turn to our
great self-student, Jerome Cardan, we find a new force
at work to produce it, a force which was neither the
recording historical impulse, nor the emotional reli
gious impulse, but the impulse we now call scientific.
A great space of time had passed between the Confes
sions in 430 A.D., and the De Vita Propria Liber in 1575.
The antique world had crumbled away, the Renaissance

THE THREE GREAT ARCHETYPES 81
had risen; what we call the modern era had been
born. During these eleven hundred and forty-five
years, while the religious confession from Augustin
to Paulinus of Pella, to Suso, to Guibert, and so
following, had been abundant; while the historical
memoir, foUowing Caesar and Josephus, had come to
estabhsh itself firmly as a Hterary fashion; yet there
is absolutely no trace of scientific self-study. This fact
helps one to realize what a wholly fresh idea came to
the Italian physician when he set to work examining
himself "as if he were a new species of animal which he
never expected to see again." '
Unquestionably the scientific self-examination is as
modern in thought as it is rare in practice. For in
stance, the Critical Reviewer does not mention it among
his "four classes of egotists." A certain temperament
only is moved to it, and only under certain conditions.
Yet the names of the followers of Cardan are among
the great leaders of thought. He who writes " a natural
history of himself," in Herbert Spencer's phrase, is he
who knows that self to be worth observation. The
entire group of modern English scientists of the nine
teenth century write their lives in the scientific or
Cardan manner. Earlier autobiographies of the Cardan
type are those of Alfieri, Vico, and Edward Gibbon,
of George Sand, David Hume, and Rousseau.
The names of Caesar and Augustin are familiar; they
» " Retrospective Review."

82 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
stand to the general reader for definite values and for
clear ideas. When Jerome Cardan comes under con
sideration there is no such clear idea. In his own field
a great man, a great influence, he hardly belongs to
general literature; his work has rather been embodied
in the advance of the sciences he professed. The tech
nical character of his mathematical achievements has
caused them to become at once incorporated into
the bulk of existing thought. His Book of His Own
Life, written under certain conditions, as we shaU
understand later, was as much reprobated as the Con
fessions of Rousseau, as much read and as much
imitated. It stands in the pages of seventeenth and
eighteenth century learning, mentioned by such men
as Huet, Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, as among the
great intellectual influences of their lives. Yet for
reasons which no longer obtain, it has not been
translated into English, and is not readUy access
ible in its French and Italian versions to the general
reader. It is not only for this reason that it has been dealt
with in these pages at greater length than any other
case, but, because this, our third great t3'pe of auto
biographer, is purely modem. He is among the first
manifestations of what we term the scientific spirit;
he is in the forefront of that new order which was
to change the face of the universe. His influence on
later minds and writings is a scientific influence. A

THE THREE GREAT ARCHETYPES 83
second reason for analyzing the De Vita Propria Liber,
with its pendant De Libris Propriis, is the character
of the document itself. Its information, its attitude,
and its logic have been misread, misinterpreted, mis
understood for four hundred years. As a study it is
so far in advance of its time, that even one hundred
years ago much of the matter would have been incom
prehensible. Here is a scientist deeply interested in the
brain and the nervous system, and their relation to
the physical and intellectual life, and at a date when
the existence of such a relation was by no means clearly
estabhshed. His own brain and nervous system pre
sented a series of the most complicated problems be
fore which he sits in clinic. If his deductions seem
wUd to us, let us not forget how absurd were his pre
mises. The fact remains that here, in 1575, sits the
first psychologist, minutely examining the only case at
hand, — a case which, fortunately for us, presents the
most salient, individual, and often abnormal features.
It is not only that a scientist of the first order is ex
amining this brain; but that the brain itself is of the first
order, presenting those definite characteristics and that
high quality which make its examination important.
A Ribot studying the mental growth of an Aristotle —
for Cardan was said to have had the greatest brain
since Aristotle — is a combination rare enough, in all
conscience. Of perfect originality, this book contains
psychological data which have awaited the birth and

84 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
development of a special branch of science for their
elucidation. To his contemporaries, to many biographers, the
man seems plainly mad. Hallam,' the conservative
historian of the Hterature of Europe, thinks that " no
man can read this strange book of his own life . . .
without suspecting a portion of insanity." Mr. W. G.
Waters, writing in 1882, thinks Cardan was subject to
periodical insanity, basing this idea on his " recorded
belief in a gift of tongues." Tiraboschi considers the
form of writing, rather than the material, indicative of
unbalanced faculties, following in this the ScaHgers,
Bayle, and Naude. Mr. Henry Morley, Cardan's
fullest English biographer, dissents from this opinion;
and a final verdict must be left to the reader. There
is matter the reader must, however, bear in mind: the
fact that his point of view has been determined only in
the last fifty years. When we come to the statisticians
who paved the way for mental physiology, we find
M. Quetelet ^ declaring that infinite aid would be given
to the study of man if only one would " s'examiner lui-
mSme avec soin, pour determiner les elements qui le con-
cernent, et ses limites." This is what Cardan did; this
his contemporaries thought him mad for attempting.
Mad or impious have ever been the favorite adjectives
applied to the pioneer. And it is not too much to say
' " Literature of Europe," Vol. I, p. 394.
2 " Sur I'Homme," pp. 268, 269.

THE THREE GREAT ARCHETYPES 85
that by reason of his invention of the principle of
gathering and coUating personal data, Jerome Cardan
stands in the same relation to the new psychology as
GalUeo to astronomy.
These three great types of autobiographer must be
introduced before one can consider their followers and
imitators, for they serve, indeed, to explain their fol
lowers. It has already been stated that the two of
them whose work was introspective were sincere. No
enemy, even, has called that general sincerity in ques
tion; and this fact has had the strongest possible in
fluence in making for sincerity among their imitators.
Augustine's motive for sincerity we know to have been
the powerful motive of religious emotion. That the
scientific motive for Jerome Cardan's sincerity pro
duced equally striking results, remains to be shown
by an examination of his work.

CHAPTER VII
JEROME CARDAN'S " DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER"
Comparison of Jerome Cardan with Jean Jacques
Rousseau has a value beyond that of its obvious
picturesqueness. Like elements of character and cir
cumstance in like combinations may produce like re
sults. Both men were born in poverty, were struggling,
irascible, hypersensitive, and at war with convention.
Both were moody, excitable, neurotic, fraU of physique,
and full of infirmities. Both were devoted to music,
given to sensual pleasures, absorbed and absent in
manner, and noted for minor eccentricities. The in
tellectual powers of the Italian far exceeded those of
the Frenchman, nor was there the same inconsistency
between his philosophy and his actions as existed be
tween the sentiment and the actions of Rousseau. The
reader of the Vita need be in no such haze regard
ing concrete detaUs as the reader of the Confessions;
yet, again Hke Rousseau, Cardan, in the phrase of
Tiraboschi,' approaches phUosophy wishing no other
guide than his imagination. To Rousseau was given
the advantage of literary quality, and that noble in
strument of style which must count in the last analysis
' Tiraboschi, T. VII, pt. I, p. 417, "E non vuol altra guida die
la sua immaginazione."

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 87
to make an enduring mark upon the minds of men.
Cardan, regardless of the medium in which Dante had
not disdained to cast the Divina Commedia, chose to
commit the record of his self-study to an arid, if not
inelegant, Latin prose, at once unpleasing and obscure.
To the pecuHar difficulties it offers the translator we
shaU recur erelong. The obscurity has been increased
for his readers by apparent contradictions — apparent
only, as wiU be seen later — and by his commentators'
dangerous habit of isolating single statements from
the text.
It is this habit, at moments amounting to falsifica
tion, which causes such studies of Cardan as- -Lom-
broso's ' and Lelut's ^ to perpetuate lasting injustice.
Both of these works are based on certain isolated,
single statements given without Cardan's explanations;
and both of them dispose of him as a hallucine, without
taking the trouble to read with an open mind the whole
book of his life. In both cases, also, simple natural
explanations have been rejected for the sounding brass
and tinkling cymbals of a favorite theory. Such methods
are unworthy of modern science. Tiraboschi, in 1821,
might declare it impossible to reconcile the different
qualities of a disposition so contradictory as Cardan's, —
that a man cannot in the same breath deplore his own
gross vices and laud his elevated virtues, cannot be
' "La Pazzia di Cardano."
' "Le D6mon de Socrate."

88 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
at once scientifically skeptical and temperamentally
credulous. Yet to this generation with its wider know
ledge of the far-reaching and subtle reactions of the
nervous system, and its greater interest in abnormal
individual cases, many of these so-caUed contradictions
have ceased to contradict, but become on closer study
the component parts of a markedly typical whole. The
value, if not the necessity, of a study of the De Vita
Propria in thi§' connection has been pointed out by
Ribot' in these words: " II y aurait une curieuse 6tude
k faire d'apres le De Vita Propria de Cardan, qui 6tait
manifestement ce qu'on appeUe de nos jours un n6vro-
pathe et un d^s^quilibre."
M. Joseph Grasset in his book on the Demi-fou
repeats and emphasizes this comment; and it wiU be
seen later what generalizations of the psychologist
may receive suggestion or Ulumination from the data
scrupulously collected by the Italian physician.
When we realize the fame and position of Cardan
in his own day, the oblivion into which his work has
fallen may give us pause, and serve to throw some
light, perchance, on the elements of an enduring glory.
Mr. Waters, one of his later biographers, thinks that
Cardan's blind following of Galen, together with his
unsound methods of diagnosis, is chiefly responsible
for the neglect of his medical writings. Had he kept
closer to the school of Hippocrates, in this opinion,
' " Psychologic des Sentiments," p. 64, note.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 89
the world of medicine would have owed him much.
To Tiraboschi and Morley, the reason lies in the diffusion
of his powers and his avidity for mere novelty. Of his
mass of work, ethical, medical, phUosophical, astro
logical, there remain only his algebraic discoveries
and the present volume, which has for centuries suf
fered from misinterpretation. Personal reasons for this
are not lacking. The definitive edition of Cardani
Opera (C. Spon, 1663) is prefixed with a study of
Cardan by Gabriel Naud6, who saw in him nothing
but a madman. Toward the end of Cardan's life his
enemies were particularly active; and nothing therefore
appeared to dissipate the tradition of the man as estab
lished by Naude and De Thou.
In 1854 appeared Mr. Henry Morley's most accurate
and readable biography, entitled The Life of Girolamo
Cardano, of Milan, Physician, wherein the author,
with enthusiasm and out of a wealth of material, has
buUt up a study of sixteenth century Italian life, full
and fascinating as a romance. For interest, color, and
picturesqueness, the general reader need seek no further.
But Mr. Morley's own attitude toward Cardan's self-
dissection is displayed when he terms it " the prattle
of literature in its infancy." The word "infantile" as
applied to Italian literature of the sixteenth century
strikes the modern ear as singularly infelicitous, but it is
typical of the general opinion concerning the introspec
tive tendency. Although Mr. Morley makes free use of

90 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
the Vita, he does so, intermingling translation, adap
tation, comment, and corrective, in a manner unsatis
factory to the serious student. It seems wiser for our
present purpose, therefore, to go directly to the De
Vita Propria Liber itself; to take this extraordinary
document at its face value; to examine it, discarding
comment and tradition; and to try to discover from
its pages what the man who wrote it reaUy was.'

II
" Since among all the things mankind has been given
to follow, there is none more worthy or pleasing than a
knowledge of th6 truth; nor is any perfection possible
among the work of mortals but it is greatly the butt of
calumny; — therefore, after the example of the phUoso
pher Antoninus, as is believed wisest and best of men,
we see fit to write this book of our own life. I assever
ate that nothing has been added for the sake of boasting,
or for embellishing the matter. Bare therefore of any
artifice, and far from arrogating to itself any power to
teach, my book concerns itself with a bald narration of
' The oblivion in which Cardan rests is best set forth by the.
statement that his name barely occiirs in the Italian Literatures
by the Italians Ancona, Bartoli, Settembrini, and Cantu; in sim
ilar English studies by J. A. Symonds and Richard Gamett; and
in French books by Leroux and others. He has, however, been
recently made the subject of Italian study. The one by C.
Lombroso is wholly theoretical and a priori.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 91
facts, and only comprises my own life, and not tumults
Hke the lives of SuUa, Caesar, or even Augustus."
In this paragraph the elements and proportions of
self-study are well defined and understood. At once it
furnishes the reader with a warrant of serious intention,
and by its dignified sequence of causes, the love of truth,
the personal example of Antoninus, and the final exposi
tion of a perfectly subjective method, permits him to
pass confidently to an examination of the facts. These
are grouped into chapters classified under separate heads
with such titles as De Statura et Forma Corporis;
De Valetudine; Victus Ratio; Vestitus ; Delectatio ;
Mores et Animi Vitia, et Errores; in such form, as Mr.
Waters puts it, " as a scientific writer would arrange
the sections and subsections of his subject." Such
an arrangement is not common to-day; and for the
sixteenth century was unique. The promise of candor
which it implied, and indeed fulfilled, was a quality
unheard of. Its mere existence bewildered the contem
porary reader, causing him to suspect some ulterior
motive. In the Histoire Universelle, De Thou remarks
that Cardan told much more of himself than any bio
grapher could have told, or than is usual among literary
men. To quote from an anonymous writer in the Retro
spective Review: "He takes the height, breadth, and
marks of his person, as a curious traveler would mea
sure the pyramids. A naturalist would thus describe
an animal he had never before met with, and never

92 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
expected to see again. He writes as if he were giving
evidence in a court of justice, and every sentence was
an answer to a question put to him . . . under the
influence of an imperious sense of duty."
Even to-day, the intensity of sincerity which moves
through the pages of this book strangely affects us.
The writer seems to stand before Dante's grinning
Minos, " che, quando I'anima mal nata li vien dinanzi,
tutta si confessa"; and so exact the image that one
seems to read in this canto of the Inferno the inspira
tion to Cardan's vivid and somewhat morbid imagi
nation. However this may be, even an outcry like
Naude's does not stand before such an "imperious sense
of duty" with any valid or proven contradictions, but
calls attention only to that mass of superstition by
which we shall find Cardan surrounded. It cannot be
denied that there is placed before posterity in a method- -
ical manner the complete -evidence about an extraor
dinary person, whose temperament, misfortunes, and
errors bring him very near the heart of ordinary
humanity. " Introspective observation," says Professor WiUiam
James,' writing of individual psychology, " is what
we have to rely on, first and foremost. The word
introspective need hardly be defined; it means, of
course, the looking into our own minds and reporting
' W. James, "Textbook of Advanced Principles of Psychol
ogy," I, p. 185.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 93
what we there discover. Every one agrees that we
there discover states of consciousness." Upon reading
such a sentence one is almost tempted to believe that
the daemon, that tutelary genius of Cardan, when it
rapt him away into ecstasies of meditation, opened to
him a glimpse of the future, by way of a modern psy
chology. It is almost as if his Minos were Professor
James or Professor Miinsterberg in person. His report of
his states of consciousness is as complete as, humanly
speaking, it is possible to be. With all a great physician's
attention to minutiae, he omits no trifling detail as to
food, clothing, feelings, habits, and the changes wrought
in them by time. To Mr. Morley this appears but as
curious and amusing, to Naud^ as evidence of egotism
and eccentricity, but to us it bears witness to the
thoroughness of a scientific method. Such thoroughness
naturally induces repetition, which is encouraged also
by the writer's age when the book was written. At
seventy-five years, and after a life of internal and exter
nal vicissitude, a certain wandering about among the
various topics is observable, and this is made the most of
by such commentators as Naud^, Bayle, Lelut, and Lom
broso. In the same manner, the emphasis Cardan laid
upon the supernatural elements in his career, an empha
sis which is heightened to account for an otherwise
unendurable grievance against life, is responsible for
the exaggerated impression of his personality, its char
latanry, its apparent madness. Isolated from the body

94 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
of the text, the incidents, dreams, omens, and so on, do
seem to take the stamp of an unbalanced mind. Read
in their proper place, with the surrounding commentary,
it will be found that Cardan rarely denies us the natural
explanation of an event. It may have been an earth
quake, and not an omen, which caused his bed to
shake ; it may have been the drugs which cured him
of a gouty attack and not the prayer to San Martino —
and so on. In brief, this is a conscientious man of
science, who compels himself to set forth all obtainable
evidence, whether or not it jumps with his theory.
This is not the method of a madman. And in truth
the one clear impression gained from the De Vita
Propria is the open-mindedness, balance, and vigor of
the intellect behind it, an impression which prevaUs
throughout the investigation of Jerome Cardan's phy
sical and mental condition in all its tragic peculiarity.

Ill
What then was this man? Let us examine the facts
which he has placed before us.
After repeated attempts to prevent it, Jerome Car
dan was born into the world,' "half-dead, with a head
of thick, black hair, and was revived only when im
mersed in a little warm bath of wine." ^ His mother
was a young widow named Chiara Micheria; his father,
' Bom 1501. ' Caput II.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 95
Fazio Cardan of MUan, was known as a jurisconsult
and mathematician. As a mathematician his grand
father also was noted. It seems scarcely worth whUe
to point out how this instance is added to many others
which show the direct inheritance of the mathematical
genius, and more particularly the phenomenon of the
rapid calculator and his visualizing faculty. Cases re
sembling Cardan's are mentioned by de Candolle,' and
there is a very noteworthy later one in that of Bidder,
the Calculating Boy. With his appreciation of all essen
tials needful for a study of himself, Cardan has given
two terse, inimitable portraits of his parents.
" My father wore scarlet (contrary to the custom of
the town). . . . He was a stammerer in his speech, a
lover of various studies, ruddy, with white eyes which
saw in the night. . . . He was studious of the works
of Euclid, and round-shouldered, . . . and my eldest
son, from the hour of his birth, in eyes, mouth, and
shoulders resembled him.^ . . .
" My mother was irascible, of excellent memory and
intelligence, short of stature, fat, pious. " ^
The relation between the elderly lawyer and the young
widow had long ceased to be harmonious or affectionate.
At times Fazio Cardan inhabited the same house as
his mistress and her child; then again, after quarrels,
' A. de CandoUe, "Histoire des Sciences et des Savants,'' p. 35.
2 Caput III.
' "Mater fuit iracimda, memoria et ingenio pollens, parvse sta-
turae, pinguis, pia."

96 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ensued long separations. "Except for their high tem
per," the son writes significantly, " the parents had in
common nothing but their capriciousness in affection
toward their chUd, although equaUy indulgent."
The vitality of this undesired infant aided him to
survive an extraordinary series of ills, none of which, he
thinks, is too trivial to be set forth for the understanding
of his mind and character. It is a formidable catalogue,
in which the modern physician would doubtless detect
a certain superfluous and misleading specialization.
Cardan probably describing and listing as separate
diseases the particular symptons of a single malady.
His first nurse died from plague, of which the baby
showed the effects. At the breasts of a second he well-
nigh perished from malnutrition, but was revived by
the care of a third. He was taken from this last nurse,
after being weaned, in his fourth year, to a house in
Milan, where his parents and his mother's sister had
established themselves. Here the chUd soon began to
suffer all the agony which neglect at home and jeers
abroad can bring to a sensitive nature. Illness, unkind-
ness, and the obloquy of base birth bit like acids deep
lines upon the plate, lines which were to tell in after
years. This childhood of Cardan's, in truth, is harsh
reading; nor does it seem possible to convey in English
the note of intensity thrilling these bald, condensed,
aloof Latin phrases of description.
"I was forced to follow and be a servant to my

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 97
father, and, notwithstanding my delicate physique and
tender age, to pass from great quiet to the hardest and
quasi-continuous exertion. ... I was beaten without
reason by both father and mother, and made Ul unto
the peril of death." This condition finaUy alarmed his
taskmasters, so that after a severe dysenteric fever
(due, he says, to eating green grapes in his eighth
year) Cardan observes: "Thus ended the hard task of
foUowing and serving my father." The beatings also
were abandoned, so that later with his characteristic
justice he remarks: "When I grew old enough to do
things which merited blows they abstained from them."
It is apparent that his child's growing ability along
lines congenial to the father's tastes began to awaken
in him, though late, some interest and affection. He
ordered a regimen for the boy's health, began to talk
with him and teach him orally many things. The son
manifests, it seems to us, an exaggerated gratitude and
respect for these attentions; indeed, somewhat like
Herbert Spencer, he mingles a perfect candor in
respect to his parents' character with much feeling
for them. He does, however, say that "toward me
my father was of better temper and more loving than
my mother." '
How fraU the little feUow was, how unlike to live,
we may guess by such significant statements as that
he was neither baptized nor named untU his eighth
'¦ Caput III.

98 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
year, and that then his father was already educating
an heir to succeed him. "Up to my eighth year," he
says elsewhere,' "I had often beaten at the gates of
death, but those within refused to open to me." Nei
ther the Ulness, the neglect, nor the cruel beatings of his
aunt Margaret, "a woman," he says, "who seemed to
be without skin," ^ — implying " so little pity had she
on mine," — were to do more than harass this extraor
dinary tenacity. Knowing what we know of his phy
sical condition and nervous system, it may surely be
taken as an indication of an inherent vigor and balance
of intellect that such treatment did not produce idiocy
or neurasthenia long before manhood; for had Cardan
been a semi-insane case in the beginning, the treatment
he received would have soon left no doubt whatever
on the subject. That much injury was inflicted by this
unnatural chUdhood on his mature life is indubitable;
its definiteness and extent we may be able later to
determine. The history of Cardan's iU health and attendant nerv
ous symptoms would be long to give in detaU, and yet
should not be ignored. It is largely responsible for the
personal impression he made on his contemporaries,
and also for the beliefs and superstitions which he
seems to over-emphasize. The correspondence of these
cannot be well understood without the subjoined table,
' "De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda," pp. 427, 428.
' "Mulier cui fel defuisse existimo."

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER'

99

Physical Conditions.
Attempted abortion.
Infancy; Nearly dead at birth.
(3 wet nurses).
(A) At six weeks old.
Plague.
(B) At 3 months. Mal
nutrition.
4 to 12 years old: Severe
sweats, bad circulation.
Dysenteric fever, weak
ness. Headache, palpita
tions.
12 to 26 years: 1. Fevers,
abscess on breast.
2. Cutaneous itchings and
eruptions.
3. Cough, suspected phthi
sis.
4. Tertian fever.
5. Catarrh.
6. Severe blows on skull,
leaving scars.
Bitten by a dog.
Nearly drowned.
26 to 70 years: Gout, haemor
rhoids, anaemia.
(Otherwise shows gen
eral improvement.)
At 72 years: Slight attacks of
pain.
At 74 years: Erysipelas.
At 76 years: Prostration and
death.

Nehvous Symptoms.
Normal from 1 year to 4 years.

Night terrors, screaming, phan
toms rising in the room,
vision of a red cock.

Spasmodic twitchings. Over-
excitement. Thoughts of
suicide. Dread of impotency.
Recurrent dreams. Voices
in his ears. Fears of high
places, mad dogs, water,
and general nervoiis coward
ice.

Head-buzzing. Cessation of phantoms and of
visions.
Recurrence of visions and
voices. Cessation of dreams.
General and acute nervous
prostration.

which shows at a glance much that is overlaid in the
text. Certain facts not without significance are made
plain. The steady improvement in health as he ap
proached middle life is accompanied by a steady de-

100 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
crease in definite morbid phenomena, until these are
revived by the great strain of his son's tragedy. Success
in life admitted of a more generous regimen, and under
this many symptoms vanished which had been pro
voked by malnutrition during chUdhood. Dissipation,
excitement, and overwork developed and accentuated
others, and had, no doubt, their share in confirming
his nervous habits, such as the spasmodic twitchings
and irregular gait. These same symptoms, it wUl be
remembered, were remarked in Dr. Samuel Johnson,
and ascribed to the same cause of privation in youth.
The physical condition of Cardan governed his outlook
on life. He suffered from nervous cowardice, from
minor ills arising from anaemia, and from a dread of
impotency which remained with him untU he was
thirty years old. Investigators like Dr. G. Stanley HaU '
have lately shown us the prevalence of such morbid
fears among neuropathic or even among merely nervous
youth, to an extent which deprives this fear in Car
dan of any individuality, causing it to become merely
symptomatic, like the hunger in a convalescent from
typhoid fever. The manner in which he sets these data
before the reader wUl serve to show how the attitude of
the diagnostician prevaUs.
"Morbid symptoms were various: first of all, from
my seventh to my twelfth year, I roused in the night
screaming. . . . During these accesses the heart beat
' "Adolescence."

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 101
faster than usual. . . . During youth I was no stranger
to inherited palpitations, which, though severe, yielded to
medical art so that I was entirely released from them.
. . . I am very fearful and timorous by nature of all high
places and nervous about mad dogs. As I know that
pleasure consists in the cessation of pain, if the pain is
voluntary, the pleasure can be summoned at wUl; there
fore I bit my lips, or twisted my fingers, or pricked my
skin, or pinched the muscle of my left arm, untU it
brought tears. And thus it is I live till to-day without
blame." '
Frequent repetition in these passages makes it neces
sary to condense in the translation, but there are parts
which deserve to be given almost at length, and chief
among them is Cardan's description of himself:
" Of middle height, with short feet, toes broad at the
end, and so high of heel that I could never find suit
able shoes, but must always have them made especiaUy,
and boots also. Chest somewhat narrow, arms slender.
The right hand clumsier, with straggling fingers, from
which palmists pronounced me rude and stupid, and
I, knowing this, was ashamed. . . . But the left hand
beautiful, rounded in form, with long fingers and shin
ing nails. Neck rather long and thin, chin cleft in
twain, under lip full and hanging. Eyes fairly small and
blinking, save when I gaze upon some object."^
' " Quo praesidio sine calumnia adhuc vivo. " Caput III.
' Caput V.

102 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The sentence foUowing is touched by his unhappy
hypersensitiveness : " Speech shriU, — if one may trust
to the reproaches of those who profess to be my friends,
— and yet cannot be heard when I lecture. My gaze is
fixed, as one who meditates, my color red and white,
my face an oblong, though not large, my upper teeth
larger than the lower.'"
The accuracy and justice of this description can only
be appreciated when reference is made to the extant
wood-cuts and medallion profile of the great physician.
On studying them also one realizes the truth of his
summing up : " Of all these things the result in me is
nothing noteworthy, which is so true that of the many
portrait-painters who have come to delineate me from
more or less distant countries, not one found my fea
tures sufficiently marked or distinguished, so that he
could depict them at a single survey. " And to this he
adds, as one who has forgotten a detaU: " In the base
of my throat there is a lump, like a hard Httle sphere,
not particularly conspicuous,^ derived and inherited
from my mother. " IV
It is not the purpose of this study to dwell upon the
varied and picturesque aspects of Cardan's career, nor
to describe the vicissitudes of his early days, those
' Caput V.
' "Sphaerula dura non admodum conspicua." Caput V.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 103
romantic incidents of his progress from the position
of struggling country doctor to that of physician
summoned and consulted by kings. This has been
done, and well done, elsewhere. Our concern here is
first and foremost with the self-student, with the auto
biographer, his method and his results, with the data
he gives and the influence he has established. Only
such outside incidents will be noted as contribute to
our understanding of his psychology.
For many years after his first success the University
of Bologna closed its doors against him; nor does this
fact surprise us in the light of what we are told. Car
dan was amazingly deficient in worldly prudence,
and had a gift for making enemies which has been
rarely equaled. He united in his proper person the
quarrelsomeness of a Romney with something of
Whistler's impish caprice. Surrounded from birth
by an atmosphere of hostUity and contempt, it bred
in him an habitual antagonism. As one reads the
account of his contests, public and private, and the
manner in which they were conducted, the wonder
is that he ever rose out of his condition of embittered
obscurity. " It is a singular defect of mine," he observes,'
" that I wiU talk of nothing with so much complacency
as that which I know to be displeasing to my hearers.
And in this I persevere knowingly and wiUingly; nei-
> Caput XIII.

104 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ther am I ignorant how many enemies this sole defect
procures me."
And again: —
" I have brought myself to compose my face into the
contrary [expression] always; therefore I am able to
simulate, although I cannot dissimulate. To the acquire
ment of this [simulation] I have bent myself with great
labor for fifteen perpetual years, and have succeeded.
... I am too little pious, but rather incontinent
in language, and (of which I am sorrowful and ashamed)
extremely irascible. And so on account of these things
I walk now in rags, now elegantly clad; now silent, now
talkative; now joyful, now sad; for in me everything
is doubled." '
In that section dealing with his attitude during dis
putes, he notes that he was particularly active and
valiant therein, although so nervously timid in other
respects; and it is indeed suggestive that his first book.
The Bad Practice of Medicine in Common Use, was a
collection of bluntly courageous truths, especially likely,
at the time, to give offense. But all this is not given
us in generalities merely. Among the most graphic
incidents is that of Jerome Cardan's interrupting, from
a back bench, the lecture of his sometime teacher and
rival, Branda Porr6, who was giving his class a citation
from Aristotle. Cardan declared that the speaker had
omitted the negative particle, thus changing the entire
• Caput XIII.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 105
sense of the passage. " ' No, surely! ' exclaimed Branda.
I mUdly maintained the opposite (meanwhUe abund
antly spitting according to my custom),' whereat he
angrUy sent for the codex, ordered the passage in ques
tion shown, and I read it as it was in common use.
Suspecting I played him a trick, reading him one thing
for another, he cried out I was deceiving my hearers, and
snatched the book from my hands. He began to read,
and when he came to the passage in dispute, read it,
was sUent, and every one was astounded." The man
ners here seem those of the stable rather than of the
lecture room, and it is amusing that certain of his trans
lators do their best for Cardan by causing the offensive
word to take the sense of English phlegm. But the Latin
leaves no doubt. And Cardan, who shows humor as
well as pugnacity, writes of this and other like incidents
with enjoyment; just as he treats with a certain
rough coUoquialism his relations with other mathe
maticians, — " Brother " Niccold Tartaglia, as he terms
him, or the ungainly person to whom Cardan alludes
in a letter as " that devil of a Messer Zuanne da
Coi " (questo diauolo di messer Zuanne da Coi).
Of his brilliant pupil, Lodovico Ferrari, and of
Antonio Maria Fior, both algebraists, he speaks with
more respect.
Faults of manner and bearing lead the analyst to the
' Caput XII,"Ego meo more pituitam quo abundo exercens."

106 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
deeper questions of error and vice. He approaches the
subject in this spirit:' —
"The entire argument is more difficult than any other,
and more dangerous to reflect upon; . . . yet, as the
readers of lives written by the persons themselves must
be convinced that they are genuine and sincere, I have
determined in this narration to expose myself. ... I
am not ignorant that nature has created me irascible
and libertine; among my chief sins are pride, proneness
to rage, pertinacity in contention, imprudence, and
desire of revenge. . . . Yet I am truthful, remembering
benefits, a lover of justice among relatives and friends,
with a contempt for wealth and a great desire of glory
after death. . . . Not for any reason have I in good for
tune or in happy success changed my customs, nor made
myself more haughty, nor more ambitious, nor more
impatient, nor a contemner of the poor, nor forget
ful of old friends, nor rougher in my manner, nor more
elated in language, nor used to more expensive clothes."
Cardan's attitude toward sensual vices irresistibly in
vites comparison with such other self-students as Au
gustin and Rousseau. It serves also to confirm us in our
impression that a man's attitude toward this subject
on paper has been his attitude toward it in life. Jerome
Cardan handles for us the sum total of his sins without
shrinking, with justice, and with a total absence of
pruriency. If nothing else were needed, his treatment
' Caput XIII.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 107
of the question displays an indubitable sanity. There
are no sentimental outpourings, no sensual analyses,
no endeavor to recaU to his palate by writing the
flavor of vices outworn. The investigation is con
ducted in an admirable temper, and with an eye single
to the interests of the truth. He lays most emphasis
upon the serious injury his excesses did to his hopes of
advancement in science, as well as to influences sur
rounding his children. Upon a single phrase which he
uses to describe a particular year of his life — "vitae
Sardanapalae " — his enemies and critics buUt a bulk
of serious accusation. Our present feeling, founded
upon a deeper confidence in Cardan's accuracy and
sincerity, leads us to believe that he made use of this
term to describe a life of general debauchery, and that if
he had intended anything specific he would have said so.
" WhUe I deliberated how rightly to Hve, either I
sinned partly from necessity, partly from pleasures offer
ing themselves daily, "he says sorrowfully. " Neglecting,
on account of an evil hope, my affairs themselves, I erred
in deliberating, and more frequently I sinned in the act."
The worst influence in Cardan's life he believed to
lie in his habit of gambling. Often he returns to this,
to lament the disgraces and troubles it brought upon
him, its evil effect upon the future of his sons.
" From earhest manhood I was immoderately given to
the game of chess, and having occupied myself there
with assiduously for many years, almost forty, it is not

108 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
easy in the teUing to explain briefly how much I suffered
in respect to my famUy affairs, with no compensation.
My dicing resulted worse, for my sons were instructed in
the game and my house often thrown open to gamblers.
No excuse remains for this but the poverty of my birth
and the distresses of my position, for I, in the reliev
ing of this by gambling, was not altogether foolish.
I prefer to serve the truth at all times, knowing weU
that silence does not excuse sin.'" Surely these phrases
are enough to show plainly that the man who wrote
them did not shirk his responsibUities when the full
penalty of his chUdren's disgrace fell upon him.
Over the innumerable detaUs of life and habits which
the phUosopher has left us, this is hardly the place to
linger. They form a most curious commentary, and
serve to show his passion for minutiae. That he pre
ferred fish to meat, and that of meats, veal, weU beaten
with the blades of knives before it was stewed in its
own liquor, was his favorite; that he slept ten hours a
day when in health, took only half a pint of white wine,
watered, with his dinner; that oU suited him and onions
benefited him, and that sweets and peaches did not dis
agree with him, — aU these and much more he describes
to us.
The student is referred to Mr. Morley's biography,
wherein all this information is admirably assorted and
digested. When Cardan teUs us: ^ "I deHght in pen-
' Caput XIII. ' Caput XVIII.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 109
knives, and to provide myself have spent more than
twenty gold crowns; also have I spent much money on
various sorts of pens, and in preparations for writing,
I daresay, no less than two hundred crowns. I love
gems, vessels, and table-service in bronze and silver,
painted glass globes, and rare books," — we see those
tastes which sent him to the gaming-table. He was also
extravagantly fond of animals, to such a degree that
he places them thus in a list of the pleasures of
life: " History, Hberty, continency, small birds, cats and
dogs, and consolation after death." In his younger
days he was shy and morose, dreading the comments
on his Ulegitimacy and poverty, the sneers on his odd
manner and appearance. But after fame brought him
deference, and he became the physician to monarchs,
he assumed a tone of social superiority and expressed
his preferences with decision. " I prefer solitude to
company, since very few persons are not rascals, and
none are truly learned. I say not that I require
learned discussion, for all that is a small matter; but why
should I ever be obliged to lose my time? For that
is what I abhor."' And the protest is one at aU times
echoed by the student. V
When Fazio Cardan began to observe signs of an
exceptional mind in his son, he became anxious that
the boy should pursue a career of law. This seemed to
' "Hoc est quod abhominor."

no THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
him the best field in which Jerome might develop both
his powers of logic and his love for varied information.
At the end of the section wherein Cardan has described
the regimen of his life, he sets down his reason for mak
ing choice of another profession. AssaUed and weak
ened by successive maladies, yet passionately anxious
for distinction, he early set to work to study his own
constitution and to establish a rule of Hfe. There again
are seen his scientific attitude and the flashes of intel
lectual domination, which were never whoUy obscured
by his perverse temper and ill-regulated nerves.
" I have remained in this habit from an early age in
order that I might preserve life. The study of medicine
rather than law aided this purpose, both as closer to
an end and as common to the whole world, also to aU
ages; again, as less artificial and as more conformable to
reason, to the logic of eternal nature, and not to the
opinions of men. Therefore have I embraced these
studies and not jurisprudence."
His profession was followed by Cardan with ardor,
though often with caprice, and always with that ten
dency toward diffuseness and that love of novelty which
were his bane. Nowhere in this book is he more interest
ing than in the chapters dealing with his inteUectual
growth, from that on Cogitations as to Perpetuating my
Name to those named Erudition : How Acquired and
Cultivated and Five Properties Peculiar to Myself. In
the beginning he was hampered in his work by an insuf-

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 111
ficient memory, and was obliged to make notes for
everything. " Quantum potui minus memoriae reliqui
quam scriptis," he puts it. But, as appears to be
sometimes the case with this function, (and here con
nected beyond doubt with the early conditions of
anaemia displayed by Cardan), after reaching a cer
tain point in age and development his powers of
memory became both sure and prodigious, carrying
him onward by huge leaps which appeared to him
nothing less than supernatural. His Latin came slowly
indeed, he says, compared to the rapidity with which
he acquired French, Spanish, and Greek — the last
chiefly in a dream. The time has gone by when we can
join the ScaHgers and Bayle in a laugh over this state
ment. Like many of his statements, it is far more im
portant than could be reaHzed by his contemporaries.
The effort made by Cardan to understand and to
account for his mental processes, is full of sugges
tiveness for us to-day. He must have been totally
ignorant of the logic of mental development. At this
time the circulation of the blood had not been dis
covered; Vesalius was painfuUy gathering the data for
his anatomy; no such thing was suspected as the nerv
ous system. A powerful imagination like Cardan's
might make one or two happy hits, but cloudy indeed
must have appeared the wonder of consciousness. That
he should have accounted to himself for such phe
nomena as this sudden increase in memorizing and

112 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
visualizing faculty while learning Greek, by a semi-
supernatural explanation, is not only reasonable, it is
inevitable. Thefact of the suddenness, the rapidity, was
plain to him; nothing could shake for him the fact. He
did not have Professor Charles Richet to assure him,
after six years of minute experiment: " There exists in
certain persons, at certain moments, a faculty of acquir
ing knowledge which has no rapport with our normal
faculties of the kind." No statistical notes existed by
which he could compare his own case with others. And
when we remember how large a part dreams played
in Cardan's life, the connection between the two ideas
ceases to be in any manner fantastic.
In many other ways the visualizing power of his
imagination bewUdered this observer. His perception
of the multiplicity of personality deepened for him the
mystery of existence. Seeing himself so great a mass of
contradictions, Hke a chUd's puzzle made of different
colored pieces, calm wisdom jostled by unreasonable
moods, there are moments when he seems almost about
to grasp the idea of the interrelation of intellectual,
nervous, and physical conditions. Dimly he perceives the
extent of those reactions which have steadUy widened
their limits for us, tiU, exhausted by the effort of com
prehension, he simply disposes of the subject by plac
ing it frankly in the realm of the supernatural.
He was from the first passionately desirous of fame.
" I entered upon thereasons for desiring to perpetuate

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 113
a name far earlier than I was able to realize it; for
beyond doubt I believed that life bears a double
aspect, — the one material and common both to animals
and to the race, the other peculiar to mankind, studious
of glory and of heroes." Then, with commingled pride
and sense of grievance, he proceeds to explain:
" Truly on the one hand nature faUed me, hope
abandoned me; on the other hand there was nothing
on which I owed it to myself to rely, neither on riches,
nor on power, nor on firm health, nor on bodily vigor,
nor on a troop of friends, nor on any especial industry
of my own; nor was I even famUiar with the Latin
tongue, . . . nor had I anything from my parentage
but misery and shame."
" How shouldst write, I ask myself, things to be read,
and of anything to thee noble and noteworthy, so that
readers can desire [it]? And in what style, with ele
gance of substance, so that they may continue to
read? "
He glories in his persistency, repeating and dwell
ing, almost with relish, upon the Hst of his initial mis
fortunes and disadvantages.
" I speak of the pleasures of the senses, of pageants,
infirmities, the impotency of men, the malice of rivals,
of successes not prospering, struggles, conflicts, threat-
enings from those in power, suspicion of certain people,
famUy embarrassments, lack of many things, dissua-

114 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
sions from some, whether real or half friends, and finally
the perils on account of heresy which assaU me. . . .
" Therefore it is no wonder that, thus compeUed, I
burned with the love of fame; rather is it a marvel that
notwithstanding these reasons this strong desire per
sists." These sentences were written at seventy-five, after
Cardan had experienced the vanity of aU things, in
cluding the fame for which he burned.
"It is not hidden from me that these things are
matters of indifference for future ages, and especially
to strangers; but," he says, and here his mind rises to its
fuU height, " of what else should I speak, having made
it clear that there is naught pertaining to mortals which
is not vain, like the empty shadow of a dream, except
it be those facts which make up the sum of human
existence? " Here we note again that sense that
" there is nothing more pleasing and important than
knowledge of the truth," which has governed the writer
throughout, and which gives so deep a pathos and
sincerity to his self-delineation. The note of analysis
here is depreciatory; particularly so, no doubt, since the
book was written after his son's execution for murder;
and Cardan, as we have seen, shouldered his fuU share
of parental responsibUity for that tragedy. Yet he can
not deny himself one boast: —
" Although I am most timid and cold of heart, yet
I am warm of head, and given to perpetual thought.

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 115
revolving in my mind things many and great and even
impossible." It must have been these great thoughts
which gave him happiness in his feverish life; for among
his joys he reckons chiefly " the hope of the unex
pected, exercises in the various arts, and the many
changes and vastness of the universe."
A perpetual hopefulness upbore him, which he took
for a special gift of his tutelary genius. This and his
independence, in an age when the scholar was too often
servile, were two qualities which he regarded as his chief
compensation for existence.
Magnificent is his retort upon the sneers and criti
cisms of this world: " I have lived to myself so far as
has been permitted to me, and in hope of the future I
have despised the present." VI
Before discussing that aspect of the De Vita Propria
Liber most in dispute, or considering those sections
which first caused men like Naud^, Bayle, and Niceron
to proclaim the essential madness of the writer, we have
at least prepared ourselves by meeting and talking
with the person concerned. We have noted his heredity,
examined his physique, heard of his illness and the cor
respondence of certain nervous symptoms, seen him
in the lecture hall and among men, and weighed the
temper of his mind. Posterity has played the part of
alienist to many a great name, but rarely has it been

116 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
given so complete a history of the case. Moreover it were
well for us to shoulder the responsibility of a verdict,
seeing the bias of the contemporary jury; for were our
enemies to be the judges of our mental soundness, how
many of us would walk free of restraint? Cardan's
morbid hypersensitiveness and irritabUity were joined
to a blunt independence and lack of tact, which would
have made his path thorny enough without the addi
tional disadvantages of illegitimacy and eccentricity.
It was difficult during his life for him to obtain a hearing;
the difficulty persisted even after his death. He be
lieved so deeply in that hope of future fame for which
he had despised the present, that he was confident he
had left behind him a document which was to prove
of permanent service to his contemporaries in aiding
them to understand the composition and operation of
a certain type of mind. It was hardly for them, it is
rather for us, to decide if he were justified.
That the verdict upon Cardan, measured by contem
porary knowledge, was natural, is not for an instant
denied here. Imagine a modern physician going to Car
dan or to Cassenate and maintaining that the way to
control epidemics of smallpox was to give the disease
to every one in a milder form; or that to cure certain
cases of deficiency and backwardness in chUdren he
had only to remove the small hypertrophied glands
situated back of the nose! Can we doubt their opinion
of that man's sanity? The need for a retrial of Car-

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 117
dan's case lies in the fact that the verdict as it now stands
has deprived his data of their weight and value, and
the modern student therefore of much that is suggestive.
For here, (it does no harm to repeat the phrase),
" by the grace of God," sits the first psychologist,
gathering material by the aid of a scrupulous scientific
method, and under " an imperious sense of duty," for
the furtherance of a science as yet unborn.
That " twofold " naturp which he observed in him
self, is further displayed when it comes to the question
of his religious attitude. This may best be described
as orthodoxwith flashes of skepticism. By temperament
credulous, nervous, and introspective, he was perpe
tually under the correction of an austere and upright
intellect. Superstition forever grovelling, inteUect striv
ing to lift up superstition and being itself dragged down
by the weight, — such is the sculptured group a Rodin
might make to picture Cardan's soul. Happiness
would seem impossible to a nature with so definite
a line of cleavage.
In this book we may observe the souls of many
men. In some, superstition itself is radiantly clothed
by faith and walks with an uplifted brow. In others,
a splendid and naked reason, the freest thing in the
universe, stands before us, showing our weakness, and
showing us also the purity of that " haute conscience
morale plac6e en face de I'univers " ' which forms the
» E. Renan, " Marc-Aur^Ie."

118 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
religion of a thinking man. But in this unhappy Ital
ian physician, these two forces appear evenly matched
and perpetually at war. On every page the struggle
is before us. If Cardan recovers from an attack of
gout by the aid of prayers and offerings to his patron,
the blessed San Martino, he adds nevertheless: " I
did not faU to take the proper drugs." If he predicts
the death of an acquaintance (he was, unfortunately
for himself, given to such predictions), he says:
" Not only the stars told me, but I knew it by my
medical art." No one appears to have more readUy
accepted miraculous illusions as coming directly from
heaven, yet " fasting," he observes in De Rerum
Varietate, "naturaUy prepares men to these things,"
and he further notices that " solitariness ... is
the cause of all hermits' Ulusions." He reminds one,
in aU these things, of that devout Roman CathoHc
trained nurse who was fervently delighted to give
her patient some water from Lourdes, but pasteur
ized it first. Similar is the contrast, for instance, be
tween this physician's, to us, wUd diagnoses and the
intelligent, reasonable treatment of his patients. He
may decide that asthma is due to an unhealthy tem
perature of the brain, and that its attacks coincide with
the phases of the moon. Yet the treatment he pre
scribed for his portly, self-indulgent patient, Arch
bishop Hamilton, reads for all the world like a modern
" cure," — few drugs, ten hours sleep per day, light diet,

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 119
Httle wine, cold baths, and horseback exercise. That
this regimen made of the archbishop a new man, sur
prises us to-day much less than it did his entourage.
But that a doctor so intelligent as to believe that
everything together wUl contribute to the success of a
cure — diet, sleep, friends, sunshine, as well as drugs —
should also cast horoscopes and rely on astrology, need
not astonish us after all. Credulity appears to be an
affair of temperament rather than of inteUect; and
scorners of Cardan should not forget those eminent
scientists who listened so gravely to Mrs. Piper,
and who sponsor the Psychical Research Society.
Phrenology has counted among its followers quite as
many important names as astrology; and besides,
credulity, in Cardan's day, was a part of the very fabric
of men's minds. Mr. Morley, who is made rather
uneasy by it, cites similar attitudes in Kepler, Newton,
Pascal, and Tycho Brahe.
The fairness of mind wherewith, as we have seen. Car
dan presents all the facts in cases of seeming miracle,
is to us but a proof of his serious autobiographical in
tention; to his contemporary readers it seemed but
another inconsistency. If San Martino 's intercession
cured the gout, why mention useless drugs? Neither
can they see anything consistent in Cardan's analysis
of the factors which contributed to his success in medi
cine. His strict following of Galen, whom he imitated
in more ways than one, is the first given of these; the

120 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
second is experience, " which taught me more," he
asserts, " than any rules." The final factor is that in
sight into the cause of disease which was a gift to him,
he believed, of his tutelary daemon. Like the results of
certain mathematical calculations, this insight was not
made up of separate steps of reasoning, conscious enough
for Cardan to perceive and follow, but belonged to his
visualizing imagination. He saw the cause of disease,
or the total of a cube root, he maintains, in the fore
part of his brain, as if it came in a dazzling light. Of
course this statement was received with shouts of deri
sive laughter. Yet, laying aside the exaggeration which
must come from any attempt to attach definite concepts
to what is inconceivable to most of us, — to catch and
hold any part of that nebulous and deHcate haze in
which so many of our mental processes are shrouded, —
Cardan's description appears to be fairly accurate. The
testimony of other rapid calculators bears him out upon
this point. SimUar statements are given, though less
fully, by Descartes, by Pascal, by Isaac Newton, and
later by Zerah Colburn and by Bidder, the Calculating
Boy. These possessors of this faculty appear to main
tain it as a visualizing power of the imagination, pre
senting to their minds, in one image, the total result
of a number of logical steps taken with inconceivable
rapidity, and subconsciously. Cardan's statement is
but another example of what Mr. Symonds calls " mis
interpreted observation"; and our fuUer knowledge bears

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 121
him out in the accuracy of this observation quite as
completely as Cellini's statement about his halo is ex
plained by his translator.
Unquestionably, similar faculties are put in opera
tion by the trained physician during diagnosis. Any one
who has seen a great doctor at work, who has observed
the glance which at once grasps and fits together an
hundred detaUs, whUe to the alert intellect a clear image
is presented, wiU at once recognize the picture of Car
dan before the cradle of the sick chUd, in the house
of Sfondrato. We can see the gabbling incompetents
who filled the room, talking of this and that and squab
bling among themselves; then the arrival before the
frightened father of this unknown doctor, — surely not a
reassuring figure, barefooted, poorly dressed, absorbed
and brusque; his pause before the cradle of the patient;
his examination during a sUence of perfect concentra
tion, and then the authoritative pronouncing of the
disease. Truth had flashed before that inner eye.
Closely examined, therefore, it may be seen how
little foundation these two statements of Jerome Car
dan's give for terming him lunatic. That he should
have thought them supernatural gifts was not only
natural but logical. Since he could relate his faculty
to no natural process with which he was acquainted,
it must be supernatural. How could one expect him
to think otherwise? The anomaly lay in his both pos
sessing the faculty and trying to understand it; his

122 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
being, in other words, both an Italian of the sixteenth
century and a psychologist of the twentieth.
In the section termed Properties Peculiar to Myself
he describes the manifestations of his visualizing ima
gination. Passing into conditions almost of ecstasy
during study is another of these properties. Warn
ings in dreams and from spots on his fingers are minor
idiosyncrasies. It is his statement of these peculiari
ties on which the charge of insanity is chiefly based.
But he was made also the subject of fierce attacks
because of his confidence in his cures of consumption.
Now that we have heard what treatment he prescribed
for Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, we can readUy
believe that his apparent success in certain cases of
consumption might well make him confident. It only
remains to point, without further comment, to the
chapter discussing these cures; for he does not in a
single instance omit to tell us whether the patient
relapsed and whether he dies of his disease. This entire
justice does not bespeak an over-confidence, whUe it gives
us greater warrant for believing him trustworthy.
Cardan's belief in omens and visions was extreme even
for his own day, and is perhaps sufficient to warrant M.
Ribot in calling him "n6vropathe " and " d6s6quUibr6."
The keynote to a fuller understanding, however, lies
in the information we have been given as to his chUd
hood, which links him with other cases of anaemic
chUdren in more modern days. Conditions of over-

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 123
stimulated imagination and nerves in badly nourished
youth are common and sufficiently recognized. Among
autobiographers in this respect, Cardan is not alone.
Later will be found such instances as those of Guibert
de Nogent, of Agrippa d'Aubign^, of John Bunyan,
and, nearer our own day, of John Addington Symonds,
Samuel Roberts, P. G. Hamerton, and others.
In a footnote, Mr. Morley asserts visions simi
lar to Cardan's in his own chUdhood, similar both
in texture and in the manner of their apparition. An
arch of transparent figures, colorless, buUt up of smoke
like rings, rose out of the carpet from one corner of
the room, to descend in another and vanish. Houses,
castles, animals, knights on horseback, plants, trees,
trumpeters blowing, groves, forests and flowers, — these
swept before the half-dreaming eyes of Fazio Cardan's
poor little overstrained and underfed child, and thus
early habituated him to marvels. A red cock haunted
his bedtime hours. With approaching manhood these
visions dwindled, but they had stamped his mind with
an ineffaceable credulity. Every act of existence was
accompanied by its miracle. Howling dogs, croaking
ravens, sparks emitted from broken sticks, tremblings
of the house, and the seeming non-natural action of
fire, water, and wind, — by such incidents the philos
opher strove to guide his steps in this obscure and
perplexing world.
He was, it will readUy be believed, one of those care-

124 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
less and preoccupied persons who often seem singled out
for the blows of fate. Dogs rushed at him, bricks fell on
him, houses he tenanted collapsed. The tutelary genius
who saved his life on three occasions was in truth the
happiest invention of Cardan's optimism; for existence
would hardly have been endurable but for some such
shifting of the responsibUity. He was affectionate and
emotional in all his relations of Hfe, — a respectful and
forgiving son, an over-indulgent and devoted father,
and a kind husband. Little is told us of his wife save
by the Carmen with which he bewaUs her death.
He beheld her first in a dream, standing in a garden
such as Pulci might describe. When he came to know
her, the situation seemed hopeless. "Truly, I said to
myself, what am I to do about this maid? If I take her
to wife, poor as I am, having nothing, and burdened
with her brothers and sisters, I shall perish, since I can
scarcely support myself. If I try to abduct or secretly
possess her, it wiU not faU to be known; and her father,
the captain, is not like to suffer such an insult to go
unpunished. In either case what wUl become of me?
If the best happens, flight must be my task. 0 miser
able me! . . . While these and like thoughts revolved
in my mind, it seemed better to die than to live in
such a manner."
Their marriage took place among evU omens. The
eldest son, Gianbattista, at birth strikingly resembled
Cardan's own father, Fazio. He grew up an apparently

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 125
harmless, if not very brilHant youth, and certainly
gained no benefit from the society of the gamblers and
musicians who fiUed the house. For this, as for the
whole responsibility of his children. Cardan acknow
ledged the blame. " It is true," he observes, " that I am
as deaf and blind when I am with my books." Gian
battista went from bad to worse, married a woman of
the town; and, after a wretched life trying to support
her and her famUy, he put arsenic into their food at
supper. It killed his wife.
This infamy overtook the father at the summit of his
fame. He had made a triumphal return from Scotland
and his cure of Archbishop HamUton's case. He had
refused the post of private physician to the King of
Denmark. In Paris and Lyons, patients with bags of
gold ducats came from leagues away to consult him. At
the time this blow fell, his health was, comparatively
speaking, good; the abnormalities of the nervous sys
tem had much diminished; his intellectual energies were
at their height. The strain of his son's trial revived his
attention to omens. Buzzings in his ears became fre
quent. "If the argument I entered upon was conten
tious," he has said, " the buzzing became a tumult of
voices." On the day the wretched Gianbattista con
fessed his crime, Cardan had noticed a red mark on
his finger; his bed had been shaken by an earthquake.
" When I was sitting in my library I heard with diffi
culty the voice, teUing briefly, of one who confesses his

126 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
misery to a priest, choked, moaning in its accent. . . .
My heart was torn asunder, broken."
The effect upon the old man was far-reaching. In
his son's defense he had spent all his money. There
were not wanting those to say that the murderer had
avaUed himself of his father's knowledge of drugs; and
at Cardan's seventy years the damage to his medical
reputation was irretrievable. He suffered a complete
prostration, " during which I could not bear to look
upon my books," he writes, "... and hate all I here
tofore esteemed." He begins once more to talk about
his tutelary daemon, to remember vague mysterious
happenings in the past, to turn his eyes upon the mirac
ulous and supernatural world.
Belief in a daemon was not, of course, original. It
came nearer than Socrates, for Fazio had had it before
his son. But in Jerome's case it was bound up with
his appreciation of his own contradictions. "At times I
seem happy and loquacious, at others silent and mel
ancholy, which serves to show the double that I am."
The daemon guided this double nature, gave the vivid,
warning dreams, the half-waking dawn-visions, and
helped him to take those deep draughts of Greek.
The daemon displayed to him the results of mathemati
cal calculations and the rapid diagnoses in disease. It
is much as if he were following Professor James's
humorous advice: " Whatever you are totally ignorant
of, assert to be the explanation of everything else."

THE "DE VITA PROPRIA LIBER" 127
Nothing is more contradictory than the humor of
Cardan. He writes often with a twinkle in his eye.
Take his account of his reason for abandoning a certain
series of public lectures. " In the year 1552, having
left in the house a little cat of placid and domestic
habits, she jumped upon my table and tore at my
public lectures; yet my book of Fate she touched not,
though it was the more exposed to her attacks. I gave
up my chair, nor returned to it for eight years." And
by the way, the various versions of this vivacious little
anecdote weU display the uncertainties in translation of
the De Vita Propria. Professor Mantovani renders
catida as a little puppy, and super abacum as the top of
a work bench. Mr. Morley calls the animal a cat, which
to us sounds more likely, and places the scene of her
depredations on the roof of Cardan's house. Two simpler
Latin words do not exist, and it serves to show that a
full, authoritative translation of the De Vita Propria
Liber is demanded by the interests of the case.
Whether cat or dog, in-doors or out, we may be quite
sure that Cardan would have found his pet's action
equally ominous.
But omens now and guiding dreams were dulled and
broken. There were no more ecstasies of study nor
dazzling revelations of truth. Cardan was an old man,
poor and lonely. De Thou mentions having seen him in
Rome the year before he died, " habU16 d'une fagon
toute extraordinaire." His eccentricities of dress and

128 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
bearing were just those we have come to associate with
the typical learned man, with the absent-minded, abrupt
student. Men nudged each other when they saw this
strange old man go by, with the fixed gaze, the un
even gait, the forked yellow beard, talking to himself.
So men have looked upon the savant from Dr. Johnson
to Theodor Mommsen. "Since no man has ever owned
full tranquillity nor peace," Cardan says phUosophi-
caUy, "doubtless he never will."
He wrote the last words of this study after the cul
minating insult of an imprisonment for heresy. They
are written in a spirit of justice; for it is justice he de
mands as he answers the questions of "that imperious
sense of duty." Some bitterness must have left him,
some peace befallen when he closed the book. A month
later we may write of him as he wrote of his father:
" Mens aeterna manet." " There remains the eternal
mind."

CHAPTER VIII
INFLUENCE AND IMITATION
While every one may not agree with Leslie Stephen
that " a duU autobiography has never been written,"
he will at least concede that every important autobio
graphy has been imitated. The degree of personal in
fluence and the extent of this imitation must be glanced
at before we leave the general aspects of the subject.
In his hand the reader of any personal narrative holds
one end of a long chain, which, if he will, he may exam
ine link by link. It has been proved that the attitude
which regards the Confessions of Rousseau or those
of Teresa as isolated phenomena, is erroneous. The
space of time intervening between the manifestations
of this impulse argues nothing. As logically might we
assert that the thunderclap has no connection with the
lightning flash, because they do not reach us simulta
neously. As a matter of fact, these spaces of time are
much briefer than is supposed. Study of contempora
neous autobiographical groups throws much light on
the origin of apparently sporadic examples.
It is not too much to say that from the date when the
self-presentation became an established form of literary
expression, the personal influence of the author became
a matter of the deepest significance. No sincere sub-

130 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
jective autobiography has been written which has not
exercised an influence, directly or indirectly, upon the
generations following. Next to the quality of the auto
biographical intention the measure of this influence may
be taken as a factor in determining its sincerity, in
accounting for its survival. If the document under our
consideration has exercised no traceable personal influ
ence on later similar documents, we may have warrant
for doubting its underlying sincerity, for questioning
its value. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule,
but they are few.
The objection that it is humanly impossible to em
brace all extant autobiographical material in the com
pass of a single survey, and that the omission of one
document nullifies the whole work, is thus answered by
the fact. Selection of cases becomes not only natural
but advisable, according to the laws underlying the
cases themselves. Thus we may rest secure in the
knowledge that if we have lost little in the records of
.ffimilius Scaurus or Quintus Lutatius Catulus, we have
lost much in the Commentaries of Sulla, with their
acknowledged influence over the mind and style of
Caesar. Turning to our three archetypes, Caesar, Augustin,
and Cardan, we see at once the confirmative proof of
their influence, traceable, both directly and indirectly,
from record to record, from mind to mind. Blaise de
Monluc, marichal de France, acknowledges his indebt-

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 131
edness to the example of Caesar in a plain statement at
the head of his book. His Commentaires were termed
by no less a person than Henri IV, Le Bible des
Soldats. The manner as well as the matter of the
book, even over the stretch of centuries, preserves a
certain spurring energy. It is a manual of military
behavior, of personal courage, written for the era when
the individual counted for much on the field of battle.
"Arms and the man" is Monluc's theme; he counsels,
he warns, he exhorts. " 0 capitaines, mes compagnons ! ' '
he cries, see how I fared, and felt, and overcame I To
day, when war is a question of money and machinery
rather than of men; when it is a rare and distasteful
episode in the life of an individual or of a nation, one
forgets that it was once an absorbing and splendid
daily business. So Monluc regarded it. " M'estant re
tire chez moy en Page de soixante-quinze ans, pour
trouver quelque repos aprSs tant et tant peines par
moy souffertes pendant le temps de cinquante-cinq
ans que j'ay port6 les armes," begins this sixteenth
century soldier, disdaining to apologize for any lack
of the literary habit, and yet adding: " Je prie ceux
qui les liront de ne les prendre point comme escrits de
la main d'un historien, mais d'un vieux soldat, et encore
gascon, qui a escrit savieS, la v6rit6, et en guerrier."
Unforgettably vivid are his pictures, even through the
clouds of antique, involved French. Though Monluc's
life was all but passed in harness, yet his volumes are

132 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
no mere bald records of sieges and skirmishes. He is
subjective and minute to such a degree that one wonders
if some study of the individual warrior, as such, did
not reaUy underlie his purpose. His own constitution,
physical and mental, passes under close observation;
his energy, his cruelty to the enemy, his severity to his
household, his vanity, his wounds, his fevers, their
treatment, their effects, — nothing escapes him. When
his tactlessness to his sovereign does him disfavor, he
comments on it: "0 qu'un homme qui vit parmy les
grands doit estre sage! " he warns his readers. Boasting
of his savage courage and his feats of daring cruelty,
he yet avows: " Que je me trouve, en voyant les enne-
mis, en teUe peur que je sentois le coeur et les membres
s'affoiblir et trembler. Puis, ayant dit mes petites
priSres latines, je sentois tout-a,-coup venir un chaleur
au coeur et aux membres," and in the avowal shows
an experience we notice also in Lord Wolseley. This
account, and the description of a wound from an arque-
busade, which " broke his face all in pieces," serve him
as textsfor long analyses of religion as an aid to courage,
and of the surgical resources of the battlefield at that
time — analyses which gp beyond the surface into the
psychology of the subject. In fact, Monluc's extraor
dinary combination of subjective self-delineation with
almost an epic touch in crises of excitement, caused his
book to have an instant power over a large circle of lay
and mUitary readers. In Paul Courteault's Monluc,

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 133
an admirably thorough study, little material has been
produced to alter the total effect of the Commentaires.
Courteault himself thinks that Monluc was more cal
culating and complex than he would avow; that his
whole figure, possibly, is too simple, too idealized.'
And, with that ignorance of psychological bases which
so often hampers the critic in his conclusions, Courteault
takes pains to point out that, while Monluc wrote
primarUy for apologetic reasons and to establish another
view of certain of his actions, yet " il 6talait avec une
franchise terriblement naive ses actes les moins recom-
mandables." The adjective terriblement here is very
Ulustrative of the terre-a-terre attitude of the historian,
even when his critical work is authoritative. Cour
teault does us lasting service by the connection he
establishes between the Marshal's work and that of
Martin du Bellay. From du Bellay, Monluc learned
method and arrangement, and he revised his book by
the aid of the Histoire de Notre Temps of Guillaume
Paradin. Unquestionably, the Commentaires served
to whet that sixteenth century appetite for war stories
which, Courteault thinks, gave an impetus to the whole
literary movement of the French memoire.
However that may be, an outbreak of imitations
foUowed Monluc, military and military-political. Such
are the Memoires of the Dues de Sully and La Roche
foucauld; such also, frankly inspired by Monluc, is that
» P. Courteault, " Monluc," page 612.

134 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
of Bassompierre. But Bassompierre is not a man of
one idea. Longing for military glory, he yet endangered
his ambition by his incurable giddiness of mind. He
was a creature of humor and of wit, with a lucid and
vivacious style and touches of modern irreverence. No
one can forget that Saint-Simon, reading in his tent
the Memoires de Bassompierre, was roused by it to
write his own greater Memoires. Knowing Saint-Simon,
we turn to his predecessor expecting to find him at
least the same kind of a man, and his book of a simUar
texture, stiff, serious, dignified. Nothing more unlike
the truth can be conceived; no man more unlikely to
affect Saint-Simon could be imagined. Bassompierre is
everything Saint-Simon most disliked, distrusted, and
deprecated. He is flippant, he is dissipated, he is
irreverent; he dared employ toward his sovereign a
tone of lively repartee. He was never free from money
difficulties or undignified amours. There is only one
apparent ground of sympathy between these two men:
in the pages of Bassompierre, as in those of Saint-Simon,
questions of prerogative, caste, and court etiquette
appear treated at disproportionate length. For the
rest, had we read that Saint-Simon, the rigid, the cere
monious, the bulwark of the divinity of kings, threw
the volume of the impudent Bassompierre across his
tent with outraged indignation, we should have been
less surprised than to be told he read it with a delight
which spurred him to imitation.

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 135
The Mimoires de Saint-Simon form a historical mon
ument, dominating and visible as the pyramids. Others
have laboriously climbed its seventy-two stories, sur
veyed it, measured it, tested the contents; in this place
it must perforce remain merely a cloudy bulk outlined
against the horizon. Of the builder we are told only that
his youth was somewhat delicate, that his marriage was
happy, and that he was fond of his father-in-law. Little
else is written of the personality of Saint-Simon
himself, whose aim is political and historical, — in
fact, the notes were at first intended to illuminate
some definite history. A certain picture, of course, is
gained of the man's individuality from the extraordinary
individuality of his work. One would know much of
Gibbon from the Decline and Fall, even if there had
been no autobiography. Saint-Simon's passion for ques
tions of prerogative and for the minutiae of court cere
monial, shows us the formal temper of his mind; while
the picture he gives us of himself in other small ways,
his biographer, M. Gaston Boissier, thinks complete
and true. The book is prefaced by an essay demon
strating his theory of history, and showing his fear lest
persons or events should be forgotten or misunderstood
by the generations to come. It was the Journal de Dan-
geau which gave the author at once a plan and a frame
work; Dangeau's bald, dated statements became the
beams and joists of Saint-Simon's immense edifice. A
massive and complete structure, it is composed of in-

136 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
numerable fragments representing events and portraits.
No figure of importance — of importance we mean to
Saint-Simon — but is carved upon its stones, in rehef,
salient, vivid, detailed. Its fullness and thoroughness,
the bigness of its plan, and, above all, its success, have
had their influence on every reader placed in like posi
tion. It became the measure and the mould of the later
court record.
D'Argenson imitates Saint-Simon in minuteness,
though his detaUs have never the authority of his
model. In French political life thereafter, a memoire
became almost one of the conventions of a certain
eminence; just as a man on a height may be expected
to report to those below what he sees from his position.
Knowledge of human nature should show us that not
one of the latter-day political memoiristes, be he Bar-
ras, Guizot, Marmont, Metternich, Pasquier, Talleyrand
(to name but few), sat down to his work without a
thought of the great exemplar. It is a long walk from
Caesar to Talleyrand, yet the path is plainly marked over
the years.
The simplest, the most direct case of personal influ
ence and imitation has, naturaUy, been the first pre
sented, in the hope that it may lead to convictions on
the subject of influence in general. Proof in chapter and
verse is not always forthcoming; the subject himself
may be ignorant of an act of imitation which seems
plain to the observer. Man is here yet again the chUd

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 137
at play. Once the student of these narratives has
come to cultivate a feeling for personal influences, dif
ficult as they may be to analyze and define, there grows
up a conviction on the whole subject that is deep and
unshakable. It is the same as in life.
My friend James meets and forms an intimacy with
my friend John. A year later one notes, perhaps with
amusement, perhaps with annoyance, how the cham
bers of James's mind echo to the sounding footsteps of
John. One cannot pick out a phrase of James's as bor
rowed from John, nor any special one opinion of James's
as adopted from John; but one feels that whereas
James had been, for instance, utUitarian, he is becom
ing hedonistic; where he was doubtful and qualificative,
he is now violently dogmatic; or that whereas he for
merly denounced Wesleyanism or the tariff, he is now
primed with too-fluent argument in favor of those be
neficent institutions. Unquestionably, James believes
that he has arrived at this change of view of his own
mind, or, at the most, that talk with John has only
modified his opinions; but his friends see and hear
John throughout the temperament and mind of
James. Our self-biographer is James to some former self-bio
grapher John. Consciously or unconsciously, according
as temperament or intellect has most submitted to the
influence, he will be found in the grip of his friend. His
denial matters nothing; like Rousseau, he may protest

138 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
an entire originality. In such cases one cannot point to
open acknowledgment like Saint-Simon's of Bassom
pierre, or Monluc's of Caesar; yet one's conviction of that
influence remains.
The idea known in religious phrase as " bearing
testimony to the workings of God " in an individual, is
original with Augustin. It has never been expressed
with more feeling and freshness than in his opening
chapters. Repeated, reiterated by ardent readers of the
Confessions as the reason urging them to a like out
pouring, it is sometimes alleged with Augustin's name
as avowed sponsor to the effort, sometimes with the
sponsorship only of Augustin's idea. To examine the
links of one among many chains, it is felt and present
in Guibert, in Teresa and Huet, and so linked to the
Quietist, Jeanne de la Mothe-Guyon. The extraordi
nary likeness of Madame Guyon in idea, in attitude,
even in phrase and expression, to the group of English
Quakers headed by George Fox, has not passed unob
served by the historian of religious movements. Such
similarities have been regarded heretofore only in two
ways, either as single isolated phenomena, or as minor
and unimportant eddies in a large single current. Much
remains to be done in the study of the personal forces
exerted by one individual upon another individual in
the matter of religious emotion, which the written doc
ument preserves and concentrates. Of so much power
is this personal force that if the conditions directly

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 139
surroundmg it are unfavorable, it is apt to pass through
the unfavorable medium and to manifest itself at a
distance. This is just what happened in the case of
Madame Guyon, as Quaker historians have pointed
out. The state of society in France during Madame
Guyon's career as a religious reformer, was such as to
preclude any lasting impression. The sparks of incip
ient fervor were soon smothered; all, that is, save those
across the Channel, which fell upon tinder ready to leap
into flame. Any examination of the characteristics of
this movement belongs to another section, but it should
be noted in passing that the whole subject of seven
teenth century piety remains a field rich in suggestive
simUarities and differences.
Not for an instant must it be supposed that the lines
of influence we have just followed for the reader are
the only ones springing from our self-student arche
types. It would be more accurate to draw them as
figures are drawn in antique missals, surrounded by
rays, rays centring in the figure itself and spread
ing widely to zenith and nadir. The literature of each
civUized country will be found pierced to the heart by
one of these rays. The Caesar influence we chose to ex
amine in France; it might have been examined in Italy
with equaUy convincing results. The Augustin power
is transmitted along two main currents, separate and
distinct. On the one hand he is a church figure, a
personality canonized and typically Roman Catholic, a

140 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
father, owned by the church with a peculiar and fiHal
tenderness. On the other hand, his vital and indepen
dent piety causes him to be the favorite reading of the
zealot and the reformer. No influence has been stronger
at the crucial moment of religious change than Augus
tin's; no power is felt to rise more freely above all
questions of creed and sect, to work more intensely
upon the basic instincts of the human soul. Dissenter,
Protestant, Quaker, have one and all dreamed over his
Confessions their visions of an inspiring and enno
bling devotion. Catholic and heretic alike have turned
at his voice. The extent of his personal fascination, ob
served through their testimony, would fill a volume with
proper names. In the compass of the present study we
have sought to present the example of only one charac
teristic and typical manifestation.
Qualities which lead a reader to imitate the historical-
objective record, or the religious-subjective confession,
are simpler and less rare than those stimulated by a
scientific inquiry. The personal influence of Jerome
Cardan, therefore, is more difficult to trace. The mere
possession of the scientific spirit causes a writer to be
slow in acknowledging personal influence in general.
Moreover, in the first two cases the purpose itself is
considered to be sufficient. Because Caesar wrote com
mentaries Monluc writes them; because Monluc, Bas
sompierre; because Bassompierre, Saint-Simon. In the
same manner the pious heart leaps to follow Augustin,

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 141
never doubting that fervor wiU supply all deficiencies
of intellect or method.
No such good intention will suffice for the require
ments of scientific self-study. A high degree of imper
sonal aloofness, close observation, an ardent love of
abstract truth, — the combination of such faculties is
rare at any age. It was so rare in Cardan's day that he
feU at once under the suspicion of insanity. Yet the
very men who doubted the sanity of the De Vita
Propria Liber were the first to come under its power.
On minds of a certain caHbre, the effect of this book re
sembled the effect produced by Rousseau two hundred
years later. It provided an outlet for the expression of
special prevalent states of thought and feeling. The
reader beheld his own chaotic, inarticulate feelings
take form, and move and speak. The intellectual and
learned man for a hundred years following gained from
this volume of Cardan's an increased respect for " the
divinity, the ruling faculty within him."
The famous Huetius, Bishop Huet of Avranches, de
votes a part of the last chapter of his Commentaries
to discussing the relative candors of Augustin and Car
dan. Deeply interesting it is to see that although the
first has his affection, the method of the second has be
come his model. Similar acknowledgments to the De
Vita Propria Liber are made by Dr. Calamy and by
Richard Baxter, but more often we find an imitation ,
without acknowledgment. The Cardan method is very

142 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
marked in such cases as Herbert of Cherbury, Sir Sy
monds d'Ewes, the lawyer, and, rather later, John
Flamsteed, the astronomer royal. Bayle, in his article
on Cardan, comments on the effect which the " derniere
naivete" of this study produced on contemporary
minds: the fashion of Latin self -biographies followed
close on Cardan's heels; his friend Niccol6 TartagHa,
the algebraist, and Vesalius, the anatomist, left much,
though inchoate, autobiographical matter. At the head
of this later group of self-students stands Cardinal Bel-
larmin, who shows a noteworthy attention to physical
and mental detaUs. Suggestive also is the tract by
Lodovico Cornaro, called Discorsi della Vita sobria,
which made its appearance at about the same date. No
more, no less than the exposition of Cornaro's dietary
theories, it shows at least how such topics were in
the air. Early in sixteenth-century Italy there was a
strong wave of real scientific feeling and interest, affect
ing even natures wholly removed from it, like Cellini.
There is something in the minuteness of CeUini's self-
examination which, however unconsciously, serves to
display his susceptibUity to the prevalent influences.
Whatever motives lay at the bottom of Rousseau's
Confessions, direct imitation was not among them.
Sincerely was he convinced that the undertaking was
entirely original. There is no evidence that Jean-Jacques
was given to this particular kind of reading. Neverthe
less, one must believe that he fell more or less under the

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 143
power of an ebbing wave, which, two hundred years be
fore, had been set in motion by the Italian doctor. His
peculiar temperament, so like Cardan's at many points,
responded quickly to the idea. His Confessions
gave the movement fresh impetus and revitalized its
energy. What Cardan had been to vital natures, Rous
seau became in his turn. In England especially, where
no subjective work of any value other than the religious
had existed, it was a revelation. On a nature, for in
stance, so deep and austere as George Eliot's, the effect
of Rousseau was almost religious, and hers is but one of
the many cases which crowd the mind at the mere men
tion of his name. Few of these natures, however, have
paused to ask why the effect upon them of the Con
fessions was so crucial; above all, what quality linked
the work to the avowed religious confession. It is not,
in any sense of the word, a pious document. Rousseau,
like Harriet Martineau, has " snapped his chain and is
a rover on the broad, bright, breezy common of the uni
verse." No stern, commanding sense of a personal God
moves through his pages; reading which, however, many
a soul has quaUed and cast a doubtful look behind. It
has been suggested that this crystallizing touch of
Rousseau's, this religious effect of the Confessions, is
due primarily to the emotion with which they are per
meated. This is the view of the literary theorist, that a
common accent of emotion links Augustin and Rous
seau. But is it emotion only which has laid so powerful

144 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
a grip over souls often past the emotional period of
life? Is it not, rather, that Rousseau, like Cardan,
freshly arouses the terror and the mystery of person
ality? Is it not the result of introspection, which brings
so deep an awe? The sensitive nature reads what this
man is, what with unwinking eyes he sees when he
stares into the depths of that clouded mirror of self,
notes " that invincible remnant of the brute," — to use
George Eliot's phrase, — feels irresistibly dragged to
do the like, and is afraid. Terror at the family Hkeness
he discerns between his own leash of yelping passions
and those of the writer, — terror and shame are the
first emotions; but they are rapidly put to flight by
the uplifting consciousness of renewed understanding
and power, by the inspiration of a high candor and
sincerity. Thus it would seera that the most religious element of
the religious confession is its high quahty of candor;
and the influence of Rousseau over the reverent mind
would seem to be largely the influence of a courageous
candor, like tragedy, purging the soul with pity and
terror. And when the scientific self-study produces a
degree of serious candor approaching, or even surpass
ing, the religious confession, its influence, like Cardan,
like Rousseau, is an influence both enduring and intense.
In our own day, it has made steadUy for the better psy
chological understanding of special cases, persons, and
conditions. The whole of that group of English scien-

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 145
tists of the nineteenth century write their lives with
the scientific intention. When we come to examine
them as a group, we shall note the permeating effect of
the Cardan intention. Whether or not we believe with
M. Bibot that " Cette manie de I'analyse personnelle est
devenue de nos jours une maladie . . . sous I'influence
d'un excitation nerveuse excessive, du raffinement intel-
lectuel et de I'Snervement de la volont6 " ; or, in other
words, whether we believe the manifestation to be one of
weakness or strength, health or disease, we seei it here in
possession of intellects indisputably balanced, healthy,
and strong. Herbert Spencer alleges practically the
same reason for writing as Jerome Cardan: " It has
seemed that a natural history of myself would be a
useful accompaniment to the books it has been the
occupation of my life to write." His method, though
infinitely more diffuse, is precisely the same, and his
two immense volumes, for thoroughness, veracity, and
scrupulous minuteness, form the culminating achieve
ment of scientific self-delineation. We are too close to
him now to realize the value of such a "natural history,"
but coming generations will find in its pages a store
house of facts relative to a great inteUectual movement
and its effect on a certain type of mind. The censure of
M. Ribot, therefore, should never keep any ardent soul
from a similar piece of work, if he is moved to it by a
genuine autobiographical intention.
Instances of personal influence along special lines are

146 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
readily found ; their study will repay the curious. Like
the case of Saint-Simon and Bassompierre, the ground
of men's sympathy is often hard to hit. Nothing is so
calculated to upset our preconceived notions of a man's
character as a knowledge of his friends. The sureness,
the composure of Gibbon were to Mark Pattison the
most bracing and salutary example; he read the life,
he declares, a hundred times; it became the very Bible
of his college career. The greater case of MUl and
Marmontel has received much obtuse comment, not
the least of it from the pen of Professor William James.
Facts show that the extraordinary education of John
Stuart Mill resulted in a reactionary nervous condition
taking the form that he believed himself incapable of feel
ing any emotion whatever. During this state of mind,
and in the most profound depression, he read Marmontel.
The literary quality, the accent, the delicacy of Mar-
montel's feeling not only produce a volume of undying
felicity and charm, but serve to compensate the reader
for a lack of some important qualities. Marmontel was
a man wholly conventional and somewhat naif; he has
no sense of general conditions, no appreciation of the
trend of events; he lacks robustness, he lacks inteUec
tual manliness. But poor Mill had too much intellectual
manliness, he had too much of one sex; it was the woman
in him that had been starved indeed. The very sensi
tiveness, the very high-pitched note of these emotional
pages, seemed fresh, revivifying, to the susceptibilities

INFLUENCE AND IMITATION 147
of such an one as MiU. He read the wonderful passage
which relates how the young Marmontel, hearing of his
father's death, rides back alone over the mountains to
his farmstead home, to be received by his young sisters
and his weeping mother as their sole hope; how he is
braced under the responsibility, and how, a boy, all
overcharged, he vows inwardly not to fail them, not to
fall from the consecration of that moment. The feeling
and sincerity, the high accent, communicated in the
exquisitely flexible style, roused emotion in Mill,
revived, inspired him. To us, reading with an open
understanding, the facts are convincing; and Professor
James's scoff — "Heaven save the mark!" — seems
both gratuitous and undeserved.
There are other parts of Marmontel which have not
lost their power to charm. Who can forget the descrip
tion of his grandmother: " Cette bonne petite vieille,
le charmant naturei! la douce et riante gaiete!" or his
pleasure on seeing his baby take its first steps, " un
plaisir," he charmingly avows, "que la bonne nature a
rendu populaire!" or the little visit he paid to Madame
de Pompadour, when the great lady so gracefully differ
entiated her greetings. Surely the Marquise has never
seemed so human and so likable, and we know she must
have had likable moments. Let us rejoice at our privi
leges, then; that with John Stuart Mill we too may
share the friendship of Marmontel.

CHAPTER IX
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN ITS RELATION TO
FICTION
The relation of autobiography to fiction has its simple
as well as its complex aspects. On either hand it Hes
open to much exaggeration. The observer, in the first
heat of his enthusiasm, is apt to be tempted by striking
points of contact to over-emphasize the relation where
it exists, and to assume or create one where it does not.
It is at no time an easy matter to determine whether A
is the immediate result of B, or whether A and B are
mediately the result of X. To claim that the imaginary
autobiography — Robinson Crusoe, let us say — owes
its being to some genuine autobiography would be to
claim far too much. More exact would it be to say that
the " I " novel — a form of narrative congenial to the
direct and fertile invention — owes to its simplicity its
predominance in earlier fiction over the more compli
cated forms. Though one cannot assert that GulHver
or Crusoe was suggested to Defoe or Swift by some like
actual record of travel and adventure, yet for the
novelist the suggestiveness of the personal narrative goes
deeper than the reader is apt to think. Whole fashions
in fiction have followed some autobiographical proto
type, and, as we shall find, there are authors indebted to

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 149
such documents not merely for incidents but also for
treatment, for character, for atmosphere.
The entire school of roipance dealing with crimes and
criminals and their detection, was directly the result of
that group of mimoires by the French agents de s-Arete, of
whom the best known is Vidocq. The others, Fouquet,
Canler, Claude, and so on, are as full of criminal incidents,
but they lack both the color and the character. Les
Miserables contains chapters, scenes, pages stamped by
Vidocq. Balzac acknowledged that he owed Vautrin
to Vidocq; Charles Dickens, less directly, went to him
for Great Expectations. The man himself appears in
Gaboriau as Lecoq, and the fascination of his Mimoires
seized upon Poe in America and Conan Doyle in
England. Professor Chandler, in his Literature of
Roguery, gives fiUl lists of the minor cases following
this manner, though he devotes little space to Eugene
Vidocq himself. Yet the man personally is worthy of
study; his four volumes are not merely a repository of
criminal tales, but are full of curious psychological data.
Vidocq was himself a criminal, a thief turned thief
catcher. He makes the most for his readers of the fact
that he was innocent of that particular crime for which
he was first arrested, but he owns to forgery, highway
robbery, and swindling, indulgently terming them his
wUd oats. Let us not be too severe on him for this atti
tude, remembering what type of sin the great Benjamin
Franklin called errata, or that Father McCabe severely

150 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
reprimands Augustin for exaggerating such " youthful
follies " as lying, stealing, and licentiousness. It is hard
to please everybody; and Vidocq was successful enough
later in life to afford to be indulgent toward these youth
ful offenses. His great natural inteUigence causes his
every page to be thorough; and he has a French love of
form in classifying and arranging his material. His
book is very orderly; he cites his own misdeeds as
necessary to its completeness; he was proud of and took
pains with his style. An immense vanity does not inter
fere with his presentation of the facts. Physically he
was one of the most remarkable of men, with a tre
mendous frame and untiring energy and vitality; men
tally his flashes of imagination show him to have had,
at moments, powers much above his task; yet he asked
for no other in life, and throughout the instincts of
the chase predominate. His facial mobUity, and his
mimetic faculty, which Gaboriau elaborates in Lecoq,
were genuine and extraordinary possessions. In Charles
Babbage's Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
there is an account of a visit paid by the author to Vi
docq for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of his
muscular and facial control. Babbage, a mathematician
and the inventor of Babbage's Calculating Machine,
was one of those harmless-necessary persons with a
passion for special information; he was indefatigable in
experiment, — roasted himself in an oven, picked locks,
and deciphered cryptograms; — and we have every rea-

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 151
son to rely upon his honesty. His description of Vidocq
is full and treats of him as a natural phenomenon. If
there had been any exaggeration about the police
agent's abUity to change his face or lower his height at
wUl, we may be sure this industrious philosopher would
have found it out.
To open Vidocq's Metnoires for the first time re
caUs the lady who found Hamlet so full of quotations.
On one page this novelist, on another that, has mined
ore for his purpose. As the author personally sinks
rather out of sight in the last two volumes, his place is
filled by some of the best criminal stories in the world.
In this respect, though in no other, he is ap
proached by M. Claude, who is also a storehouse of
ingenious plots. Very different from Vidocq, of whom
he heartUy disapproves, M. Claude deprecates the sensa
tional, and conducts his own criminal investigations in
a manner less brilliant, though more sociological. His
accounts of Lacenaire and Troppmann are full of
value as studies of perversion, and have been so used
by French criminologists. And M. Claude is not with
out his modest boast that his book provided Eugene
Sue with the material for the Mysthres de Paris.
If Vidocq and Claude are parents to a thankless brood,
what shall we say of the eighteenth century prisoners,
Latude and Trenck? Tom Sawyer knew them, we re
member, but we know only their grandchildren. No
imprisoned hero of romance, from Monte Cristo to the

152 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
modern Russian Kropotkin, ever went through in his
own person a tithe of what befell these men. Compare
Prince Kropotkin in his Autobiography of a Revolu
tionist, and we see how, even at its worst, the world
has changed. The incredible cruelties and brutalities
told in these two narratives, still hold poignancy
for us between the covers of their dumpy, little
brown volumes. Of the two, Trenck is the more
vigorous and interesting, Latude the more human
and piteous.
Fr^d^ric de Trenck was an impetuous young man,
in strength and physique a giant, whose vanity and
self-confidence are sufficient to permit him to translate
this Histoire de mes Malheurs from his native Ger
man into excruciatingly bad French. His impudent
folly at the outset gained him the steady enmity of
Frederick the Great, which was increased by his mis
handling of his case. However one may admire — and
admire one must — Trench's vigor, ingenuity, and
courage; the buoyancy with which he bore the weight
of sixty-three pounds of chains, in a cell where he could
hardly stand up or lie down; the self-control which
helped him to preserve his reason during such torture;
the endurance, the patience with which he tunneUed
the earth over and over again; yet one cannot help
feeling that all this energy was wasted for the want of a
little common prudence. To the end he is absurdly cre
dulous, a dupe of the first comer, and continuaUy losing,

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 153
by some signal foUy, the reward of months of patient
labor. Poor Henri Masers de Latude, on the contrary, was a
weakHng hi mind and body. His vacuous, giddy, and
indiscreet disposition makes the more pitiable his in
credible sufferings. To punish Trenck, one could ima
gine, afforded the monarch a certain satisfaction; it was
like punishing a particularly stiff-necked and vigorous
boy. But in the grasp of authority, Latude seems like
some helpless and maimed animal which yet cannot die.
He is landed in the BastUle as the result of an idiotic at
tempt at a practical joke upon Madame de Pompadour,
— just the sort of empty-headed impertinence which
to-day might get the perpetrator into the station house
over night. Disorderly conduct would be the very worst
we should call it; this man paid for it with the better
part of his life. After escaping from his first imprison
ment, Latude conceives the brUliant idea of writing a
grandUoquent letter to Madame de Pompadour to tell
her where he is. This amazing piece of foolishness
leads at once to his recapture; and thereafter the poor
wretch spends thirty-five years in prison and in lunatic
asylums, suffering every physical and mental torment.
If he had only done something to deserve it, — the
rheumatism, the sores, the threatened blindness, —
but he had merely been guilty of an act of impertinence
toward a king's mistress. The story, as we read page
after dreadful page, is like nothing so much as watching

154 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
an insect imprisoned in a tumbler, stupidly, persistently
bumping itself against the impenetrable glass. He is
so utterly weak and helpless, and he is so indomitably
persistent. Like Trenck, he is capable of endless
ingenuities; he manufactures lamps, rope ladders, etc.,
out of food, clothing, medicine; he goes beyond all that
was ascribed to the Abb^ Faria by the imagination of
Dumas. Our pity should not let us forget that twice
his own indiscretion ruined his chances of release; and
one has a distinct sensation of surprise when he is
finally set free, to recover from the heirs of Madame de
Pompadour compensation to support him during the
rest of his ruined life.
Latude writes in a spirit of piercing bitterness un
known to Trenck, who was something of a phUosopher.
The narrative added its drop of oU to the inflammable
feelings of the day. To read it gives one a shudder, it
is so clear a forerunner of revolution. Just as Made
moiselle de Montpensier, in her Memoires, when she
gives rein to her conscious and unconscious arrogancies,
causes us to comprehend as never before the complete
and overwhelming effronteries of her order, so poor
Latude, frenzied with wrong, gives us a glimpse into
the mind of an arousing people, and a glimpse more
terrifying than can be conveyed by any descriptions of
les Noyades, or citations of Ca ira! In vain does fiction
about the French Revolution try to communicate that
thrill. A sense of unjust, intolerable wrongs and in-

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 155
human cruelties was behind the pen of Latude, lashing
it on.Thus is seen the fascination which is responsible for
the imprisonment-and-escape story from the Abb^ Faria
of Dumas to the Siberian exile. Trenck, Latude, Leo
nora Christina in the Blue Tower, and that part of
Casanova describing his escape over the leads of Venice
— no fiction on the subject but has taken incidents
from these. Seldom in the twenty-two volumes of mi
moires which Alexandre Dumas has filled with anecdote
and description, does he mention the sources of reading
for his novels. His own figure is painted therein in
crude, staring colors, as bright as Hfe, — a figure out
of Balzac and the Comedie Humaine. Part Napoleonic
soldier, part San Domingan negro, — ye gods of the
drama, what an heredity! — he seems to us a savage
tale-teller, seated at the camp-fire, holding his com
panions breathless. Alternately lazy and energetic, sen
sual and shrewd, he had aU the undiluted primitive
forces of huge vitaHty and huge laughter. At twenty,
he sets out, like Francis Bacon, to learn everything, —
although learning, in Dumas' case, was the mere accumu
lation of material. In his romances, there is the visual
izing power of the narrator, rather than the lore of the
antiquarian. One notes no such careful research as may
be found, for instance, in Flaubert's Salammbd; but how
much the greater gift for seizing, for revitalizing the
individualities of the past!

156 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A hint is at any time sufficient. He hears the name
of a neighbor to Louise de la Valli6re;it is Bragelonne.
A remark dropped in a letter is enough for the lively
sketch of MademoiseUe de Montalais. And there is also
the power of dramatizing the fact. Take the different
versions of that protest uttered to Louis XIV by the
exasperated Marie de Mancini. It occurs in Madame
de MottevUle, and in Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and
Marie repeats it in her own memoire. La Verite dans
son Jour. The words she probably said were: " Vous
pleurez, sire; vous fetes un roi, et pourtant vous souffrez
que je parte! " The novel reader feels that what she
should have said, taking the centre of the stage with a
noble gesture of despair, are the ten words written for
her by Dumas: " Sire, vous fetes un roi — vous pleurez
— et je pars! "
What hour found Dumas with the Mimoires of Bussy-
Rabutin in his hand, finding in the real man flesh and
blood wherewith to clothe the puppets of CourtUz de
Sandraz? Whether Dumas knew that the Mimoires
de M. d' Artagnan, from which he frankly took his
Musketeers, was a spurious document, and as much fic
tion as his own, will ever remain in doubt. He mentions
the book in the same tone as Mr. Rider Haggard prints
the sherd of Amenartas and the edifying inscription
in Greek uncials, to prop the simple and probable story
of She. Dumas uses the reference as a technical
novelist's convention; and it is true that nine people out

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 157
of ten take it as such, and have not the faintest belief
that such a mimoire ever existed. The curious fact is
that it did exist. The Mimoires of M. d'Artagnan, by
Gatien CourtUz de Sandraz et de Verg^, published in
Amsterdam, in three volumes, about 1702, contain not
only Dumas's main incidents, but the names of his chief
characters — Athos, Porthos, Aramis, Tr^viUe, Berna-
joux, de Wardes, MUady, — and most of his narra
tive to boot. Also, it is the dullest book ever written,
dry, juiceless, limp; quite as much of a contrast to the
novel we love as Hamblet is to Hamlet.
There is an irony in the circumstance, however, that
fate should so serve de Sandraz — himself a trucqueur
of an earlier date — that his work should finally be
ground up in the Maison A. Dumas et Compagnie.
Yet Dumas may have believed the Mimoires were gen
uine. Saint-Simon believed it; and it does appear to be
true that the real Captain d'Artagnan — amazed and
innocent protagonist ! — was killed before Maestricht
in 1673. When the subject was first under discussion,
Victor Hugo claimed to prefer Courtilz de Sandraz to
Dumas; but he stands alone in this, and even he ac
knowledges that Dumas could have done little with the
book but for other contemporary documents, such as
Bussy, for instance.
For Bussy's Mimoires is another work full of quota
tions; he is three muskeeters rolled into one, or, rather,
perhaps, not unrolled into three. Intellect and vindic-

158 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
tiveness, those two main qualities of the man Bussy,
were inconvenient to Dumas in constructing his heroes
of romance. Those of us who know and love Madame
de S^vign^ have not forgotten that Bussy was her cousin ;
that he wrote her ardent love letters and received
charmingly playful and reserved replies. Neither have
they forgotten that when this honest wife repulsed him,
her kinsman and playmate did not disdain the most
spiteful and calumnious reprisals. Ungentlemanly con
duct this, according to our standards; but even the good
CorbineHi thought Madame de S^vign^ virtuous to the
point of affectation for spurning her attractive cousin.
Well-born, handsome, rich till debt engulfed him, was
Bussy; gallant soldier, humorist, and cynic; poor friend,
worse enemy. But, through all his amazing verve, one
feels the presence of intellect. He was important
enough in learned circles to have his name Latinized
into Bussius by the Rev. Edmund Calamy, that Mr.
Collins of the theological world. Dr. Calamy speaks
of the memoirs only by hearsay. Had he read them, one
fears he might have denied our lively friend the dignity
and solace of a Latin termination. Personally one loves
and respects Dr. Calamy; but the thought of his reading
Bussy's account of that journey with the Countess de
Busset "en d^shabill^ fort galant" is enough to extin
guish the most dignified in a gust of laughter.
Bussy had definite ideals. "Lorsque j'entrai dans le
monde," he asserts, "ma premifere et ma plus forte in-

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 159
clination fut de devenir honnfete homme, et de parvenir
aux grands honneurs de la guerre." And he explains
further, in a letter to CorbineUi: "L'honnfete homme est
un homme poll, et qui salt vivre." This definition of
honesty is extremely modern; it satisfies many persons
engaged in the financial operations of the present day.
Bussy himself did not live up to it. His tongue was
venomous, and on the altar of Democritus he sacrificed
everything in life. He could never resist the temptation
to be witty. His satire L'Histoire Amoureuse des
Gaules landed him in prison; his epigrams stung on
every side, hurting enemies and friends impartially, like
a swarm of bees. He knew it was said of him "que
j'^tais l'homme du monde le plus m^disant," and he
knew it to be true.
The vitality, the humanity of the musketeers when
compared with the beaux tinibreux of Scott, — with
Ivanhoe or Nigel, — is far better understood when one
considers the remarkable personal pictures which stood
ready to the French novelist's hand. Could he possibly
invent a character at once so gallant and so giddy as
Bassompierre? In the marshal, and to a stUl greater ex
tent in Bussy, the humorous hero stands clearly forth.
The dash, the audacity, the courage and gayety, the
high-handedness, the irresistible impertinences, are all
here as in life. A thread of narrative, and it is done. At
certain moments the very manner is Dumas'. During a
journey Bussy stops overnight in a castle where there

160 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
was a ghost. "Moi, qui les crains, sans les croire," he
says, "jememettaislatfetesousla couverture . . .pour
m'oter les moyens de rien entendre qui pilt me faire
peur." Here is Porthos-Bussy; while as for d'Artagnan-
Bussy, there is the journey above mentioned, which Dr.
Calamy has not read, unless such reading is permitted
him in his present place of residence. It is indeed a jolly
story, though too long and too medisant to quote here ; but
the echoes of its laughter ring down the scandalized years.
The huge laughter of the musketeers was caught from
the pages of Messire Bussy. " Nous nous abandonndmes
aux feclats de rire; — nous eussions ri jusqu'aux larmes;
— c'^tait un rire k deux mains," are not these all but
the very Dumas phrases? But Bussy's humor held
wit and observation besides the gift of laughter. It is
hard to understand why Mr. Van Laun, in the French
Literature, calls him a dull man and thinks his wit pro
bably exaggerated.' The Mimoires display many un
desirable qualities, but they are not dull. On occasion,
the author can be d'Artagnan tout pur. "Je baisois
quelquefois la comtesse devant la gouvernante, qui ne
faisoit pas semblant de le voir, parce que je la baisois
aussi, tant il est vrai," says Bussy-d' Artagnan slyly,
"qu'il n'y'a qu'^ int^resser les gens pour leur faire
oublier leur devoir!"
One last citation. These are questions, says the out
raged reader of romance, of picturesque character or
' H. Van Laun, "French Literature," II, p. 262.

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 161
suggestive environment; the accent of the creative art
ist is lacking in them. From what Dumas novel, excel
lent sir, comes the following? The hero says to Louis
XIII, on the eve of a skirmish: —
" ' Sire, I'assemblee est prete, les violons sont entr^s,
et les masques sont k la porte. Quand il plaira k votre
Majeste nous donnerons le baUet? '
" II s'approcha de moi et me dit en colere: — ' Savez-
vous que nous n'avons que cinq-cent Hvres de plomb
dans le pare d'artillerie? ' Je lui dis: —
" ' II est bien temps maintenant de penser k celkl
Faut-il que pour un des masques qui n'est pas pret, le
ballet ne se danse pas? ' "
It occurs on page 192, volume II, of Bassompierre 's
Mimoires. Good reader, if you have already made
the acquaintance of these fair ladies and gallant gentle
men, you will like me no less for loving them. But if not,
wait no longer, I pray you, but send at once for Mar
guerite de Valois, for the intriguing de Retz, for Bassom
pierre, for Bussy, — above all, for Bussy, — to renew
your acquaintance with the musketeers. If you are
scrupulous on the score of morals, he will reassure you :
" J'avais toujours eu un fonds de religion, et une devo
tion particuHfere k la sainte Vierge." And he ends with
a little philosophic quatrain : —
"fitre satisfait de son sort,
Quel qu'il soit ne s'en jamais plaindre,
Et regarder venir la mort
Sans la d^airer ni la craindre."

162 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Plain to be seen then, is the influence of the personal
record on Dumas and the novel of adventure, on the
crime-and-detection story, and on the imprisonment-
and-escape story. Later modern instances show that it
has not lost its power. Mrs. Ward's Lady Rose's
Daughter revived interest in her prototype. Made
moiselle de I'Espinasse; but the reader of Marmontel
knew that it was not the letters alone which had in
spired the novelist's creation. The few pages wherein
Marmontel paints that central scene — central in the
life of the real as of the fictitious Julie — stand out
clear, graphic, obviously tempting to the strong and
adequate hand. The incident is not one in which Mar
montel himself figures, nor is the suggestion the result
of a total personal impression, like Bussy or Bassom
pierre. It is contributed by the way, a gift, a friendly
gift of the memoiriste. Sometimes our friend's character
is of value to us, sometimes his surroundings or his
conversation. To the romancer there often is suggestion
merely in the atmosphere of the past. Did Scott read
Ousama ib'n Mounkidh, we wonder, that he draws so
sympathetically, in The Talisman, the attitude of the
Syrian emir toward the barbarous, crusading Frank?
The effect of those great Italian eighteenth century
autobiographers, Alfieri, Gozzi, Goldoni, Casanova, on
the fiction and description dealing with their country,
is almost too wide to be comprehended in one essay.
Lord Byron thought Goldoni's autobiography the

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 163
best in the world. Goethe enjoyed it — it is, indeed, a
sort of Italian Wilhelm Meister. Carlo Goldoni typi
fies for us the Venetian of Hterature. " I was born in
this racket," ' he says. "Could I help loving gay
ety?" Talkative, busy, industrious, and merry, he takes
life with a smile and a shrug. He smUes always; indeed,
he declares that he came into the world without crying.
Like WUhelm, he starts with a stock of Ulusions and
in company with a troupe of wandering players; like
WUhelm, he parts with his Ulusions during his travels,
but, unlike him, the readjustment is accomplished with
out any shock or bitterness. Vernon Lee calls him a
"cheery, flighty little man," and thinks that "all his
emotions and impressions have the levity, the good-
natured simplicity of his work — the same light-hearted
imperturbable slipperiness." To us, Goldoni seems more
mercurial than slippery. Never a dissipated man, he
takes certain vices for granted; his Latin romanticism in
love goes hand in hand with a Latin canniness when it
comes to marriage. On this subject the most "freddo
Inglese" appears madly imprudent by comparison. A
match is arranged for the youthful Carlo, but when he
sees the lady he comments thus: —
"She was one of those delicate beauties whom the
very air injures, and whom the smallest fatigue or
pain discomposes." When he adds to this that her
elder sister had become ugly after the birth of a chUd, he
' "Questo strepito."

164 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
considers it prudent to rupture the negotiations. In
a second matrimonial arrangement the dot appears
to be less than was first supposed, and so Goldoni
leaves Venice in high dudgeon, his comedy in his
pocket. When he does marry, he finds his wife sensible and
complaisant. "I shared my pleasures with her: she
followed me everywhere. The only place she did not
accompany me was to my mistress. She did not
hinder me from going, but this actress was not to her
taste, and there is no disputing taste." There is a plea
sant insouciance about this. "I knew her docUity; I
owed her esteem and friendship." And, toward his
later years, settled in Paris, he is serenely content in her
company. We see him taking his well-earned ease, if not
the lean, at least the slippered pantaloon. "I am of a
pacific disposition," his last sentence declares; "I have
always preserved my coolness of character: at my age I
read little, and I read only amusing books." It is a
peaceful, elderly phUosophy. Yet Goldoni had his
serious, his austere side. He had theories of art in
advance of his day; he shows deep interest in science
and in scientific discoveries. His fecundity, vivacity,
and industry were amazing. In one year he wrote
sixteen comedies. Of course, we think of Mr. Vincent
Crummies and the washtubs, but let us not mistake.
Goldoni wrote better Italian than the English of most
of our one-comedy-a-year playwrights. Each one of

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 165
the sixteen comedies had a definite, if slender, plot and
clearly delineated characters. There was no machinery
necessary, he says, but to sit down with his scenario,
and then merrUy, copiously, the dialogue flowed on. It
is all gay and busy and unvexed, like his life. One is
glad he died just as the French Revolution came to
cloud that golden sunset. The far gleam from these
pages shines athwart many novels which have tried to
catch and hold its radiance. To work, to laugh, to Hve
always next the earth and in sunny weather, seems his
prerogative. We have read such lives, "in earlier SicU-
ian," but this is almost the last.
If Goldoni is of the country, Gozzi is of the town.
Goldoni tramps from viUage to village, sharing his last
half-bottle with the soubrette. Count Gozzi, "a taU,
gaunt man in his old-fashioned clothes," as Vernon Lee
describes him, remains in Venice, immersed in legal
affairs and in the theatre, where he was Goldoni's rival.
His book is exceedingly rare in the original, so rare
that J. Addington Symonds, the translator, says he
had to hunt for four months to procure a single copy.
Gozzi himself termed them Useless memoirs, published
from humility, yet he must have realized that they
were a useful and interesting commentary on Venetian
Hfe. The author is a poor gentleman, the comte of a de
caying house. His shrewdness and energy could accom
plish nothing in a f amUy where there was no money, and

166 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
eleven idle chUdren. The financial difficulties of the
Gozzis, their quarrels, their lawsuits, would delight
Balzac. Our author is caustically frank in describing
his relatives, and he had personally a certain business
acumen. But literature was his passion; here, and here
only, he displays enthusiasm. On the subject of his
own performances he is fond of telling us how he never
accepted payment; and rather maintains the attitude
that "he handles his pen with the negligent ease of a man
of quality." Gozzi is not simple and direct Hke his
countryman, Goldoni; he is cool, aloof, ironical, modern.
Vernon Lee's further picture of him, "always silent,
self-absorbed — kindly idle, half-crazy, a poet and a
humorist, an aristocrat and a dreamer " — hardly tallies
with his description of himself as a brisk and competent
man of the world. He may have been a dreamer, but
he was not romantic. Women hardly came into his life.
"I regarded the sex with the eyes of a phUosopher,"
and "matrimony was wholly alien to my views of
liberty," he asserts. But he loved the life of the place, of
the coulisse and the caf6, the intrigue, — its success or
failure, ¦ — the little supper, the little satire, the idle
crowd that applauded or hissed, the life of buzzing
engagements, like banging doors, — of small things in
a miniature metropolis.
Gozzi's humor is a thing apart; it is so cynical and ir
reverent, it is almost American. After a quarrel with his
mother, he left her presence with "hilarity" and, taking

ITS RELATION TO FICTION 167
his younger brother, quits home forever, quoting "E
quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle ! " What he calls "my
habitual phUosophy of laughter" never fails him. It
stands his friend in bitter disputes, in unfriendly de
sertions; it colors his feelings, even when they seem
to be most warmly aroused. These two men, Goldoni
and Gozzi, supplementing one another, bring before us
vividly that decaying, pre-monarchical Italy, and in
so doing they assume the parentage of the Italy of
fiction. Without them, its hundred private aspects must
have remained unknown. In the detaUs, in the small,
clear, sunny glimpses, the comedians lunching in that
slow canal boat on the Brenta, which Goldoni called a
Noah's ark; Gozzi in the dressing-room of the Ricci, or
hurrying in his gondola to the play, sword in hand, —
there is the novel in embryo. History cannot do this;
it is the place and privilege of such books as these. But,
like history, here are canvases so broad that the question
is more of a whole communicated feeling for a special
place and epoch, than of any one particular incident.
Mrs. Wharton's Valley of Decision has caught the
mood, has been pieced together, as it were, out of bits of
foreground; the effect, however careful, has been, as the
Italians would themselves put it, troppo studiato. It
is an example, however, ready at hand to show that
fascination is still potent.
As a final token of how slight a suggestion may serve
the creative impulse, providing the accent is high, one

168 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
may re-read Erasmus's autobiographical letter concern
ing the tragedy of his parents. It is brief, bald, poign
antly intense; and the quiver of that intensity has
remained with Charles Reade through the many and
chaotic pages of The Cloister and the Hearth.

CHAPTER X
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP
In the two foregoing sections we have dealt with the
personal narrative from the point of view of its indivi
dual appeal to the mind or dramatic sense of the novel
ist. Inevitably, documents of this kind must have a
pecuHar value for him, since they permit him to en
large both his extensive and intensive experience. In
life, this has ever been a temptation to the creative
nature, which forgets it is a contradiction in terms and
foredoomed to failure. No one can forget that picture
of Lucien de Rubempr^ at the door of the greenroom,
urging himself forward on the first frivolous steps by
the thought " un homme qui veut tout peindre, doit tout
connaitre." And yet never was the falsity of this idea
better shown than in the case of Lucien's creator him
self; for the contrast between the amazing diversity of
Balzac's canvas, and the narrow and relatively austere
course of his daily life, remains the enigma for his
critics. Indeed, the novelist in his proper person finds
himself face to face with the fact that emotion cannot
with most of us be at once deep and wide, that one is
apt to pay for extensive experience by loss of intensive
experience, and that, therefore, he must come the most
to rely upon his observation and imagination. Armed

170 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
with these tools, he freely turns to use the written
records of the experiences of others. Gauged by the
autobiographical intention, they are placed in a proper
perspective for the reader; so their full suggestiveness
is retained whUe their trustworthiness is increased.
The novelist finds his store enriched, not merely in
respect of incident and atmosphere, but by the inter
play of character upon character, and by a closer view
of those iUuminating inconsistencies which display the
richness and complexity of human nature. Moreover,
there is borne in upon the open-minded reader of these
documents a sense of the seriousness and importance of
them as pieces of life; he begins to see that, however
immense the diversity of individuality, it is weighted
and underlaid, like everything else in nature, with cer
tain principles of law. He is able to observe some of
those principles in operation, to gain a perspective
which he could never obtain from actual experience.
He begins to realize why his honest, strenuous efforts
have produced but cheap and one-sided effects, beside
the unconscious and effortless play of genius over the
subject. He sees why these intelligences of the past,
with their large reading, their wide, imaginative hori
zons, and their comparatively narrow, personal experi
ence, accomplished such infinitely greater things than
Mr. Jones, who conscientiously toured Labrador and
boUed his moccasins for his new book; or Mr. Smith,
who spent three years studying in the slums for his.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 171
^The acquaintance of Samuel Richardson with females
of the class of Mrs. Jukes was, quite probably, nil; yet
there she is; and where, in Heaven's name, is the pro
curess, studied with microscope or kodak, of the ardent
and reformative Smith? The would-be novelist, there
fore, realizing that his first effort must be to understand
the laws of, and to obtain data upon, human nature,
realizes also that this is hugely more difficult, if not
impossible, when he walks on the same level with his
subject, — he cannot see the wood for the trees. He
must, therefore, do as the great have done, raise himself
above the level of swarming thousands, and apply him
self to the study of generaHties, and to the observation
of highly-colored and quintessential types. Does he de
sire, for instance, to understand the working of poverty
on the youthful spirit? It is painted for him by Anthony
TroUope, by Thomas Platter. Is his theme the arro
gance of the aristocrat? He turns to the pages of
MademoiseUe de Montpensier, of Bassompierre, of
Marguerite de Valois. Does he intend to depict "the
deHghts and kiUing agonies" of the artist struggling on
ward? He reads the self-portrayals of CeUini, Haydon,
Giovanni Dupr6. Every shade of reHgious feehng and
influence, from the thirteenth century naivetis of
SaHmbene to the refined, intellectual austerities of a
MUl or a Martineau, has in these documents been
made the subject of analysis and portrayal. Hate,
envy, affection, and devotion, the abnormal nature

172 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
bent and twisted, the normal nature healthily blossom
ing to fruition, — all such experiences furnish reliable
material on which the creative intelligence may work.
But the personal record has an effect on literature far
wider than can be conveyed by describing detached in
dividual cases, and the novel or novels which they may
have inspired. As nuclei of certain past social energies,
regarded not individually but in groups, they show the
prevailing tones and predominating influences of their
time. Once more, as in the question of sincerity, it is not
the special instance which should be considered, but the
weight of aggregate instances. One statement here, one
impression there, means nothing; but the body of like
ness or unlikeness contained in a contemporaneous
group of autobiographies must show the main tenden
cies of the society by which the group was surrounded.
Pages have been and are each day being written —
pages of inquiry and speculation — as to the rise of lit
erary and social movements, and as to the presence or
absence of certain mental and moral conditions in the
society of the past; as to when, where, how, the great
determining forces began to work the changes of the
world. Passing reference is made, perchance, to letter
or journal or mimoire; not yet has there been un
dertaken any such simple and concrete expedient as
the comparative examination of contemporary memoir
groups, and of their testimony, conscious or uncon
scious, on the subject in hand. Far too wide is such

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 173
examination for the confines of this essay. It is a study
so fruitful that it might well fill a separate volume. But
we may profitably linger over two of its main aspects
here, because they bear directly on certain individual
cases later to be considered.
It is obvious that the study of a group of individuals
will provide correctives for the study of any one among
those individuals. Each human being rotates upon his
own axis, if we wish to put it so, — rises and sets large
upon the horizon, exercises his attraction, in greater or
less degree, upon the other bodies which come within
his influence. Change the point of view, and he be
comes an infinitesimal unit in a vast aggregate of units,
sharing the main characteristics of the aggregate, and
with personal idiosyncrasies which seem but microsco
pical. The metaphor is not here intended to minimize
the importance of the individual. The sun will always
remain to us the most important of solar bodies, how
ever often we strive to realize its relation to a universe
inconceivably vast. But it is also true that we increase
our knowledge of the sun when we study it as one in a
group of flaming stars.
An autobiography is apt to contain much material
which standing by itself would seem to show the writer
abnormal; an impression which may be changed or dis
pelled by comparison with another case of the same con
temporary group. Such over-emphasized impressions
may persist through several generations, for the want of

174 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
some simple expedient like this comparison. For in
stance, when we read of them singly, the superstitions
of Cellini, the artist, and of Cardan, the mathematician,
strike us as bearing a most disproportionate relation to
their other qualities. At the age of three, Cellini sees a
salamander; later he raises the devU in person in the
Coliseum. The visions, the omens, the supernatural
experiences of Cardan, require a chapter to themselves.
But the impression of individual abnormality vanishes
when we compare the two as contemporaries; when we
realize that the existence of a simUar degree of credu
lity in men so representative and so different, means,
simply, its prevalence in their society to a degree which
has not previously been understood. The most hasty
purview of the main autobiographical groups shows
their participation in certain common attitudes, views,
and feelings, which must be realized before we can
separate those attitudes, views, and feelings peculiar to
the individual himself. The whole impression must be
obtained, if only to serve as a background for the more
saHent and picturesque figures of a group. In studying
such groups, one follows the lines laid down by the
psychologists concerning all crowds. Gustave Le Bon,
in his Psychologic des Foules, reminds us that a
number of individuals does not constitute a crowd — ¦
in the psychological sense — until the different in
dividualities which compose it are for the time being
submerged by the pressure of a common energy, a

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 175
common emotion, and a common end. The two addi
tional causes operating to produce this submergence
are contagion and a mutual sense of power. The crowd,
therefore, partakes of a single general character, very
different from that produced by its separate units, and
"its sentiments and thoughts turn collectively in the
same direction." When carefully observed, this fact,
which Le Bon terms "the psychological law of the
mental unity of crowds," will be found equally true
of the autobiographical group, and explanatory of cer
tain apparently contradictory elements in the individual
documents forming that group. These elements, which
are really so simple, have often puzzled the critic; but
a comprehension of them is doubly necessary when one
comes to consider their total impression, the atmo
sphere of the group in question.
"TeUe groupe humaine," says M. Ribot,' "laisse
celui qui le fr^quente une impression de tristesse, de
gaiete, de dissipation, d'aust^rite, d'immoralite, etc.
Cette atmosphere morale qui joue un si grand r61e dans
I'education et la vie sociale est une r^sultante du senti
ment evoque." The reader of a series of contemporary
memoirs, then, stands for the person who frequents the
group, and who is thus able to gauge the quantity and
quality of the impression — the "r^sultante du senti
ment fevoque." One is also able to measure its extent,
and to compare the effect of certain permeating moral
' "Psychologie des Sentiments."

176 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
atmospheres on certain societies, with the effect of other
moral atmospheres during other eras. M. Quetelet
thinks that these simUarities extend themselves even
to physiognomy, forming definite and recognizable
types, such as the fifteenth century Italian facial type,
and the typical Napoleonic "soldat de la vieille garde."
M. Taine goes even further, for, in the introduction
to his History of English Literature, he states that a
study of the law of group-formation is indispensable to
the understanding of all questions of psychological and
aesthetical development. "History," he thinks, "must
search nowadays for these rules of human growth;
with the special psychology of each special formation it
must occupy itself . . . . "
"I would give fifty volumes of charters, and one
hundred volumes of state papers, for the memoirs of
Cellini, the epistles of Paul, the Table Talk of Luther,
..." cries the enthusiastic M. Taine, who beHeves
also that "the confessions of a superior man are more
instructive than a heap of historians."
However this may be, — for perceptions of values
differ, — it is a comparatively simple matter to bring this
group study within the scope of a reader's attention.
Nor must the group in this particular case be limited
only to subjective documents, although these will ever
remain the richest nuggets of the cache. In displaying
general characteristics, however, the bald historical
record, or the political diary has its place. The lists

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 177
placed in Appendix B do not claim to cover every case,
but yet give the representative members of each group.
Chronicles and historical records are inserted only when
written in the first person.
With these before one, it becomes no difficult task
to run rapidly over the distinguishing and salient
qualities of these groups as there tabulated, before
passing on to examine the cases in particular.
The first thing to be determined of any individual
mimoire, after its sincerity has been tested, is its
relation to its group. How many of its qualities are
common to that society, how many belong to the indivi
dual? Cardan's superstition is shared by Cellini, Cor
naro, etc.; his intellectual penetration and scientific
spirit belong to him alone. The attitude toward nature
of the Electress Sophia is shared by the other represent
ative self-biographers who wrote during the same fifty
years; her humor, her independence of mind, are wholly
her own. Compare her in this regard with the two
Mancini, or la Grande Mademoiselle, or Madame Guyon,
and the difference will be felt at once. Such intellectual
independence as she displays is totally unknown, has
not been dreamed of by these other ladies. The poor
scholar, Thomas Platter, is a figure at once strikingly
individual and strongly related to the learned world of
his day. What he owes to Conrad Pellican, to the
ScaHgers, to Casaubon, is shown, and also the toUing
man himself. Here, then, lies the chief value of the

178 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
figure evoked, namely, its likeness and its unlikeness to
other figures still, for us, lurking in the dusk.
It is amazing to find how fresh an impression may be
received from these societies; how well one may come
to know the separate members, to understand their
friendships, enmities, jealousies, emulations. Across the
page flashes a shifting movement and color like life.
And although the greater figures wiU always tend to
obscure the lesser, yet many of us will find friends
among these.
Who can forget I'abbfe MoreUet, "ce bon MoreUet,"
with his passion for discussion, his gay wit, his mordant
irony, his religious feeling surviving the shock of many
revolutions? Charles C0II6, that French Pepys, thinks
him a hot-headed fellow, yet ever apt and wise. Morel-
let had, in truth, great critical power and a cathoHc
taste. His knowledge of English had broadened his
mind. His paragraph of criticism on Clarissa Harlowe :
"Clarisse, cette grande machine, dans laquelle tant de
ressorts sont employes k produire un seul et grand effet,
oil tant de caractferes sont dessin^s avec tant de force,
oil tout est prepare avec tant d'art, oil tout se lie et se
tient," has not been bettered by all our English eulogies.
But he was chiefly noted for his passionate love of
conversation, which in truth he carried to an excess.
Morellet notes that the Revolution in breaking up
society, scattering his friends, and reducing him to
hack-work in a garret, did him the greatest wrong of aU

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 179
when it deprived him of good talk. This love of dis
cussion shows in all the members of that brilliant and
turbulent circle. Duclos, Saint-Lambert, FrancoeuU,
Mademoiselle Quinault, and the rest, appear to exist
chiefly for purposes of conversation. In the curious,
partly fictitious, and yet very real Mimoires of Ma
dame d'Epinay, we may distrust the sentiment, look
askance at the ethics, and smile at the phUosophy, but
we believe in the conversations. Within all that mass
of artificial insincerity and insipid sentiment, one thing
stands forth real and living, — that talk chez Made
moiselle Quinault where Duclos bangs the table in his
energy, and the little Emilie fears that the tone is be
coming un peu fort. During these discussions, lasting
often uninterruptedly for hours, — for, in comparison
with our own, those were leisurely times, — men's opin
ions were shifted and crystallized, their ideas formed
and defined. In those days there was a chance to
develop original thought on politics or literature, which
we now buy for a penny in the newspapers. Then it
took the hard hammer of discussion to mould the
great changes that were pending. "Talk, talk," says
Turgenev bitterly; "smoke, smoke!" Yet this was the
smoking of a fire whose flames were to redden the skies
of the world.
Madame d'Epinay furnishes future generations, all
unconsciously, with some very interesting matter when
she introduces them to her lover, M. Dupin de Fran-

180 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
cceuU. The future grandfather of George Sand, this
gentleman displays certain characteristics which we
recognize. Nowhere in all literature is there given a
more vivid and convincing description of the process of
corrupting the mind. The young Madame d'Epinay faUs
into the hands of a certain MademoiseUe d'Ette (a figure
out of Balzac), who, with her lover, the Chevalier de
Valory, sets to work systematically to bring Emilie
down to the level of the people around her. The success
of her arguments is naively shown. Whatever is false
and fictitious in the book, — and there is much, — it is
not the psychology. If it had not been a doctored auto
biography, it might have lived as an important novel.
Of course, Jean Jacques, the central figure of that
society, has plainly impressed his method on these
mimoires. That opening chapter of analysis and ex
planation, so strong in intellectual vigor, so weak in
philosophy, is typical of his influence. It is even more
noteworthy in the case of a later member of the
group, in Madame Roland. This remarkable woman,
of indomitable spirit, fine sense of proportion, moral
strength, and delicate perceptions, thought to imitate
the Confessions and to avow certain dusky and
morbid moods which would never have had the defi
nition of words attached to them but for Rousseau's
example. She has done herself a lasting injustice by
their perpetuation; but the incident is very instructive
as showing us the power of imitation in forming the

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 181
tone of a group. No healthier woman ever lived than
Jeanne Phlipon. This weak morbidity, which she
caught from one of the most morbid of men, is set
at naught and contradicted by her every other word.
Cases like these permit us more successfully to under
stand the individual autobiographer's relation to his
protagonist. To return to the group itself once more, and to
broaden the view stUl further, Le Bon has sufficiently
demonstrated that all persons writing their own lives
during the same decade or half-century would not
necessarUy fall into the same group. WhoUy different
groups may exist during the same era. We see this in
England, where the Quaker journaHsts form a separate
and distinct cluster, unconnected with the secular per
sonal records of the time. Sporadic cases of self-study
occur wholly outside of any contemporary influences.
Where people have met and known one another, or ob
served and imitated one another, or have merely fallen
under similar prevaUing influences, we are warranted
in grouping them together. Where contemporary self-
biographies display the same methods of presentation,
the same subjective viewpoint, simUar sides of frank
ness, simUar corners of reticence, we are warranted in
grouping them together. Cardan, Cellini, Cornaro, with
Tartaglia, Vesalius, and other fragmentary cases — the
first important Italian group — may never all have met
in the flesh, but a family likeness in method and hand-

182 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ling cannot escape the most obtuse. If the grouping
strikes one reader as forced, another will at once ac
knowledge that it brings the heterogeneous material
into order and renders it amenable to law.
In the same way, only by grouping will the reader be
aided in forming the relation of the subjective docu
ment to the whole world of personal narrative. Ob
servation of the lists, ' and of the proportion borne to
the whole by the cases marked as subjective, wiU render
certain facts immediately apparent. That the sub
jective tendency rises during certain social and mental
conditions, falls during others, is the first of these. This
process is the same whatever the nation, although more
typically operative in France, that richest of aU litera
tures in the personal record. If one were to draw a line
through the centuries as a measurement of this tendency,
it will be found to start very low before the reign of
Henri IV, with but two subjective cases in eighteen
personal chronicles. During the next half-century the
rise is steady: we find six cases definitely subjective
out of twenty-six mimoires, and some of these last
show, in part, traces of the influence, although they do
not maintain it. The reign of Louis XIV doubles the
number of autobiographies, and the subjective cases
take a jump; fifteen out of forty-four are fuUy so, and
at least half of the residue have partly personal qual
ities. Just before the Revolution the highest point is
' Placed in Appendix B.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 183
reached by the Rousseau group; thirteen out of a total
of twenty-one mimoires are complete self -presentations.
The Revolution and the Napoleonic era produced an
enormous lessening in the subjective cases, whereas the
personal narrative itself increased in numbers. Taking
the space of fifty years, which for all practical pur
poses cover the main events, we find twenty-five im
portant and representative personal accounts of the
Revolution, only two of which deal with the writer him
self rather than with his experiences. The immense
outpouring of Napoleonic mimoires shows only five self-
studies in the total of sixty personal narratives. After
the Napoleonic epoch, we enter upon modern literature,
with its misleading facility to all sorts of print. The
cases cease to group themselves with any definiteness;
they become heterogeneous and scattered. But the
passion for "I'analyse personnelle" rises once more, and
out of thirty-two of the more interesting later French
mimoires, half or more are by self-students.
The Italian autobiographies are so much fewer than
the French that the course of our line of proportion
is sharply accented. It starts higher in the scale, for
the personal and family record was an established
fashion in Italian literature as early as 1300. The fore
runners whose names head the list in Appendix B
(Italian) aU show in their histories that they follow a
known custom. But the earliest noteworthy Italian self-
biographies are also the most subjective cases on record.

184 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Between 1500 and 1575 eight out of eleven are minutely
self -analytical. The proportion declines during the next
one hundred and fifty years — the time of artificial and
imitative prose in Italy — but rises again to the highest
point at the end of the eighteenth century. A group of
master examples then occurs. The struggle for Italian
independence fifty years later, produces the usual large
number of narratives in the first person, and again, as in
France, the event obscures the writer. Only five out of
twenty-five are self-examinations in any sense of the
word. English literature shows cases of this kind no earHer
than 1600. We find twenty important secular autobio
graphies written before 1700; of these, six are personal.
The religious Quaker journalists from 1624 to 1800 form
a definite and singularly interesting separate group,
maintaining a high average of introspection. The Napo
leonic wars caused the fashion to drop. It is succeeded
rather by the literary, anecdotal memoir, descriptive of
the friendships and activities of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. The scientific group, about
1850, produced an outburst of self-study which is the
equal in value and proportion of the Italian groups; but
since that time, as likewise in France, the movement has
lost coherence and clearness, clogged by the innumerable
cheap and petty cases which fiood the public. The
imaginary line just mentioned expresses better than
any further description the ratio of subjective to

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 185
objective cases, at different epochs, under different
influences. And comparison develops still more; it
shows that the conditions under which the subjective ten
dency rises or falls are similar conditions.
Thus there is made manifest the presence of a general
law. A simple induction wUl enable the reader to
form and to complete the law of these cases for himself.
The subjective autobiography groups itself about the great
intellectual movements and changes of the world, and
lessens or disappears in times of material change. What
occurred during the points where the imaginary line
touches its highest mark? In France its height is
reached just before the Revolution, that time of enor
mous intellectual activity and change of ideas. This
intellectual uprising produces Rousseau and his group;
when action followed, the self-study disappeared. In
Napoleon's day it is hard to find a single subjective
document, so completely has that central figure over
shadowed men's minds, so fully has imagination been
dominated by the event. In Italy the same law is
manifest. An earlier civUization, an earlier intellectual
movement, earlier starts the subjective trend; it rises
high just before 1600, at the time of GaHleo and Cardan,
at the era of new thought. After dropping lower during
the hundred and fifty years of Italian feuds, and in
ternecine quarrels, it rises once more in Alfieri's day,
when Vernon Lee notes a wave of intellectual energy
running through Italy, under the same current of

186 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
change which produced the French Revolution. During
the period of struggle for united Italy, it dropped to the
lowest mark in its history. In England, several great
movements are intermingled; but its political activities
keep the percentage extremely low untU much later than
in other countries. The violent fluctuations just after the
Restoration, foUowed by the Quaker and other religious
movements, mark a first high point; and the second
high point is not reached until our own day, when the
great scientific upheaval shifted the whole intellectual
point of view.
Just as the iron filings rise and cluster about a magnet,
so do men's individualities rise to expression under the
influence of a current of thought. The impulse is not
to be explained by the general theory that warlike
periods of national life are apt to be foUowed by an
outburst of literary and creative energy. The EngHsh
and Italian tables both give examples of the rise in the
self-study at a time of general literary stagnation, pre
ceding marked intellectual changes. The EngHsh scien
tific group begins at the very ebb of the greater Hterary
activities of the nineteenth century.
Find the dawn of new ideas, find the moment when
men's minds begin to submit to the shaking power of an
inteUectual change, and there you wUl find the attempt
at self-understanding expressed in a group of personal
records. The observation of great movements at work
in himself causes a man fresh interest in himself: the

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GROUP 187
observation of a similar movement at work in others
makes a man wish to state his position, to define his
credo. The atmosphere of doubt, restlessness, inse
curity, caused by intellectual upheavals, produces in
the serious mind a desire to clear the ground for him
self, and to aid others, — produces, in a word, the
autobiographical intention. And so we find these cases
foUowing the law, and grouping themselves about
movements of intellectual significance.

PART II

CHAPTER XI
NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION
Long ere we have reached this present point in our
examination, certain definite, general questions wUl
have been asked by the reader. Discussion of the auto
biographer as a class and as an individual, raises the
question as to the main influences at work on the indi
vidual and on the class. In other words, the reader has
come to enquire what effect a national and professional
bias may have had on this particular Hterary mani
festation. Is the autobiographical intention a literary
intention merely, or does it strike deeper root? Must
we not, before particularizing the examples, comment
on the broader aspect of race, nation and occupation?
For instance, we are asked: "Are the best self -studies
written by men whose work is literature, or by those
whose work is not literature?" and "What nationality
has, as a whole, produced the best work of this
kind?" Our ramble is here not upon a by-path at all, or,
rather, it is as if the path, heretofore leading by flower
ing thicket, shady wood, or daisied meadow, came sud
denly out upon the broad and ancient highway of some
vanished people, overgrown and disused, but stUl bear-

192 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ing tokens of its greatness in the huge and crumbling
stones of the roadbed, and the easy rise of its grade
over the hiU. These main roads stiU traverse our mental
history, though time and confusing civiHzation have
obscured their outlines. Does the power of, and the
wish for, self-delineation belong to the Hterary gift, or
is it something entirely apart?
One could wish to glance at a table here, just as it
is pleasanter to climb a height and take a hasty survey
of the surrounding country, before plodding through it
on foot. But the matter is too broad for tabulation,
— can hardly be presented in any convincing tabular
form. Perhaps this, in itself, is an answer to the ques
tion, for we find the self-biography written by the
reUgious and the secular alike, by the doctor, the
lawyer, the artist, the actor, the poet, the noveHst,
the scientist, the phUosopher, the rogue, the soldier, the
statesman, and the monarch. If a large number are the
work of the littirateur (this French word covers what
English needs a phrase to express), an equaHy large
number are by persons unused to the pen, and driven
to the task by the autobiographical intention alon3. If
a proportion of narrators might exclaim with Count
Fosco: "Habits of literary composition are perfectly
familiar to me," there is an equal proportion to whom
the whole question of form, arrangement, and style is
acknowledged and shown to be a matter of painful
effort.

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 193
One fact, however, may be noted as most suggestive.
Out of the two hundred and seventy or more examples '
which have been deemed worthy of careful study,
barely thirty-four have been the work of the imaginative
writer. The poet has contributed eighteen and the nov
elist nine, the playwrights seven autobiographies, as
against twenty-six by general literary workers, thirty-
three by philosophers and scientists, nine by historians
and thirteen by statesmen; the balance is made up by
smaller numbers of other professions. There is, in other
words, strong evidence that the self-study makes its
special appeal to the exact mind, and that in modern
times it is exceedingly rare to find a scientific worker
who has not left some measure of autobiographical ma
terial. The ratio confirms that established by the table
on reasons for writing, where the predominating reason
was found to be a desire to add to the search for truth.
In fact, when we place in one column the cases just
given, with the forty main examples of religious confes
sion actuated by the same serious reason, the aggregate
number (one hundred and fifty-five) is more than half
the number of capital personal records.
Surely, if further evidence were needed as to the
serious and honest purpose of the autobiography, it is
given by showing how much more its form has appealed
in the past to men of fact than to men of fancy; with
what high and holy things it has been associated. The
great autobiography may be the work of men so unlike
' In Appendix C.

194 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
as Cellini, Franklin, Alfieri, but a likeness exists, not
withstanding — it is the common seriousness of con
ception acting on a high quality of mental power.
So far as interest and value go, occupation and pro
fession appear to have slight influence. Valuable cases
occur under everyone of the tabulated professions. The
soldier, the court-lady, — Monluc, Mademoiselle de Mont
pensier, — may give us a noteworthy self -biography;
and so may Thomas Platter, the obscure schoolmaster;
Solomon Maimon, the Jewish teacher; Al-GhazzaH, the
siifi. The important personal narratives are not, neces
sarUy, by professional writers; nor can they suffer the
reproach — if reproach it be — that they are oftenest
the work of imaginative minds. On the contrary, the
majority of these subjective records are composed by
specialists, scientists, or religious leaders. Historical and
political memoirs, it goes without saying, are an expres
sion of monarchs, statesmen, and court functionaries,
and descriptive of their pecuHar situations. Where a
man's position in life brings him nearer to those events
which in their very nature affect and interest mUlions
of his fellow-men, he is likely to take advantage of
the fact, and so a mimoire becomes a sort of conven
tion. In any case, we are warranted in classing our
self-study with other scientific material — a dignity
denied it hitherto. If we expect any commentary
on the effects of profession or occupation we shall
be disappointed; nothing definite may be gathered

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 195
from the page. Certain generalizations may, unques
tionably, be made if certain moods are felt. A com
mon hyper-sensitiveness runs through such poet-lives as
have been left to us; the accuracy in bulk and in detail
of the scientist is, of course, shown in writing his own
life; of the painter, the doctor, the actor, our records
are violently diverse — no one thread runs through
them. This is most curious in the last case, for of
various memoirs of stage folk, one (Macready) is a
reHgious document; two (Ristori and Salvini) show
natures and methods simple, dignified, direct, and
sincere; three (Clairon, Charke, and Bauer) are beset
with vanity and morbid grievances; "Perdita" is wholly
romantic, and Madame Bernhardt wholly objective.
To no one effect can we point as the result of their pro
fession on these eight persons. On the other hand, few
autobiographies of the mihtary order appear to have
been written which do not mention a love and a talent
for mathematics in boyhood. In this one regard, from
the French marshals to the English Lord Wolseley, they
are simUarly endowed, almost from infancy. But, as a
whole, we may confidently repeat that the influence of
profession on individuality is imperceptible.
The question of race-characteristics, of nationality,
is one which we must not be led to over-emphasize.
The statistician has pointed out that evidence can have
Httle weight on this subject since it must be limited
to a few individual minds. Quantity, rather than qual-

196 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ity, counts here. Allusion has already been made to
Quetelet's warning that a study of the individual ham
pers the proper conception of general laws; and that the
individual must be regarded as only a fraction of the
species. If this warning was advisable at the outset of
a general study, it becomes necessary where the study
touches on questions of race.
Yet, if no man is a complete guide to the race from
which he springs, it is true that his own personaHty may
underline, may accent, those characteristics which we
speak of as Oriental or Anglo-Saxon — • as French, or
English, or Italian. In every highly-colored tempera
ment there are shades belonging to a man's race rather
than to himself. The Germanness of Goethe, the ItaHan-
ness of Alfieri, are plain to be seen, although their genius
may be universal. But, as a pyramid may not stand
upon its apex, just so one must not rely too confidently
upon the race qualities of a single personality, however
concentrated an essence of his race that personaHty may
appear. A warning is needful, because the mere terms
of writing tend to exaggerate the subject, tend to make
the reader believe an argument is being stated and con
clusions formed. Therefore it must be made very clear
at the outset that certain curiosities of psychology are
handled for what they are worth.
A single speck of cochineal or pepper may be too
small, when isolated, for us accurately to determine the
color of the substance, which yet it shares. If it be

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 197
presumptuous to volunteer any final estimate of the
French intellect after a study of the mimoiriste alone,
yet the mimoiriste must contribute his share to our
impressions of the whole. Briefly then, theorists may be
equally mistaken if they "have been cowardly and
hung back" and if they "have been temerarious and
rushed unwisely in," as Stevenson puts it. One should
not exaggerate the suggestiveness of any one literary
class; yet only the obtuse would deny that class its full
participation in all the characteristics of its race.
Since we know that there have been many fluctua
tions in the introspective tendency, and that the ap
proach to a measure of perfection in self-delineation has
been far from steady or continuous, it were not amiss to
recapitulate our canons for the classic, the ideal auto
biography. The first is a serious autobiographical
intention, seriously maintained and seriously fulfiUed.
The work thus weighted must possess that balance be
tween fact and feeling without which no attributes of
character can be placed in a proper perspective to the
observer. The sense of proportion in both feeling and
fact must be delicate and just. There should be style
enough to make the personality count. More is usually
a disadvantage, and any involved, euphuistic tendency
injures the book at the outset. The writer of his own
life must remember above aU, that he is making first, a
scientific document; second, a piece of literature. If
he can do it simply, clearly, vividly, so much the better

198 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
for him and for us; but he had better make a dry
digest than a romantic narrative; better foUow Cardan
than Kenelm Digby.
The standards just set up have been fulfilled to a
larger degree by the ItaHans than by any other nation.
Not only do their incomparably great examples reach
more nearly our perfect self-study than those of any
other country, but their unfinished, their minor cases,
share in their distinction. We owe them Alfieri, Goldoni,
Querini, Cardan, and Cellini; complete, authoritative
psychological records; and also marvelously perfect frag
ments — Lorenzino de Medici, Vico, Chiabrera, Leo-
pardi, Petrarch, Giusti. These show an equal clearness,
balance, and just discrimination of values. They never
err in over-emphasizing the non-essentials. This pre
eminence of ItaHan memoirs has given rise to admirable
editions and coUections, to penetrating commentators
like Ancona and Luigi Carrer. The crowning glory of the
Italian autobiographer, however, is his abiHty to distin
guish between emotion, sentiment, and fact. Never is
the reader in the slightest doubt as to what Benvenuto
Cellini was doing, as apart from what he was feeling. The
fear, affection, and superstition of Cardan are carefuUy
differentiated from his acts, from his accomplishment,
from his opinions. In Alfieri's struggle for self-control
there is no confusion between what actuaUy happened,
what other people thought, and what Alfieri thought.
This extraordinary combination of high capacity and

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 199
emotion with a scientific method, is not to be found in
other Hteratures to anything Hke the same degree.
There are separate instances, of course. Herbert Spen
cer represents the scientific method in autobiography,
but in his case the method has overwhelmed the matter
and left but Httle construction to the picture. On the
other hand, the Wahrheit und Dichtung, and the His
toire de ma Vie, so lack method, are so occupied with
the flow of feeling, and the vague and rosy glow of
reminiscence, that, whereas we cannot somehow see Mr.
Spencer going daUy to the Athenaeum Club, and feel,
instead, that his real place of residence was in a glass
case at the British Museum, we are equally at a loss to
evoke the young Wolfgang or the later Aurore Dude-
vant, and xannot shake off the sensation that we have
been reading rather inferior works of fiction by these
noted hands. Now this is not once the case with the
Italian writers, in whom the power of just analysis
does not seem to interfere with the presentation of a
living figure. Apparently, emotion in literary expression
has retained with them its primal force, has not become
weakened, dUuted, into sentiment. It is as if their cre
ative faculty has paused longer than is usual at the
point of balanced maturity, when emotion still gives
impetus to the intellectual forces, when intellect gives
direction and weight to emotion. The Italian auto
biography has displayed this measure of equilibrium
for a space of three hundred years or more, — dis-

200 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
plays it still, in sporadic and scattered cases. Pages of
Giusti forcibly recall that stream of earHer power from
1575 to 1800.
In no other country, among no other people, has the
self-biographer shown an impersonal aloofness in regard
to truth with the same touch, as we may say, in which
he has animated his picture with the warm hues of Hfe.
Let any one lay side by side those passages in which
Jerome Cardan deals with his gambling, Benvenuto
CeUini with his amours, and similar passages from Jean
Jacques Rousseau; or compare Alfieri's description of
his conquest over passion and entrance into freedom
of mind, with Franklin's errata, and somewhat smug
progress on the road to prosperity, and the differences
wUl be at once as striking as apparent.
Far exceeding the Italian in number and variety, yet,
on the whole, below their level of general excellence,
the French mimoire has stood for centuries as an expres
sion of the most characteristic qualities of the French
genius. From the first it has been a literary creation
rather than a scientific document. The very earliest
cases are marked by their sense for style, their love
of form, the unity and finish of their construction. A
literary impulse produced them, a Hterary atmosphere
pervades the completed work. Sentiment as a literary
constituent is, therefore, disproportionately predomi
nant. Passion, emotion — not literary things at all —
are banished.

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 201
But if it be true that several Italian autobiographers
reach levels to which only a single famous French self-
student has attained, yet no one can deny to the
French hand a mastery in rendering this kind of narra
tive artistic, agreeable, and complete. If there be in
France no such group of great psychological cases as we
have found in Italy, there is a mass of admirably inter
esting works. At once lively and accurate, polished
without stiffness, flexible without looseness, the French
memoire carries with it a general readableness, inde
pendent of era, of author, — we had almost said, of
matter. It is this general readableness and popularity
and fascination which has led to the wholesale forgery
of mimoires, in full operation, as we have seen, as far
back as the time of Courtilz de Sandraz and the Mi
moires d'Artagnan. The traits which coalesce to make
this universal readableness, include wit and humor (for
in other literatures the early autobiography is wholly
serious), graceful detaUs superimposed upon a plan of
regularity, and an infinite penetration and vivacity in
dealing with persons. It is in France that woman makes
her first appearance as a mimoiriste — woman, so es
pecially fitted by her continuity of memory to preserve
for future generations both the main aspect of the
social life of her day, and the rich details which build
up the life of the individual.
If we place the French and Italian records beside one
another, we see the lines of human nature in the latter

202 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
deeper-cut, more freely outHned; a rough vigor, a primal
force, lives in them. The capacity for creative emotion,
heightened and strong in the Italian, has in the French
been formaHzed and lowered to a cult of sentiment.
This is the main great difference between them. An
other difference is developed when one looks at the
chief tendencies of the French literary mind, and notes
the sense for form above mentioned, and also the in
herent and overwhelming sense for personaHty. This
interest has by no means escaped the psychologist.
M. Alfred Fouiliee, in his most Uluminating tract on
the Psychologie du peuple Frangais, analyzes it in the
following terms: —
" Par son intellectualisme, notre litterature est portfe
k consid^rer les fetres et les personnes sous I'aspect qui
les rend plus saisissables k I'inteUigence; or, on pent
dire que c'est avant tout I'aspect conscient, celui oil
I'etre existe pour soi, et devenu transparent k lui-meme,
le devient aussi aux autres. Ce que nos ^crivains met-
tent k reHef, ce sout toutes les passions et les id^es qui
arrivent k la connaissance de soi."
This intellectuality, so early turned upon itself, is
present in the most trivial example, entirely blotting
out surroundings, nature, conditions, beauty, or atmos
phere. Nature hardly exists for the Frenchman before
the Revolution, and M. FouUlfee does not let this fact
escape him.
"Le sens de la nature," he says, "a 6te long k se d6-

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 203
velopper dans la Htt6rature frangaise, tant la vie intel-
lectuelle et sociale, rapportant tout &, I'homme, absorbait
tout." Every reader of the early mimoires knows how just
is M. FouUl^e's observation; how "I'aspect conscient,
celui oil I'fetre existe pour soi, " totally absorbs the mind
of the writer and of his friends. Search as one may, it is
hard to find the briefest sketch of surroundings. We
read of a movement from place to place; but the char
acters journey Hke Greek gods in clouds of their own, so
do they enwrap themselves in the single atmosphere of
Paris. We hear nothing about the country except the
annoyance of traveHng through it; nothing of nature
save when she inconsiderately hampers the progress of
the great; nothing of the provinces save their provin
ciality; nothing of Lyons or Marseilles save their dis
tance from Paris. Reading these records one might
easily believe the country quite homogeneous, — the
scenery of Normandy exactly like the scenery of the
Midi. These ladies and gentlemen seem to have gone
about with their eyes shut. The Electress Sophia of
Hanover (writing in French) makes a visit to Venice
in 1680; asked to admire the town, she confesses that
she finds it "extremely melancholy," though she likes
the Corso, because there is no dust ! The St. Gothard
Pass to her is simply frightful and alarming, — when it
is not "nasty," — and of the journey in her carriage
from Bologna to Rome, she remarks that she did not

204 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
find it so tedious because she played cards all the way!
The marshals Monluc and Bassompierre, the two Man
cini sisters, la reine Margot, Madame, mbre du Rigent,
rarely condescend to mention the outdoor world at all.
MademoiseUe de Montpensier admires but one spectacle
in her four volumes, and that is her father's funeral pro
cession. "Gelk parut trfes beau," she says, and adds
characteristically, "et Ton dit que j'etois magnifique
en tons que j'ordonnois." We have aU accompanied
Madame de S^vign^ and the good CorbineUi a score of
times in her traveling carriage, "aux Rochers," but we
are rarely told anything about the house or the estate;
and Madame de Grignan's journeys, we remember, were
simply to be dreaded and bewailed. If Saint-Simon or
Madame de MottevUle, when they tell us how un
comfortably the court moved out to VersaUles, should
have described that, on their arrival, the sun shone,
the sky was clear and mild, the fountains sported their
jets of silver and the talons rouges gleamed upon the
turf, the dullest reader would at once mark the passage
as suspect.
Not until Rousseau brought nature into fashion and
made possible such charming descriptive passages as
occur in Marmontel, do we find the surroundings of a
character considered as of value in drawing any picture
of that character. This alone renders the pre-revolu-
tionary mimoires as illuminative socially as they are
narrow in other regards. Their strength and their weak-

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 205
ness lie alike in this : strength, in those graphic touches
with which they portray the social group; weakness, in
that they fail to relate their group to the world of hu
manity in general. Whereas Cardan and Alfieri are,
first of all, men, and secondly, creative intelligences and
Italians, the French mimoiriste is, first of all, a French
person, secondly, soldier, poet, or grande dame, moving
quite serenely in a little world apart.
Somewhat similar attitudes have been credited to the
EngHsh of to-day; they are not true of the seventeenth
and eighteenth-century Englishman. Insular he may
have been in certain customs and conventions, but a
great and different world lay close about him, forced
itself on his attention. The literature of journal and
autobiography in England is full of atmosphere and ob
jective detaU. The rural life of seventeenth-century
England has been painted for us as if it were the stage-
setting of a drama. Nor is it true of the countryside
alone. The London of Evelyn and Pepys — how much
more vividly it is pictured than the Paris of Madame de
Staal-Delaunay! And professional London, — the Lon
don of Symonds d'Ewes, or of Roger North, — how
much more reality has it than the Paris of Bassompierre
and Sully! Their French minds are turned inward upon
personalities — theirs is the aspect conscient. And this
is one reason why French autobiography surpasses the
English. The autobiography has touched in modern English

206 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
literature extremes of nobility and banality. Hordes
of cheap and commonplace persons have been encour
aged to mount the witness-stand. The Lights and
Shadows of my Pastorate and My Steps Heavenward
type of record exist in such profusion as to cheapen
the value of evidence in general. At the same time,
single instances are of unusual distinction and weight;
and in the group of Quaker journalists our Hterature
possesses an unique and complete record of a great reli
gious movement. One cannot forget Egerton Brydges,
MUl, and Harriet Martineau, nor the later scientists,
whose worth is incalculable if their picturesqueness be
less. If the general tone is less inteUectual, the particu
lar cases stand extremely high. Undeniably, however,
autobiographical writing in England — with the single
exception of the Quaker group — is sporadic untU the
end of the seventeenth century.
The casual glance will observe at once that the impor
tant English autobiography is comparatively modern.
In J. Payne ColHer's Bibliographical Account of Early
English Literature, in four volumes, only one prose
autobiography, Richard Vennar's, is considered. This
is at the same date as Cardan and Cellini in Italy, as
Monluc, Marguerite de Valois, and the chroniclers in
France. As a fashion, the personal record in England
dates practically from Rousseau; and this is why all
English books of criticism are so naif in their references
to Jean Jacques as the primal autobiographer. They

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 207
invariably speak of him as the parent of the whole
introspective crew.
Is there an important EngHsh self-study earlier than
George Fox or Herbert of Cherbury? If we take the
former as our first capital English self-delineator, we es
tablish a level which must carry us over until we meet
the name of Edward Gibbon, writing in 1789. The
barren stretch in this particular field struck M. Taine
at once, who comments on the aridity of the Puritan
memoir, and its lack of personal qualities. But after
Gibbon and Rousseau and the French Revolution, the
fashion takes a firm hold on English literary energies;
the autobiography widened, deepened, heightened
steadily in value until it reached its zenith in the
middle years of the nineteenth century.
The discussion, a few pages back, of the Wahrheit
und Dichtung, mentioned with emphasis as a cause of
its vagueness the mental habit of confusing sentiment
with fact. Our excuse for repeating the phrase is
that it furnishes us with the reason why we possess
no German autobiographies of definite standing and
worth. Study of representative cases confirms the im
pression made by the Wahrheit und Dichtung; Rich
ter, Kotzebue, StUling, Lavater, with their Teutonic
brothers, such as Hans Andersen and Louis Holberg,
are all vitiated by the same poison. They may often
be read with interest, they may contain curious or
suggestive matter; but they are, in the main, psy-

208 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
chologically valueless. The emotion which was height
ened to passion in Italy, and clipped, drilled, formalized
to a cult of sentiment in France, has spread over the
German pages a smudge of sentimentality, besmearing,
hiding all it touches. Incidents typical of this charac
teristic in Kotzebue and in Andersen have already been
given; if any one desires others, let him read the auto
biography of Ludwig Spohr, or of Jung Stilling, or the
singular life of the actress Karolin Bauer. From the
recent autobiography of the novelist George Ebers, not
one single valuable fact about the author can be ob
tained. Of course, there are Germans writing wholly
under the influence of other literatures, who escape this
danger. Such is the sixteenth-century schoolmaster,
Thomas Platter; Heinrich Suso, the mystic; the great
Erasmus; and, later, those remarkable women, the
Electress Sophia, and Wilhelmine, Margravine of Bareith.
But the latter, and Catherine II, once of Anhalt-Zerbst,
write in French because of French inspiration, and the
earlier German savants wrote in Latin. If we do not
give up a section to the consideration of the German
autobiography, it is because, as autobiography in our
sense of the word, it does not exist.
If Americans consider that our literature has also
signed the Declaration of Independence, then it is evi
dent we can hardly lay claim to those of the Quaker
journalists who came and labored here, and yet kept
their aUegiance. Those who do not caU themselves

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 209
American, we may not call so. For all that, we have
our classic autobiography, and it is strange that this
example should be at once so distinctive and so typical,
even at that date, of a separate nationality. Typical
it still remains, for even now the ideal American is
Franklin in Httle. The figure he presents, — prudent,
sagacious, prosperous, — above all, prosperous, — with a
healthy moral code not in the least fanatic or strained;
with humor, energy and importance in affairs, — is not
this still the American ideal at its best? Franklin,
that large embodiment of somewhat small virtues, has
left us a balanced and complete self-delineation, after
reading which we have but one regret — that his are
qualities which do not bear reduction from the heroic
stature. It is not easy to say whether the influence of
his record has been more useful or hurtful. Its balance
is extraordinary: the writer is wholly reasonable; he
is moved by common sense; he is consistently utUitarian
in every event of his life. His attitude toward what
he terms his errata is as gentle as we could wish it
possible to be toward our own. Interesting and
significant is the fact that his first erratum is "a
violation of trust respecting money"; which might well
be written in black and giant letters over the whole
United States, from Maine to Cahfomia. The second
was his abandonment (for reasons of prudence) of
the young woman to whom he was betrothed. He
repairs the fault as best he may later on, and, after

210 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
his Wanderjahr, renews the engagement and marries
her. Toward vice he is also wholly utilitarian. "The
intrigues with low women that fell in my way," he
writes, "were attended with some expense, great in
convenience, besides a continual risk to my health."
The emphasis here is adjusted to suggest that if one
could moderate the expense, bear the inconvenience, and
avoid the risk to health, Franklin knew no other reasons
for self-restraint. Poor Burns — how deep a sinner,
and, worse than all, how unprosperous! — has a clearer
insight, a more poignant accent. Even at its full stream
of splendid energy, Franklin's intellectual development
is, in a measure, hampered by his expediency. Practi
cally a free-thinker in religion, he yet never mentions
his free-thought without apology. If he sets systemat
ically at work to weed himself of faults, to "arrive at
moral perfection," he gives up the task, lest it "might
be a kind of foppery in morals, which if it were known
might make me ridiculous." Again, we find him, even
in his inner life, governed by his cardinal principle of
mundane success. Seeing ourselves in this great man,
— perhaps the most typically American of aU our
great men, — what small, what ungenerous creatures
do we after all appear! Could we have pointed, as the
quintessence of our national character, but to some
courageous idealist!
But enough of carping. Some of us must walk the

NATIONALITY AND PROFESSION 211
earth, yet reverencing stUl that type of "beautiful and
ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings
in vain." For the reader, the value of Franklin's auto
biography lies in our being able to trace therein the
growth of uncommon mental powers, developed by self-
education and given an exceptional field of activity.
The inteUigence with which he governed his own life and
affairs, became intellect when he turned it to the service
of the country at large. His measure, persuasiveness,
and wisdom, used among men, carried immediately into
execution the projects of an ingenious and benevolent
mind. The man's powers were both dignified and ex
panded by success. His autobiography traces for us the
growth of personal thrift into communal economy; of
petty ingenuity into great invention; of individual in
dustry into a spirit fit to animate a people; and of intel
lectual understanding of others, from the tact which
enabled him to keep on terms with a drunken partner,
into that firm sagacity to which we owe so stable a part
of our national existence.

CHAPTER XII
MEMORY
"I WILL soar then beyond this power of my nature
also; and I enter the roomy chambers of memory, where
are the treasures of countless images. . . . And I dis
cern the scent of lilies from that of violets while smelling
nothing; and I prefer honey to grape-syrup, a smooth
thing to a rough, though I neither taste nor handle, but
only remember. These things do I within the vast
chamber of my memory. . . . There also do I meet with
myself and recall myself . . . and when I speak, the
images of all I speak about are present out of the same
treasury of memory. Great is this power of memory,
exceeding great, oh my God ! — an inner chamber
large and boundless. Who has plumbed the depths
thereof? Yet it is a power of mine, and appertains unto
my nature; nor do I myself grasp all that I am. There
fore is the mind too narrow to contain itself. ... A
great admiration rises upon me; astonishment seizes
me. . . . And men go forth to wonder at the height of
mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow
of the rivers, the extent of the ocean, and the courses
of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves. . . ."
In these magnificent sentences of Augustin — which,
in truth, approach the accent of Hamlet's "What a

MEMORY 213
thing is man!" — we read aU the wonders of a new
outlook. Why should man marvel at the world and
leave unregarded the perpetual marvels at work within
him? Chief apartment in the palace of mystery is "that
roomy chamber of memory." The first sustained effort
of self-examination brings to Augustin a sense of ex
haustion and bewUderment.
"Truly, O Lord, I labor therein and labor in my
self. . . . But what is nearer to me than myself? And
behold I am not able to comprehend the force of my own
memory though I cannot name myself without it. . . .
Of what nature am I? A life various, manifold, and ex
ceeding vast. . . . Through it all do I run to and fro
and fly; I penetrate on this side and on that, so far as I
am able, and nowhere is there an end."
Although this wonder of memory has n^ver been, so
deeply, so truly voiced as in these sentences, yet as a
wonder it persists in page after page of personal narra
tive. Rare is the document that does not begin with
specified first recollections, or with some allusion to the
earliest memories. In historical chronicles written in
the first person, this early remembrance may be the only
subjective fact recorded on the first page or two of the
author's introduction. The age at which it occurs is
sometimes noted (though we could wish more fre
quently), and in the case of important persons this
becomes interesting and suggestive. The consensus of
experience gives it between three and four years, as

214 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
the lists show.' In regard to the other cases, there
would appear to be as many remembering at two years
as after four years. Casanova recalls nothing before
eight years and four months, which is as unusually late
as his sexual experiences were early, for they began at
ten years old.
An earlier first remembrance does not, by any means,
imply a generally powerful memory. Alfieri, Rousseau
and Renan remember nothing before their fifth year,
yet they possessed unusuaUy strong memories. CeUini,
Goethe, Goldoni, Cardan and John Ruskin were four
years old, or thereabouts, at the incident of the first
remembrance. Those whose recoUection goes to two
years and earlier, are apt to connect it with some sUght
shock — a fall, an illness, a death in the famUy, or news
of the Lisbon earthquake. WiUiam Hutton remembers
a whip at two, an ocular delusion before three. John
Gait says: "Memory carries me transactions that must
have happened when I was less than two years of age,
yet I have not a very good general memory." Jean
Paul Richter goes back stUl further: "I am able to
bring from my twelfth or at furthest my fourteenth
month, one pale little remembrance . . . that a poor
scholar loved me much and carried me in his arms."
The age given is not to be received without question,
yet the recollection is a typicaUy chUdish one.
Herbert of Cherbury, whose chUdhood was sickly, and
' In Appendix D.

MEMORY 215
who writes, "It were so long before I began to speak
that many thought I would ever be dumb," gives a
curious first memory. "The very furthest thing I re
member," he says, "is that when I understood what
was said by others, I did yet forbear to speak, lest I
should utter something that were imperfect or imperti
nent." The strangeness of this, which could not have
been seriously credited but for what he tells us of deli
cacy and retardation, lies in its subjectivity; for, as we
shall see later, the normal first memory is, almost with
out exception, objective. In contrast to Herbert, we
find Lord Brougham talking fiuently at eight months
old; and yet first remembering the story told by his
grandmother of his parents' marriage, fully two years
later in his life. The first memory of the Cardinal de
Bernis was of being weaned, and also of being amazed
at shadows on the wall; he must have been less than
two years old. Herbert Spencer avows that he only
"remembers that he once remembered" a keen dread
of being alone. William BeU Scott's Autobiographical
Notes give his theory that "the earliest remembrances
we retain from chUdhood do not refer to the externals
of life . . . but relate to the difficulties of conscious
ness." Jerome Cardan supports this idea with his
dumb, struggling, early memory of night-terrors and
phantasms; and so does Harriet Martineau, for her in
numerable childish fears are the very first thing she can
recall. Blind, unreasoning dread of people, of dusk, of

216 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
the star-lit sky, of nightmares themselves, and the fear
of nightmares. "I had scarcely any respite from terror,"
she says of those early .recollections.
What sort of things do people remember? asks the
curious reader. A. J. C. Hare remembered a big dog's
knocking him down; Cellini, a salamander and a beat
ing; George Sand, a bad fall and a cut, bleeding and
excitement; Ludwig Spohr, a smell; Edward Gibbon,
insubordination and a whipping; Thomas Holcroft,
playing with his parents before three years old; Dr.
Joseph Priestley, playing with a pin; Goethe, the house
where he was born; and the Highland lady, Mrs. Grant,
"some West Indian seeds, pretty, red and shiny, with
black spots on them." These are typical chUdish im
pressions of another type from the terrors of Cardan,
Spencer, Sonia Kovalevsky and Miss Martineau; or from
the states of consciousness of Herbert, Job Scott the
Quaker, and Solomon Maimon. A third type recaUs sur
roundings, atmosphere, background. Of these are Cha
teaubriand, Edgar Quinet, Lamartine, Dumas, and
Alfred Russel Wallace. John Ruskin observes espe
cially that we first remember places. A parting,
whether temporary or eternal, often makes the first deep
impression on the mind of a little child. Alexandre
Dumas remembers nothing before his father's death,
neither does the godly Robert Blair, who says — poor
baby! — that "at his interring, I used my bairnly en
deavoring to be in the grave before him."

MEMORY 217
Baron Marbot and Colonel Meadows Taylor, like
George Sand, recollect a chUdish accident; and Josiah
Flynt Willard's first memory is of the first manifesta
tion of his life-long passion for running away. Sir
Symonds d'Ewes, that learned lawyer, was not likely
to pass over his first memory, for at three years old he
crept into his grandfather's wine-cellar and drank him
self into unconsciousness. "It brought me very near
my grave," he declares, and, as a matter of reaction,
caused him to loathe all liquor for the rest of his life.
Scott's friend, "Jupiter" Carlyle, remembers the drown
ing of a boy comrade, to whom he had confided his half
pence to buy some sweets. The loss of the sweets made
an indelible impression. Alexander Bain remembers
being at dame's school at three years old; and Massimo
d'AzegHo remembers posing for a "putto" to a painter
friend of Alfieri's, when he was a restless little child of
four. It is rather curious to find the pains of childhood
persisting over and beyond the joys. There is not a
single one among the memories just cited that is of a
delight; in fact, the only definite case here of joyful
first memory appears to be Goldoni, in whom the gift
of a puppet-show, when he was four years old, produced
transports of pleasure which have survived aU other
impressions. If we glance back over these first memories, the
statement that the normal first memory is objective
seems to be sustained. The autobiographer himself ob-

218 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
serves this, for we find Alexandre Dumas making a
special note that incidents and places are the clear
pictures which his mind retains. Alfred Russel Wal
lace comments especially on the vivid character of
objects and surroundings in his memory, whereas, like
Dumas, even personalities are to him half-effaced. If,
therefore, the usual recollection takes so definite a form
as red seeds, or a big dog, or a whipping, it behooves
one to look a little more closely at these few cases
wherein it has taken a subjective form. Terror, pure
and simple, formed the first remembrance of Cardan,
of Harriet Martineau, of Sonia Kovalevsky, and of
Herbert Spencer, alike only in that they were delicate,
sickly, and over-sensitive. Maimon's sense of chUdish
subtlety (he got the better of an argument at three and
was rewarded by sugar), and Herbert's sense of chUdish
reticence, and Job Scott's memory of "the serious
impressions and contemplations " of his feelings in
meeting, are linked together by their evidence of a
somewhat abnormal childhood. These seven cases of
subjective first memories belong, as we see, to five men
and two women. Three of the seven are scientists,
three students and writers, and one a reHgious fanatic.
Diverse as they seem, in sex, occupation, talent, na
tionality and date, they are alike in this, that they all
were unhealthy children. Cardan, as we have read, was
an abnormally delicate boy; Miss Martineau had dys
pepsia and was deaf; Sonia was extremely nervous;

MEMORY 219
Herbert Spencer thinks himself below par as a child;
Job Scott records a series of illnesses and melancholies.
Maimon gives no evidence of iU health during chUd
hood, but, none the less, describes a condition of
abnormal precocity and nervous overstrain.
Before quitting the subject of first memory, therefore,
it seems reasonable to point out that in healthy and
normal cases it takes an objective form, and that this
first remembrance becomes subjective only under some
abnormal influence. Infirmity, sickness, or nervous
strain, governed those memories which hold keen
terrors, hideous nightmares, religious awe, or exagger
ated states of self-consciousness; and it may be said,
in passing, that the speciaHst in chUd-study will gain
more than he imagines from an examination of the
records left by these seven, together with those of
Alfieri, Agrippa d'Aubign^, Robert Blair, Goethe,
Guibert de Nogent, J. S. MUl, Rousseau, George Sand,
Marie Bashkirtsev, Henry AUine, .Bellarmin, J. A.
Symonds, P. G. Hamerton, M. A. Schimmelpenninck,
Vico, Robert Southey, Zerah Colburn, Ristori, Salvini,
Samuel Roberts, Edmund Gosse, Anne Gilbert, Georg
Brandfes, Lord Brougham, WUliam Hayley, Robert and
WUliam Chambers, Guido Sorelli, G. Giusti, WUliam
Hutton, John Ruskin, George Fox, Jeanne de la Mothe-
Guyon, Teresa, H. Heine, with many other religious
documents, and minor fragmentary autobiographies.
Frequent as are the accounts of what the self -student

220 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
first recalls, it is exceedingly rare to find a writer
noting the beginnings of self-consciousness. Such as
do so are usually modern. Roger North, born in 1653,
observes of his commencing school: "I began to have
a sense of myself." Jean Paul Richter's description of
the same moment is very curious: "I stood one after
noon, a very young child, at the house door, when all
at once that inward consciousness / am a me, came like
a flash of lightning from Heaven, and has remained
ever since;" and he adds, with naiveti: "Deceptions
of memory are here scarcely imaginable." Alfred Rus
sel Wallace, the scientist, and WUliam Bell Scott, the
painter, draw simUar experiences as to suddenness and
intensity. The latter is minutely described : " One evening when
turning up the turf, I found it swarming with annulose
and centipedal creatures to me previously undreamt
of . . . supernatural, yet vital activities. ... I rose
up straight. ... I was apart from these and from
everything else, alone, in an antagonistic creation,
accountable only to myself for preservation and well-
being." And he goes on to declare that the change was
from "the repose of instinct to that of thoughtful per
plexity and unrest, responsibility and isolation, never
to be again lost." Edmund Gosse, at six, suddenly
underwent the "consciousness of self as a force and as
a companion." The circumstances attendant on this
case are particularly curious and interesting. William

MEMORY 221
BeU Scott's experience in certain of its features; the un
expectedness, for instance, and the intensity, markedly
resembles that of religious conversion. In the strict
sense of a "turning about," it is conversion, indeed.
Sir Capel-Lofft says: "almost all the active powers of
my mind have come upon me thus suddenly like
moments of grace." Although, as we have seen, the
inrush of self-consciousness is very rarely observed
and recorded, yet there is enough evidence to warrant
us in beHeving that it varies immensely with the indi
vidual, and is by no means attached to a special age.
Richter, Scott and Gosse were "very young chU
dren"; Wallace and North were schoolboys. There
are cases where we can see that the subject must have
been a youth — cases like Lofft, De Thou, or George
Fox. Mark Pattison describes himself as too childish
at seventeen to receive any impression whatever from
Paradise Lost, and as not having any consciousness
of his subjective self much before twenty or twenty-one.
Development was similarly late in the case of Georg
Brandfes. Intellectual growth, no doubt, with its in
finite variations in the individual, must govern the
experience. When it comes to the accuracy of these early first
impressions, the autobiographer himself is not without
his doubt. This we have already quoted in Herbert
Spencer's case. "Of incidents in childhood my remem
brances have assumed that secondary form which I

J

222 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
suspect they mostly do in advanced life — I simply
remember that I once remembered." The impHcation
here that advancing years dull the early memories, is
not borne out by the bulk of the evidence. Psycholo
gists point out that, in general, a man in late middle
life has clearer pictures of his childhood than when he
was twenty-five. Turgenev expresses this idea in a
more literary form when he says: "But to bend a
cold, clear gaze over all one's past life — as a traveler
turns and looks from high mountains on the plain he
has passed through — is only possible at a certain age."
In the introduction to her autobiography, Sonia
Kovalevsky expresses the doubt and analyzes the
famUiar difficulty. "I should like to know," she asks,
"whether any one can definitely fix that moment of his
existence when for the first time a distinct conception
of his own personality, his own ego, the first glimpse
of conscious life arose within him. I cannot. . . .
When I begin to sort out and classify my earliest recol
lections . . . these disperse before me. I can never
succeed in evoking a single one of these recollections in
all its purity; I involuntarUy add something foreign to
it during tne very process of recalling it." Professor
William James in his Psychology states, as a general
ization, what Sonia so vividly describes as a personal
experience. Both of them thus take another view-point
from Richter, or from WUliam Bell Scott, which it is
instructive to contrast with the recorders of " moments

MEMORY 223
of grace." With aU his effort to understand the miracles
of mental growth, extending, as we have seen, to
psychological problems in themselves. Cardan excludes
memory, taking it for granted as a basis, and firmly
relying upon its data.
The controversy as to memory in the sexes, has as
sumed the form, at the present time, of a mass of
general statement, very slightly supported on either
side by particular instances. School records are made
to form the basis of various conclusions, useful so far
as they go, no doubt, but bearing the vital objection
of dealing with abilities as yet immature and unformed.
As a result of these statistics, the two sides are most
contradictory in their dogma. On the one hand is the
viewof Dr. HaU,' that "Woman excels in memory. . . .
Her thought is more concrete and individual; she is
more prone to associations," etc. This view upholds
woman as the ideal letter-writer and domestic recorder,
because of her gifts for visuaHzing concrete images and
connecting them. On the other hand, the German
writer Otto Weiniger, in his book. Sex and Charac
ter,^ largely rests his burden of proof of woman's
mental inferiority on her lack of "continuity of
memory." "When a woman looks back over her life,"
he maintains, "and lives again her experiences, there
is presented no continuous, unbroken stream, but only
a few scattered points."
• "Adolescence,'' vol. i, p. 568. ' Page 124.

224 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The memory tables' will be found to contain many
female names as furnishing data for the first recollection.
They have purposely not been classed apart from the
male, in order that they might not be examined with
any shade of difference in the mind of the reader.
That they are fewer in number goes without saying; the
same proportion continues through every department
of literature; yet the evidence furnished here does not
appear to show any lack of continuity. It is probably
unfair to compare book with book in this regard: for
instance, the Wahrheit und Dichtung shows an in
finitely smaller sense of continuity of memory than
the Histoire de ma Vie. Yet, even laying side by
side the strong man autobiography with the strong
woman autobiography, — • Mill, as an example, beside
George Sand, — the result does not annihUate the
constructive effect of the latter. Woman has not, as
yet, written the Cardan type of self-study, and on
the side of her emotional life she appears to be natur
ally more secretive and reticent than man; but she
yields nothing to him in vividness, power, ^r con
tinuity of recollection. The breadth of mind in the
male autobiographer, his tendency to connect his own
personality with the world at large, causes him fre
quent lapses of recollection, breaks in the continuity;
whUe the more limited range of the woman's inter
ests permits her memories to move without gap from
' In Appendix D.

MEMORY 225
event to event, from state of mind to state of mind.
Can one say of such autobiographers as Marguerite
de Valois, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Madame de
Staal-Delaunay, George Sand, Miss Martineau, the Mar
gravine of Bareith, Mrs. Oliphant, that their recol
lections present "no continuous stream, but a few
scattered points"?
It is pleasant to find aspects during our ramble
which we need not classify or differentiate, some blooms
over which one needs not botanize. The attributes of
the sexes occupy so much attention to-day, that the
subject appears to shift like a disputed boundary line
between rival countries. Now the raider from this side,
now the discoverer from that, sets up his flag and
claims a strip of territory. How much of woman is in
man, and how much of man is in woman, is a discus
sion perpetually in search of fresh evidence. Once for
all, then, these pages can aid it little, for there is no
sex to the autobiographer; on this field the writer
stands or falls by the performance itself. The great .
self-student may be either man or woman; it is only
required that he be thoroughly the one or the other.
Equipment for this task is as much woman's as man's;
each has his special candor, each his temperamental
reticence. As regards memory alone, the woman's is
usually more intimate, more personal, more limited and
more complete; and the data furnished by both may be
used without undue attention to the fact of sex. Com-

226 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
parative study tends to show, at least, that those powers
of memory which bring about and confirm the auto
biographical impulse, belong to both sexes, and place
the results of self-study equally within the reach of
both. Perchance this is by the way. Our path mounts at
times the little eminence of argument to stand upon
the little hill of theory, or merely wanders between
the flowering hedgerows of allusion, or pauses to
admire a distant view or to lament the untidy bor
ders of a neighbor's garden. The reader, who is our
walking companion, must be content this should
be so.
Observation of memory in the autobiographer sus
tains the prevalent theory of its relation to genius.
Among the cases of persistently weak memories not a
single one is a mind of the first order. Though it may
develop late, a strong, if selective, memory seems to be
a first requisite of intellectual power. But the quality
of memories must vary, and just as different physical
training may develop different muscles, so special
mental training must produce different kinds of memory.
The verbal memory of the littirateur, the face-and-
character memory of the politician, the date-and-event
memory of the historian, — these may alter the treat
ment of the same facts. Pasquier's four volumes are
a tribute to his general powers of memory, yet he
declares he could never learn by rote, word for word.

MEMORY 227
Some mimoiristes omit all dates; others lay a stress on
them which their value does not warrant. Rousseau
never gave an accurate date, but how accurate was his
memory and transcription oi feeling! So the "roomy
chamber" is furnished anew for every occupant.

CHAPTER XIII
RELIGION
Though the religious confession has been thoroughly
studied, though it is the only branch of autobiographical
writing which up to the present has been systematicaUy
classified in order to receive scientific attention, this
study has been individual rather than comparative.
Two lines of investigation have been respectively
brought to bear upon important examples, the psychical
and the medical. The philosopher and the student of
religions, has consulted these documents for the purpose
of coUating from their individual reHgious experiences
data to elucidate and confirm certain theories as to
general religious experience. In their hands the cases
resemble a series of dots which, drawn on paper, form
a line having a certain curve and length. Before these
records can be of service in this way, a pre-supposition
must exist that they are normal, representative. The
student of religious movements and emotions makes
use of them because he believes them to display feel
ings, ideas, exaltations common to a large section of
humanity, descriptive, in more or less measure, of the
experience of many earnest and thoughtful persons. An
Augustin or a Teresa, he believes, must simply voice
the common ideas accompanying certain normal and

RELIGION 229
definite reHgious conditions; and the student, therefore,
feels warranted in his induction as to the power of
religion over the souls of men.
The second view of the reHgious confession is directly
antagonistic to this one, although the extent of its an
tagonism has not, as yet, been clearly demonstrated.
This point of view, denying the state of mysticism per se,
regards the religious confession as an abnormal mani
festation, its existence as a proof of the singularity of
the subject, and its data as directly pathological. The
very incidents of exaltation, the very intensity and
variety of emotions, which to the religious student are
indicative of the strength of a "something not ourselves
which makes for righteousness," in this view form but
the syndrome of neuropathic conditions. Such records
are, therefore, far from normal. Their writers are not
to be regarded as representative of countless unwritten
cases, not to be regarded as representative of common
experience, but rather the reverse. Religious strain,
reHgious excitement, religious depression, whether con
sidered as the manifestations of hysteria, or as a form
of insanity, or as a neurosis, are, in any event, to be
regarded not as general, not as normal, but as individual
and as pathological.
According to this conception, the miracles attending
on what we have been lately taught to call the "phe
nomena of conversion," are symptomatic of abnor
mality. The visual and auditory haUucinations, the

230 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
great lights from heaven, or voices from on high, are
not to be considered as intrinsically differing from
secular hallucinations. They are no more to be taken
as indicating the presence in human life of any non-
natural or non-material influence whatever, than the
frequent delusion of the insane that they are being
persecuted may be taken to indicate that persecu
tion is an imbedded instinct in the human race. The
fact that these hallucinations are in many cases un
accompanied by any other symptoms of illness or
abnormality, would serve, in this opinion, simply to
isolate the malady. The fact that they are associated
with genius, with a high ethical sense, with a high
degree of creative and intellectual abUity, does not
shake the theory. Broadly stated, it is based simply
upon the syllogism that hallucinations are abnormal,
that if the religious leader has hallucinations he is
abnormal, no matter what may be the quality of the
man, the nature of the hallucination, or the aesthetic
beauty of the whole case.
Such are the two chief aspects of the religious con
fession, and according to them it has been examined.
Books like Professor WUliam James's Varieties of Re
ligious Experience, and Professor Starbuck's Psychology
of Religion investigate it from the first point of view;
men like Ribot and Grasset maintain the pathological.
To the second, Richard Burton, in the Anatomy of
Melancholy, has unconsciously added the weight of his

RELIGION 231
erudition, for the section on religious melancholy is
packed, though aU unwittingly, with examples to main
tain the neuropathical opinion.
The difficulty with the second aspect — which is un
doubtedly favored by men of science at the present
time — is the difficulty of establishing the norm. The
psychological study of religion is entirely modern; so
recent, indeed, that it can turn to no storehouse of
accredited facts, but must snatch its material out of the
air, Hke a conjurer with oranges. It has succeeded in
maintaining and upholding certain simUarities which
bring closely home to us the ties of human nature, bind
ing alike the Quaker and the Catholic, the Siifi, the
Buddhist, and the Jew; and it has succeeded in showing
us that power of emotion which propels the religious
idea. Religious manifestation invariably brings the
emotions into play, and in quantity and strength is
governed by the quantity and strength of those emo
tions. This fact immensely affects the written docu
ment; and when we remember that the creative literary
impulse has also in itself a heightening effect on emo
tion, we see that we are not apt to be furnished with
the religious experiences and feelings of perfectly
balanced and controlled people. Francis Galton, in
The Human Faculty, declares: "It would be instruct
ive to make a study of the working religions of
good and able men of all nations — and also as to
their happiness and unhappiness." Such a study would

232 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
aid in setting up some normal standard by which the
variations might be judged. But, above all, in examin
ing such testimony, the quality of the witness becomes
of importance. In Professor James's Varieties of Reli
gious Experience, although the author declares his
intention to confine himself to "those more developed
subjective phenomena recorded in literature, produced
by articulate and fully self-conscious men in works of
piety and autobiography," there is apparently no
attempt at any standard of credibUity. The sincerity
of Augustin or Teresa is treated as on the same plane
with that of Billy Bray, the street evangelist, or that of
the latest Salvation Army convert. Moreover, although
comparison in itself implies certain simUarities, and can
only be useful within the same limits, Professor James
yet uses indifferently the witness of Augustin and of the
Reverend Mr. Skinner. With so many documents extant
of serious intention, and by warranted hands, it would
seem hardly necessary to include the Christian Scientists,
the Reverend Mr. Skinner, and the street evangeHsts —
"Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their crew." And this, not be
cause they are less religious, but because what they tell
of their experiences is less trustworthy and less credible.
The careful work done by Professor Starbuck is open to
the same objections, which become intensified when we
read the answers of those camp-meeting and revivalist
converts to the list of questions offered by him as better
worth scientific attention than autobiographies in books.

RELIGION 233
As weU might one suggest to the student of poetry that
he had better omit Shakespeare, MUton, Dante, and
devote his attention to the works of Tupper or to the
Botanic Garden of Dr. Darwin! The analogy is not
so remote. Religious conversion is an outcome of emo
tion, just as poetry is an outcome of emotion; and such
emotion may be cheap and transient, or vital and dis
tinguished. Following out Professor Starbuck's idea,
the student of poetry might maintain that Tupper and
Dr. Darwin were more modern, and were therefore
acted upon in poetical mood by conditions nearer to
our own; that their work was less heightened, and
therefore, more sincere; that the student could more
easUy comprehend the spirit of real poetry from them,
because they were more nearly at his own level! The
fallacy of this reasoning is a fallacy very prevalent
to-day, in all sorts of work claiming to deal scientifi
cally with literature, by ardent investigators of more
science than culture. Unfortunately, both acquire
ments are necessary when one wishes to differentiate
between the religious sentiments of an Augustin and a
Peter Cartwright. This is best seen in the total effect
of Professor Starbuck's own book, in which the massing
of cheap, shallow experience causes the reader to doubt
and derogate the entire business of conversion, which
he would wish to respect, if not revere. And, finally,
it is true that the same impediments to candor and
fullness in the autobiography, affect, in still greater

234 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
measure, the questionnaire. This method is open to the
same adverse influences, and is without a final corrective
in the shape of spontaneous autobiographical intention.
In any estimate of the forces which act primarUy upon
the imaginations and emotions of men, truth can only
be obtained by studying these in their purest essence,
at work upon energetic and creative minds.
It would seem that any comparative study of the
religious confession must be undertaken within definite
limits; like compared with like. Bearing Galton's sug
gestion in mind, autobiographies may be fruitfuUy
examined for their attitudes toward the question of
religious duty and religious emotion, and for an esti
mate of normal or abnormal characteristics in this re
gard. Professor James suggests this when he points out
"the enormous diversities which the spiritual lives of
different men exhibit," and when he maintains that
"the psychology of individual types of character has
hardly begun to be even sketched as yet." No more
fascinating page in the book of life lies open to us, in
which he who runs may read.
To whatever the initial impetus over men's minds is
due, that religious emotion possesses the rise,"sweep, and
onward movement of a wave, is now generally granted.
Where this wave starts, how it passes from slow to
swift, from moderation to extreme, from the bounds of
health to those of disease, has been and is being con
stantly the theme of investigation. The passage of this

RELIGION 235
force over the mind and life of the self-observer is
plainly traceable, and tends to Hnk him, in its mani
festations, with other contemporary self-observers
submitting to the same influence. A group of religious
confessions forms a nucleus of forces, — an eddy in the
larger current. Personal influence and imitation cause
such forces to affect the minor cases grouped about
the major, furnishing us with slighter but similar
data, slighter but similar phenomena. Thus is formed
Professor Le Bon's "psychological crowd." The
very first essential in the classification and analysis
of the religious confession, thus becomes its grouping,
and, secondarUy, the comparison of group with group.
Mention has already been made of the freshness and
flexibUity of the early pietistic records, as contrasted
with the conventionality of the later devotional writers.
The most clearly-defined group of these, the one which
for our purpose is best fitted for examination, owing to
the number and richness of its cases, is the Quaker
group. No other reHgious movement has left so large a
mass of classified material. The autobiographical inten
tion with the early Friends became a dogma, as it were,
of their belief, and to leave behind a journal or an
autobiography was almost a requirement of faith. The
Quaker journals form in themselves a complete library;
they are full of incident and adventure on land and sea,
in the old world as in the new; and they display upon
every page qualities of courage and steadfastness, of

236 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
simplicity and kindliness, which move the heart.' At the
same time, they show a common lack of imagination in
dealing with their creed; there is astonishingly little
vitality to their religious expression. When they write of
perplexities, of conversion, of prayer, of meeting, they
all employ the same style, the same terms of expression.
In such passages it is hard to tell if you are reading
Woolman or EUwood, Chalkley, Davies, Edmundson, or
Crook. Though there exists the quaintest individuality
in the character of these men, yet the religious color of
their minds appears to be as uniform and as dun-
colored as was the prescribed dress of their society.
The stamp of George Fox is upon every piece of
these differing metals, and we are led, therefore, back
to Fox's Journal, not only as an influential personal
narrative, but as the earliest important self-study in
EngHsh, and one of the few later documents which
has an influence approaching that of our three primary
types. Fox's biographer verifies the clearly presented image
of himself; for, although Fox's religious prepossession
is complete, he lacks none of the qualities of the sincere
self-delineator. We have noticed how, in teUing of his
' Cases used in this work: (I) Geo. Fox, (2) Wm. Edmund-
son, (3) John Crook, (4) Rich. Davies, (5) Henry Hull, (6) Jane
Pearson, (7) Alice Hayes, (8) Eliz. Ashbridge, (9) Eliz. Stirredge,
(10) Oliver Sansom, (11) Stephen Crisp, (12) John Woolman,
(13) Thos. EUwood, (14) Thos. Chalkley, (15) James Gough, (16)
Samuel Bownas, (17) Job Scott.

RELIGION 237
chUdhood, he avoids the factitious element introduced
by Crook, Davies, and others — the making oneself out
to be a lost and miserable sinner, for the sake of affording
proper contrast to the later conversion. "In my very
young years, I had a gravity and stayedness of mind
and spirit not usual in chUdren. . . . When I came
to eleven years of age I knew pureness and righteous
ness, and people had generally a love to me for my
innocency and honesty." Sentences like these remind
one of Teresa: "On m'a toujours vu avec plaisir"; and
they must be emphasized to show the superiority of
such minds to mere literary influences, such as beset
weaker types. To listen to John Bunyan one would sup
pose that his youth was steeped in an utter villainy,
without a possibility of goodness. Idleness, cursing,
swearing, lying, and blaspheming, left him never a
moment's freedom from wickedness; and the same is
true of George Whitefield. Now, Fox's note is as in
tense as Bunyan's, his poignancy greater, his religious
zeal surely no less; the difference is that Fox's power
of self-study works as a leaven in his most frenzied
moments of fanaticism. One cannot say which feels the
deeper in religious matters, but one can see plainly
which is the student of human nature.
When we lay Fox and Augustin side by side in these
pages which deal with their terrible reHgious upheaval
and conversion, we find a great many points in common
between the peasant and the man of the world, between

238 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
the young mystic and the learned sensualist. The
actual phenomena of their conversion are simUar —
the darkness, the torment, the inward light, the inward
voice. But these brought to the Bishop peace, to Fox
not peace but a sword. He has that intense passion
of religious zeal which never lets him rest, and his gift
of describing this is, perhaps, his greatest gift. His
prose has epic moments when it stops the heart.
"As I was walking with several friends I lifted up
my head and saw three steeple-house spires, and they
struck at my life. I asked them what place that was?
They said: 'Litchfield.' Immediately the word of the
Lord came to me that I must go thither. I stept away,
and came within a mile of Litchfield, where, in a great
field, shepherds were keeping their sheep. Then was I
commanded to pull off my shoes. I stood stUl, for it was
winter, and the word of the Lord was Hke a fire in me."
Undoubtedly, it is to this gift of expression of their
leader that the Quakers owe their whole body of con
ventional religious phraseology. It is Fox who gave
birth to such idioms as his "mind was retired to the
Lord," or that "great exercises and weights came upon
me," or "I was moved by the Lord towards Friends
in the north of England;" thus lajang upon divine
guidance the simplest operations of the wiU. His fol
lowers most eagerly adopted both the phraseology and
the spiritual attitude from which it sprung; with aU that
was directly owing to Fox's understanding of others and

RELIGION 239
of himself. This utter passivity, this laying of one's
slightest action on the responsibihty of God, he saw,
just as Jeanne de la Mothe-Guyon saw it, to be the
greatest power he could use to resist persecution, to
harass the persecutor, and to uphold and comfort the
spirit of the persecuted. It gave him a self-confidence
which permitted him to use it in and out of season, and
he notes his extraordinary insight into the spiritual
condition of others. Now, all this is very like Madame
de la Mothe-Guyon, and one may pause to observe why
Quakerism prevaUed, when Quietism died still-born.
The reason appears to be that Fox's self-study gave
him an unwonted understanding of the craving in the
minds of others, while Madame Guyon understood noth
ing about herself, and, thus, little about the people close
to her. Her preaching had its effect, but it is not the
effect of Fox, when "I did so shake and shatter them
that they wondered." Finally, one must not forget
Fox's fierce and vindictive humility, wherein he gloats
over difficulties and persecutions. His uneven, over
charged temperament brought about constant quarrels
with his friends; while his analysis of these disputes and
his share in them, shows how sincere was his introspec
tion, and what power it gave him as a religious leader
over the souls of others.
Every day we see about us examples of the conven
tionalizing of a vital phrase. Dropped from the speech
or writings of some shrewd and penetrating mind, it is

240 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
seized on by the people, incorporated into existing
ideas, attached — almost as a technicality — to the
phraseology of certain subjects. A humorous case of
this kind wiU occur to every one — the "innocuous
desuetude" of Mr. Cleveland. In the religious life —
where expression is to many persons difficult — a gift
like George Fox's of crystallizing the mood, of vitalizing
with language some more or less vague emotion, is
bound to persist. When we reaHze, in addition, that
the bulk of his followers were simple, unlettered folk,
we understand why they did not seek to alter their
leader's phrases. As it is, they one and all repeat them
without change, using them much as other sects use
the formulae of church service. The effect extended
beyond the Quakers themselves, and may be noticed,
to a certain extent, in later Wesleyan and Methodist
movements; for a simUarity exists through the whole
religious revival initiated by the Puritans and Quakers.
Not so the mediaeval pietistic writers; not so the
religious minds which followed the earlier Christians.
There is no convention here, but rather a wonderful
individuality; no possibUity is there of mistaking one
for another. Augustin provided an impetus, but he
did not furnish any technical vocabulary. There is a
freshness of feeling, a flexibUity of phrase, a vitaHty,
a color about the mediaeval religious confession, which
is wholly lacking in later examples. Also, it is more
personal as a record; less concerned with the outside

RELIGION 241
world. The Quaker enthusiast is, first of aU, an evan
gelist, anxious to convert others to his special form of
belief, and most occupied with its increase and progress
in the world. His work lies among other men. Not
thus Augustin, Paulinus, Suso, Guibert, Teresa. Their
chief concern is with their own souls and the phenomena
attending on them; their interest in you is but indirect.
They are surrounded by marvels and ecstasies of feeling
and vision, which they seek to understand. They pray,
watch, and fast; their gaze is fixed upon heaven. Small
affair is it of theirs, comparatively speaking, that you
should believe. This subjective intensity becomes a
focus of religious excitement which often continues to
exist as a point of force long after the death of the
mystic himself. To whatever this may be due, — in
sanity, semi-insanity, hysteria, says one camp; divine
manifestation, religious instinct, declares the other, —
it is, nevertheless, true that an extreme subjectivity
gives it persistency and lends it a literary value. Had
Augustin, had Teresa, spent their force in trying to
convert every street-sweeper to an especial form of
creed, what might we not have lost! Instead, they
endeavored to place on record and to understand the
working of certain obscure forces within themselves,
and the world, whether of science or philosophy, is
richer for the data they have preserved.
The autobiography of Teresa of AvUa is particularly
valuable because of the writer's healthy mental attitude

242 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
and undoubted mental vigor. Mrs. Bradley GUman, in
her life of Teresa (a lay biography), dwells on the
humanness and womanliness of her personality. It is
not as a theologian, not as a mystic, that she appeals
chiefly to us to-day; it is rather as a vital, energetic,
and complete woman, intellectual enough to protest in
her preface against the mandate of her confessor that
she was to enter into full details of the Lord's grace
toward her, but as to her own sins to maintain an
extreme reserve. This, she declares, was not possible;
she carries her candor to the point of omitting no
data which permit us to comprehend her case. A long
illness and, during convalescence, a volume of Augustin
— thus this enthusiastic and emotional creature is set
upon the way of mysticism. Up to this time her con
vent life had been lax, her piety but formal; she had
experienced an unhappy love-affair, and had been ro
mantically interested in one of her confessors. But now
the high current of her vitality is all turned inward;
she begins to live inwardly alone. The outer world
fades and is dim, a mystic world opens. The phe
nomena at first are slight. "J'^tais tout-&,-coup saisie
du sentiment de la presence de Dieu," she says simply,
adding, "Ce n'^tait pas une vision." But the visions
did not delay, and, under the favoring physical and
surrounding conditions, Teresa passes onward, step
by step, from ecstasy to vision and to hallucination.
Exhausting reactions follow: she battles horribly with

RELIGION 243
the demon, who stuns her ears with blasphemies, or
affrights her in the shape of "a little negro all of flame."
With Madame Guyon this phantom becomes " a horrible,
devUish face in a bluish Hght." Unseen hands, Teresa
believes, lift her from the earth; Satan in person pinches
Madame Guyon. There is nothing unusual about all this,
as the neurologist assures us. The unusual fact about
Teresa is that she continues to preserve so high a degree
of practical energy and executive ability. Apart from
her mysticism, she is a woman of inteUect, healthy
vigor, and healthy imagination, not without humor; aU
her actions show practical common-sense. She looks
carefully to the sanitary conditions of her new convent
at AvUa, and to the health of its inmates; she writes
alert and interesting letters; she carefully nurses a sick
relative, over whom most mystics would have merely
prayed; she reads a great deal, and not only theology.
She stands before us, not in any sense distorted, or
abnormal, or diseased physically, and as such she stands
alone in the annals of hagiography.
The case approaching nearest to Teresa in this re
spect is that of Patrick, for the Confessio Patricius can
only be the outpouring of a genuine and healthy soul.
Writing early enough to have come under the direct
influence of Augustin and Paulinus, Patrick evidently
feels the contrast of his rustic, Celtic illiteracy. Hu
mUity is his key-note, simple and sincere. "The rudest
and least of aU the faithful, and most contemptible to

244 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
very many," he terms himself. "I blush . . . and
greatly fear to expose my unskUfulness ... I cannot
express myself with clearness and brevity," these
shamefaced phrases are in sharp contrast with Augus
tin's lyrical and literary outpourings, or the exalted
security of Teresa. But Patrick, though humble, is
steadfast over what he calls his "drivel"; he presents
a clear and touching picture of a young convert,
fasting, praying, herding cattle in the wUderness of
Britain, and barkening to the voice which directed him
to Ireland. The supernatural side of his experiences
follows hard on the fasting period; but Patrick is,
throughout this fragment, the practical missionary,
rather than the mystic.
Teresa and Patrick are sporadic cases of mystical
development; there appears to have been no hereditary
predisposition, and no markedly sufficient surrounding
causes. The case of Guibert de Nogent is valuable
exactly on the other count. Few records furnish so
Uluminating an example of hereditary and environ
mental reHgious influences. Professor James speaks of
states of mysticism as states purely individual and in
dependent, produced inwardly by pious emotion, un
connected with exterior circumstances. He cites the
case of Teresa which, as we see, supports his theory.
The modern French school, on the other hand, treating
mysticism as disease, might weU cite Guibert and
Henry Suso in support of theirs. The family of Guibert

RELIGION 245
(who was born in 1053 and lived untU 1124) was steeped
in piety, and took mysticism for granted, as other
famUies accept a tendency to asthma. The hysteria of
their religious feeling had warped every relation in life;
it kept Guibert's parents, sincerely attached to each
other, apart for years after their marriage. At eight
years old, Guibert was abandoned by his mother, who
left him to go into a convent; she had previously disci
plined him with blows to conquer the old Adam in him,
and so nearly terminated his little life. Yet she was a
tender, a devoted mother, whose health suffered from
her necessary severity. She is described as a person
who in daily life walked close to the borders of the
unknown. She dreamed dreams, saw visions, experi
enced miracles, was frequently transported out of the
body. She complained of personal battling with de
mons, as you and I might complain of dyspepsia.
On one occasion, during a physical struggle with the
devU, her good angel came to her assistance, "et le
renversa, avec un tel fracas que sa chute ^branla violem-
ment la chambre, et reveiUa les servantes accablfees par
le sommeU."
There is no suggestion in her son's account that all
this was extraordinary or unusual. No physician came
to see Guibert's mother; nobody advised her exhausted
famUy to put her into a rest-cure, nor did any one
operate for adenoids. The boy, whom she leaves at
this tender age, was intelligent and badly nourished.

246 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Is it remarkable that he should decide at twelve years
old to retire also to a monastery, that he might repent
"les d^sordres de la jeunesse"? Visions, voices, de
spairs follow. His fervor, says Guibert naively, " exces
sively irritated the devU," who had been previously
greatly annoyed by his mother's prayers and macera
tions. The two, mother and son, glorying in the trouble
they are giving to the king of evU, keep the excite
ment at a high pitch by an interchange of letters
and messages. With all this, he was a man of deli
cate literary taste and sound historical method, as is
shown by his Histoire des Croisades. A poet, too, he
yet felt poetry to be an especial snare of the evU one.
"Quelquefois je composais des petits ecrits oil U n'y
avait ni sagesse ni retenue, oil mfeme ne se trouvait
aucun sentiment honnfete," he avows sadly, in the
naive phrase preserved from the Latin original by the
French translator.
The life of the Blessed Henry Suso, written by him
self, deals much less with the personal development of
the writer than either Teresa or Guibert. That his
mother was pious and his father worldly, that his
childhood was joyously devout, so that he never
plucked a flower without in spirit offering it to the
Blessed Virgin, and that he took the vows at thirteen,
is all we are told. There is evidence to show that at
the time of Suso's real conversion, five years later, he
was merely a youth of exceptional imagination, a tender

RELIGION 247
heart, and a high and joyous exaltation in reHgious
matters. At the beginning this sense of joyousness is
paramount, the visions are beautiful, the dreams serene;
he hears the morning stars sing together, and he has a
healthy sense of happiness. But the monastic rule and
ideals do not encourage joyousness in piety; and Suso
soon begins to feel uneasy at his own cheerfulness. He
begins then, out of his sincerely religious feeling, to mor
tify the fiesh, to scourge his young body, to torment
himself; "and that way madness lies." Twenty years
later we find him suffering from "heaviness of spirit,"
"inordinate fear," "certainty of damnation." "Im
pious imaginations against the faith," and a hideous
delusion of devils, have replaced the singing stars, wor
shiping flowers, and kind, angelic visitors of his boyish
visions. If anything more were wanting to make this
change and condition significant, it is Suso's own state
ment that the wounds and torments of his self-inflicted
tortures "had broken down his bodily frame." The
narrow border-land between overcharged imagination
and unbalanced imagination is traversed under the
reader's very eyes.
That this state of mystical excitement was individual,
is demonstrable when we compare the experiences of
Guibert or Suso with that common-sense record left by
Brother SaHmbene di Adamo. Healthy in body and
mind, this Franciscan friar is converted at twelve years
old, during the great Alleluia, and at once takes up a life

248 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
of hard, practical, missionary work, as far removed as
possible from mysticism. SaHmbene 's autobiography is
purely an objective chronicle; its interest for us Hes only
in the fact of its displaying the other point of view.
The only miracles in SaHmbene are the bogus miracles
of the friars minor; the only vision is seen by him in a
dream, during which the Blessed Virgin lets the young
monk hold in his arms the Holy Child. When the
vision vanished, SaHmbene says: "In my heart re
mained so great sweetness as tongue could never tell
. . . never in this world had I such sweetness as that";
but he does not attempt to suggest that this vision was
other than a dream. SaHmbene, indeed, is the type of
mediaeval, personal historian who, though a religious,
does not leave a religious confession; in his exposure of
the crude, charlatan methods of the preaching friars,
his pages are worthy to be laid, as commentary, beside
those of a Guibert, Suso, Teresa.
There is much in common between the Abb^ Guibert
and Cardinal Bellarmin, whose learning made him the
wonder of Europe. Bellarmin also had a pious mother,
given to fasting and to flagellation, who destined her
five sons to the priesthood. Already at five or six years
of age the child had preached on Jesus' suffering; and
at fifteen this oratorical talent was given its first public
exhibition. Bellarmin, however, has the serenity of the
savant, and he is not like the Abbfe, perpetually con
cerned about the opinion of Satan. His life, written in

RELIGION 249
his seventy-second year to obHge a Jesuit friend, is
placed in the third person, and, although the Hfe dis
tinctly of a religious, is full of secular detaU. His
health, which was injured by over-work, his attainments
in rhetoric and languages, are dwelt upon, as well
as his supernatural adventures and prophecies. More
over, Bellarmin has the Italian interest in, and ob
servation of, his mental processes; self-study had a
fascination for him, for he tells us of a destroyed poem
on himself which was composed at sixteen. His mys
tical attitude, indeed, like that of Teresa, dated defi
nitely from an iUness of three years' duration, and
was established upon a mental and bodUy habit of
fundamental sanity.
Bellarmin, although he gives an account of this Ulness
from his nineteenth to his twenty-second year, faUs, of
course, to connect it with his outburst of piety. In
truth, so many of these witnesses furnish us all uncon
sciously with the means to understand what is veUed
and mysterious to themselves. In these just cited, note
the clues which are scattered over the page. Rare is the
case in which we may not find the mot d'inigme. Augus
tin's Hfe of dissipation and its profound reaction on his
mental condition; the solitude and fasting of Patrick;
the change in Suso's mysticism; the illness, at so critical
an age, of BeUarmin, Teresa, and Madame Guyon; the
heredity and surroundings of Guibert — all these are
keys for us. Sometimes the causes are stUl more direct.

250 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
That quaint and discreet divine, Robert Blair, has given
an account of his conversion, which is one of the most
curious and significant in all religious history, and con
tains as striking an example of "misinterpreted observa
tion" as that halo of Cellini, so ingeniously explained
by Symonds. Blair was a little lad of seven when first
he was troubled by great thoughts. "Upon a Lord's
Day, being left alone in the house through indisposition,
the Lord caused my conscience to reflect upon me with
this query, 'Wherefore servest thou, unprofitable crea
ture?' I, not being able to answer, looking out the
window, saw the sun brightly shining, and a cow with
a fuU udder." Little lonely child, how the picture stirs
one ! "I went pensively up and down that gaUery where
I was." After this experience, " I durst never play upon
the Lord's Day," he tells us, even when told to do so, for
his health's sake, by his kindly schoolmaster. Here are
already two significant references to physical condi
tions; but more is to come. At college this fraU and
serious boy comes under the spell of Augustin's Con
fessions; but his real conversion occurs when "I met
with a most rare and admirable mercy, somewhat of the
joy that is unspeakable and glorious." Briefly told,
Blair pays a visit to a sick friend, whom he finds com
pounding a milk-posset with wine. Urged to partake,
young Blair does so "heartUy," he says, though he was
unused to wine. He fell at once into a fever of religious
ecstasy and vision, which he never once attributes to

RELIGION 251
the posset. During this condition, "in the great glad
ness and exulting of my spirit I extolled my Lord and
Saviour, yea, I sang unto him" aU night, untU "the
vehemency of my rejoicing abated." One could wish it
in one's heart that all college possets had so innocently
uplifting an effect !
Closely examined, the case of Blair bears all the
typical features of the mystical phenomenon; it shows
the error of isolating these phenomena from the text; it
is enough to maintain that the only convincing way to
study them is to omit no fact, however trifling, from the
whole case. It will be noticed that, in each of the re
Hgious excitements already mentioned, facts have been
established sufficient to show the starting-point of the
disturbance. In each example there was the predisposi
tion of a devout and serious nature, and in each ex
ample the mystical phenomena, the ecstasies, visions,
voices, begin after a physical strain. So much for five
major cases: but how stand the minor?
The Rev. Henry AUine, a Nova Scotian preacher, in
1784, had visions and despairs of unusual vividness.
He notes that he spent a solitary and terrified chUdhood
between the fear of Indians and of heU-fire, and that at
fourteen a long, severe illness left him indifferent to life.
He notes, also, dissipation and extremely late hours.
His visions began at nineteen. He is dead, of a "de
cline," at thirty-six.
Such Quaker autobiographical journals as those of

252 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Alice Hayes, Elizabeth Stirredge, Job Scott, John Wool-
man, Stephen Crisp, are very fuU on the question of
explanatory physical conditions. Conversely, it is in
teresting to read that the simUar journals of Thomas
EUwood, of Thomas Chalkley, of Richard Davies, and
of Samuel Bownas make mention of good and even
physical health; and, although they experience strong
religious feeling, meditations, exercises, yet, as in the
case of SaHmbene, there are no miracles. The powerful
frame and vigorous personality of George Whitefield,
undergo, according to his Short Account, the most
violent religious stress, but his experiences are quite
unmystical. Three ardent seventeenth-century Scots,
John Livingstone, WUliam Pringle, James Fraser of
Brae, observe of themselves that they underwent no
special conversion experiences. AU three had a normal
physical development.
Data in the case of John Crook, John Dunton, and
John Bunyan, appear, on the whole, to be pathological.
Conversion brought no steady peace to Bunyan's mind;
he still underwent tumults and melanchoHes. Describ
ing one of these moods, when " there feU on me a great
cloud of darkness ... I was so overrun in my soul
with a senseless, heartless frame of spirit," Bunyan goes
on to say: "At this time also I felt some weakness to
seize upon my outward man." There is a simUar fuU-
ness in the later statement of Blanco White. In the
autobiography of Peter Cartwright (which is the only

RELIGION 253
autobiography from which Professor Starbuck deigns
to quote, and which, by the way, is almost wholly an
objective narrative), a violent physical crisis precedes
conversion, with rush of blood to the head, palpitations
and temporary blindness. This attack is the starting-
point of Cartwright's whole religious life, and directly
responsible for his sense of sin and subsequent struggle
and conversion.
Let no one suppose that these instances are quoted
here for the mere purpose of repeating that physical
causes lie back of religious mania. They are cited, rather,
to show how much more the religious confession yields
the investigator than he has, so far, been willing to
allow; and also how much injustice he may do by isola
ting single passages. Comparative study of the reHgious
autobiography may lead to certain conclusions, but it
must be, necessarUy, a study of complete documents.
However convinced these mystics are of the divine
origin of their experiences, the autobiographical inten
tion, in most cases, urges them to give all the facts; and
it is precisely in all the facts that the value lies. Pro
fessor James observes that "the religious life exclusively
pursued does tend to make the person exceptional and
eccentric . . . and to present all sorts of peculiarities
which are ordinarUy classed as pathological." Joseph
Grasset, writing distinctly on the pathological side,
thinks it more accurately said that "religious ideas may
be the starting point or the manifestation of certain

254 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
disturbances." These he groups under two heads: "1,
diseased exaggeration of the religious idea; 2, perversion
of the religious idea. " In neither of these two volumes
is any notice taken of those cases where these same
mystical phenomena occur wholly unconnected with
religion. What does one make of conversions to free-
thought, such as WUliam Bell Scott's, which presents
the definite and typical features of religious conversion
without the belief? A somewhat similar experience was
undergone by Annie Besant. Cardan described — with
his usual scientific accuracy — a repeated condition of
mystical ecstasy in connection with studies in higher
mathematics and Greek. A simUar experience was
Jung Stilling's with regard to the same language.
The "burning flashes of energy" which transfixed poor
Haydon at his easel, is almost the exact phrase used
by Teresa.
Ernest Renan found that sense of uplifted security,
that deep, inner peace and radiance, of which Professor
James makes so much, only when he left the church
and became a confirmed agnostic. Blanco White, after
breaking with creed ideas, observes: "In the constant
watch I have kept over my imagination, I have observed
a sort of reverie — sometimes on important subjects —
sometimes on most ridiculous trifles — but always ac
companied by a painful degree of abstraction from the
senses." Capel-Lofft says : " Almost all of the active powers of

RELIGION 255
my mind have come upon me thus suddenly like mo
ments of grace," and gives detaUs.
Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Sir Egerton Brydges,
in describing ecstasies of poetical imagination and com
position, use a succession of terms and phrases which
might well stand for the diagnosis of a state of religious
mysticism.' Apart from all abnormal or extreme ideas, or mystical
conditions, the religious attitude of healthy and normal
people holds for us the most helpful sides of congen-
iaHty and of difference. Since nothing in the world is
more important, it is rarely omitted from the sincere
personal record. The diversity of view mentioned by
Professor James is thus made more apparent. No doubt,
in looking here and there among these witnesses of the
past, you and I wiU find light on our special difficulty,
on our particular doubt, on our dogmatic certainty.
An interchange of views on the subject of religion —
where it can be made without heat — is one of the most
fruitful interchanges in the intellectual Hfe. Many of
us to-day are of that utilitarian cast of mind concern
ing this topic whereof Franklin was the larger exponent;
others hold the whole subject to be a little in the air, as
' Prof. Starbuck notices some half-dozen cases in which
awakenings bearing the typical features of religious conversion
occurred in connection with comparatively trivial causes; such
as (1) confessing a fault to a parent, (2) deciding about education,
(3) breaking a friendship, (4, 5, 6, 7) sudden ability to sing, play
the piano, ride a bicycle, study physics.

256 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
did deRetz or TaUeyrand: there are still the simply
pious, and the fiercely pious, and those whose very souls
are dyed, like that of Ernest Renan, in a hue the intelli
gence has abjured.
As a whole, women appear to be less interested in
the subject than men, although they are equaUy in
tense as mystics, equally militant as sectarians, and,
strange though it may seem, equally serene and power
ful as agnostics. Teresa, Madame Guyon, and Harriet
Martineau are quintessential of their kind. On the
other hand, the great ladies we encounter: Marguerite
de Valois, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, her step
mother, Madame Mfere du Regent, the two Mancinis,
Hortense and Marie, the Princess Daschkaw, Leonora
Christina Ulfeldt — these omit more than the conven
tional references to religion, although the}- went regu
larly to church. Mademoiselle de Montpensier had a
brief period of yearning toward a convent, but it was
very brief. Catherine II says of her own early dis
position: "I had no affection; ambition alone sustained
me. Generally speaking, I was inclined to devotion."
Later, she turns Voltairean, and avows that Tacitus
had more influence over her life than any religious
sentiment. The Margravine of Bareith has left an
autobiography of extraordinary vividness and value.
The sordid and hideous pictures which fill her canvas
are unsoftened by any lights and shades of real
tenderness or of real piety. No daughter of a hod-

RELIGION 257
carrier had surroundings more brutal, or an existence
more dominated by the insane caprices of a drunken
father, than this child and sister of kings. If lacking
in sentiment or emotion, she is yet a woman of an
advanced intelligence in serious matters, approving
"ceux qui font une 6tude de rechercher la vferitg," as
she puts it. "Je suis mfeme convaincue que les per
sonnes qui s'accout^ment k r^flfechir ne peuvent qu'fetre
vertueuses," she maintains, and the conviction has a
modern ring.
Certain types of intellectual and moral vigor show
small traces of any definite religious influence. Alfieri,
whose life is the noble record of struggle and triumph
over an unusually violent and unbridled nature, accom
plished his ethical advance absolutely without the aid of
any religious feeling. A high seriousness takes the place
of religion in the lives of Darwin, of John Stuart Mill,
of Herbert Spencer; indeed, a high ethical tone, uncon
nected with any creed idea, is the marked characteristic
of this group as a whole. Benjamin Franklin declares
himself free from dogma, — " revelation had indeed no
weight with me, as such," but he never entirely breaks
with the church. His attitude of constant apology for
his intellectual independence, is jarring to Our modern
ideas. To Benvenuto Cellini religion is inseparably
bound up with art; and what religious feeling exists
is called into play only by beauty. Notwithstanding
his immorality and general materialism, these feelings

258 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
in him are keen and of high quahty. To Goldoni, to
Gozzi, in eighteenth-century Italy, the Church is
simply an easy convention — there is no trace of
religious vitality in their lives. How different from
poor Haydon, who dwells upon that "crystal piety
of feeling" with deep-breathed prayers, in an inten
sity of earnestness! Cardan, as we have seen, keeps
the religious convention and superstition, whUe his
thought is advanced and free. He feels most reHgious
while at work.
Whatever else she may have concealed, George Sand
has presented the most convincing picture of her re
ligious development. Like other imaginative chUdren,
she created her own deity, named it Corambi, and dedi
cated to its worship a little grove apart. A most ui-
teresting evolution of the religious nature is depicted
in these chapters, which for suggestiveness are worth
volumes on fetish-worship and demonology.' Later in
her life, work becomes her religion. Among those whose
intellectual serenity never demanded a sacrifice of
creed, the good Morellet lived secure, always an abb6,
yet conscious, as he says, that "La raison, obscurcie
par I'education des coUfeges et des s^minaires, reprend
bien vite ses droits sur les esprits justes. " This type
of mind is still more familiar to-day.
' George Sand receives corroboration from Edmund Gosse in
his recent book, "Father and Son." The boy appears to have
lived several years of fetish-worship very similar to George
Sand's.

RELIGION 259
Change in belief is one of the most frequent causes
for the autobiography, which thus becomes an apologia,
in Newman's sense of the word. His Apologia pro Vita
Sua, and the very curious and suggestive state of mind
which it presents, are too well known for further com
ment. It may, however, be fruitfully compared with
a similar document, the Munquidh min ad-dalal of
Al Ghazzali,' which has been translated from the Ara
bic into French by Barbier de Meynard, under the
title Le Priservatif de I'Erreur. This serious religious
self-examination forms the more strictly autobiographi
cal part of the Arabian's philosophical work, wherein
the author, at twenty, sets himself "to discover truth,
to separate error, to interrogate each dogma, and to
determine heresy." "The search for truth," he main
tains, "is the end which I pursue." Al Ghazzali goes
through all the torments of religious and intellectual
doubt, foUowed by a prolonged physical and nervous
prostration; whence he emerges as a siifi, and ends
his days in a mosque. A somewhat simUar trend in
the life of the Sheikh Ali Hazin has the opposite and
significant termination in an intellectual rather than
a religious serenity. Ali Hazin says also: "I now felt
a desire to inform myself on the questions and truths
of different religions, including Christians and Jews."
But this investigation simply leads him to freedom
from all dogma and to peace of mind.
' Recently translated into EngHsh.

260 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Similar is the progress of Harriet Martineau toward
an uplifted tranquiUity. "Christians can never be se
cure," she maintains; and after receiving sentence of
death, she, too, like the Persian sage, "sat, Hstening
for the note of departure."
Not always is the serenity on the side of the free
thinker. We must not forget the case of Uriel d'Acosta,
whose successive changes of beHef brought him but suc
cessive humiliations. Chateaubriand, too, gives many
pages to his change of view. His first work, the Essai,
was sceptic; but the death of his mother, embittered by
this fact, causes a revolution, and he starts the Ginie
du Christianisme as an expiatory offering. This shift,
therefore, is due primarily to emotion. Another docu
ment dealing with an alteration of ideas was written
by James LacMngton, the London bookseller. An ener
getic, industrious, self-educated man, Lackington in
youth was converted by Wesley to Methodism; re
tracted in middle-age and became sceptical, only to
return more violently than ever in his latter years.
Each turn he discusses with conviction. During his
lapse from grace he speaks thus of his wife's death:
"She died in a fit of enthusiastic rant, surrounded by
Methodistical preachers." This unsympathetic atti
tude he bitterly repents: "I shudder to see what I have
done. I have wantonly sported with the most solemn
and precious truths!" But he publishes the book, with
all these changes, intact.

RELIGION 261
Changes of faith shown during progress are rare.
A curious one is that of Comte Lomfenie de Brienne,
another memoiriste, the son of the upright minister
of Henri IV. He is a person vibrating to the ex
tremes of vice and of religion. During his pious moods
he composes "des petits cantiques de dfevotion sur
les aires du monde." No sooner is he a member of a
monastic community than he repents the step; and the
scandal of his conduct, now priest, now debauchee,
caused him first to be exiled, and then placed under
restraint. Though he writes his mimoire at St. Lazare,
where he had Hved for eighteen years, it is a singularly
weU-balanced account of religious caprice; to the end
he is said to have retained his memory and "I'art de
raconter." One could wish that Gibbon had given us a fuller
account of his conversion to Catholicism, and the re
bound to free thought. We know little save that he
went to Oxford "with a stock of erudition that might
have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of
which a school-boy would have been ashamed." A
nature throwing itself violently into different creeds is
drawn in the Autobiography of Annie Besant. Be
ginning as an orthodox member of the English Church,
she swerves toward Romanism and mysticism, reacts
into a profound atheism, and drops this after a time
for theosophy and Madame Blavatsky. This is, how
ever, more a case of successive personal influences act-

262 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ing on a nature particularly susceptible to personal
leadership, and gifted in itself with a talent for becom
ing a disciple. It is worth noting, because it shows
an unusual development in a rather common type of
ardent female hero-worshipper.
The well-known modern case of Count Leo Tolstoi
shares many of the more striking features of the classi
cal individual confession. Very marked is the Russian's
self-depreciation before his conversion; his self -accusa
tions equal in intensity those of Augustin or Bunyan.
"Falsehood, theft, voluptuousness of every kind,
drunkenness, violence, murder, — there is no crime I
have not committed, and yet they count me among
the number of men relatively moral!" he exclaims
fiercely, in an arraignment less of his faulty seK than of
what he believed the faulty standards of ethics. This
change presents the familiar sequence of emotions:
self-disgust, doubt, despair, a total abattement of mental
and moral activities, and, finally, emergence on the side
of simple faith, and a simple plan of existence. But there
is an individual quality in Tolstoi's My Confession
which has a special interest and point for us. Examined
more nearly, it is really the record of the immense pres
sure of the Russian social order upon one over-sensitive
soul. The monstrous distortions, the continuous spec
tacle of injustice in the life about him, could not be
borne by this particular individual without producing
morbid conditions of spiritual responsibihty. We read

RELIGION 263
every day of simUar effects upon equally sensitive
persons, although their manifestations in action vary
widely. Tolstoi was naturaUy believing, but the in
justice about him kUled his faith; for the same reason
his scepticism could have nothing but a destructive
effect. His religious crisis and his political crisis became
one; his religious ideas form a necessary part of his
socialistic ideas. This is distinctive in his case; it is not
found in simUar examples during the richly flowering
time of the religious self-study.
Suggestive and interesting accounts of religious de
velopment are given in such dissimilar personalities as
Dr. Edmund Calamy and Giuseppe Giusti, the Italian
poet; by the tragedian William Macready, Mark Patti
son, Edgar Quinet, Sir Capel-Lofft. Data showing strong
predispositions and definite psychological religious con
ditions are furnished by Agrippa d'Aubigne, by P.
D. Huet, by Georg Brandes, James Freeman Clarke,
Samuel Roberts, J. A. Symonds, and others. Rare,
indeed, is a volume so unforgettably charming and so
authoritative as the Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeun
esse, in which Ernest Renan describes his peculiar
temperament and situation. The whole man — his
dreaminess, his indecision, his indulgent tolerance, his
scientific virtues, his "difautsde pretre," are conveyed
in a rapid and convincing analysis. The perfect opti
mism of freedom is there; and yet the tenderness for
outgrown creeds, which is that of the parent for the

264 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
imaginations of a chUd. Here is no harshness, no scorn
for the dreams, the beautiful, impossible visions of the
age of faith. He has had "le bonheur de connaitre
la vertue absolue . . . Au fond je sais que ma vie est
toujours gouvernfe par une foi que je n'ai plus."
A like note of encouragement is sounded in the His
toire de mes Idies, of Edgar Quinet. He also, in strik
ing antithetical phrases, finds his change of view con
structive rather than destructive, and the joys of Hfe
increased rather than lessened. "Chaque jour," he
beautifully writes, "la justice m'a paru plus sainte, la
Hberty plus belle, la parole plus sacrfee, I'art plus rfeel,
la r^alit^ plus artiste, la po^sie plus vrai, la verite plus
pofetique, la nature plus divine, le divin plus naturei."
This is the type of religious confession which is so
helpful to the young and unsure; to that hesitating,
seeking mind not yet determined upon a cause. Be it
Augustin or Teresa, Renan, Quinet, or AH Hazin, these
are the voices which call to ardent spirits standing at
the crucial moment of life.
Enough has been said to show that a comparative
study of the religious confession may lead the mind in
certain directions, and that if it has led, thus far, in no
really significant direction, it is because the work upon
it has been so completely a priori. Up to the present,
the psychologist or neurologist has formulated his
theory, and then turned confidingly to some one else's
list of cases to select those bearing upon his theory. In

RELIGION 265
Les Maladies du Sentiment Religieux, Murisier ob
serves that religious psychology to-day has faUed to
make use of autobiography and other material, but has
abandoned itself to predication and abstract disserta
tion, thereby involving a real loss to science;' and this
stiU remains the fact. An authoritative and complete
work on the religious autobiography, making use of ex
isting material by the inductive method, has yet to be
written. It should be one of the world's great books;
one of those volumes which speak in a thousand tongues
of suggestion to the seeking intellect. Of the value of
such a work there exists no corroding doubt; indeed,
considering the part played by these records in our
mental history, our neglect of them is amazing indeed.
Goethe, in describing the conception of Werther, says :
"The whole shot together from all sides, and became a
solid mass, just as water in a vessel which stands upon
the point of freezing, is converted into hard ice by the
most gentle shake." On all sides we find this image re
peated in the mental life of the thoughtful and intelli
gent. Tentative ideas, held in solution, become crystal
lized at the touch of personal influences and intellectual
understanding; and, if asked what most frequently and
potently furnishes this touch of guidance, one would
reply without hesitation; The religious confession.

CHAPTER XIV
THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST
If it seems, in glancing through the more ancient
records of personal experience, that we have come to
understand much which was strange in the writer's
everyday life, what shall we say regarding the dark
incidents which touch the supernatural? How many
terrifying and inexplicable past occurrences turn toward
us now an aspect of familiarity? M. Funck-Brentano's
excellent little study on the death of Madame Hen
riette d'Angleterre is one of the most forcible Ulustra-
tions to be found of the bright search-light which modern
knowledge throws back over the centuries. It is not
only for the specialist that the path has been cleared.
Bossuet, in the thundering terrors of his funeral sermon,
shook the hearts of his auditors with the horror of
sudden death: "Madame se meurt — Madame est
morte!" he cried, and his description of that swift end
ing left no accountable cause but deadly poison. Who
among us nowadays on hearing that a lady of depleted
constitution, anaemic habit, and unhygienic life, with a
digestion so impaired that for weeks past she had been
living chiefiy on ass's milk, had first danced upon the
grass, next bathed in a stream, and then, returning,

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 267
partaken hastUy of an iced drink, — who among us but
would think that these proceedings quite accounted
for a swift, painful, and mortal illness? The whole
troop of aUments for which we are raUroaded to the
hospitals, to be operated upon and returned, dead or
convalescent, to our friends, were invariably ascribed,
because of their rapidity of action, to poisonous agen
cies. Science stands ready to determine the cause of any
of these cases, where there chances to have been left a
record giving sufficient data. In the same way, much
more is to-day understood of those hysterical epidemics
which attacked mediaeval religious communities, and of
the marvels they produced, wherever the contemporary
historians have preserved facts and material of uncon
scious suggestiveness.
Just as it has been shown in the preceding chapter
that the religious and mystical vision described in the
pious autobiography is usually accompanied by many
explanatory facts and unconsciously illuminative cir
cumstances, so we find the supernatural vision, the
ghost-story, likewise accompanied. Most frequent here
are the cases of "misinterpreted observation," as shown
in CeUini and Blair. In the light of such anecdotes and
experiences the nervous systems of the past become
linked more closely with our own. One is accustomed
to think of men and women in 1600 as infinitely less
sensitive, as more robust, more stolid; and so in a sense
they were. Cruder contacts, more dangers, more vicissi-

268 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
tudes, — these tended to toughen the epidermis for self-
preservation. To-day a child's Ulness, an over-gay sea
son, the loss of an investment, a family jar, — these are
accepted as sufficient cause for overstrained nerves, and
temporary retirement to a sanitarium. Then war, rap
ine, fire, sword, prolonged and mortal perU, were con
sidered as furnishing no excuse to men or women for
altering the habits, or slackening the energies of their
daily existence. On the night of St. Bartholomew, a
hunted Huguenot rushed into the bedroom of Marguerite
de Valois. Her husband's danger was unquestioned, her
own exceedingly great. In his mortal agony the man
had clutched at her clothes; four archers pursued him
into the very ruelle where her bed stood. She says she
was more frightened than the poor creature himself, and
that when M. de Nangay, Captain of the Guard, ap
peared he could not keep from laughing, — "ne se peust
tenir de rire"! The incident hardly strikes us as par
ticularly amusing. Yet, although Marguerite declares
she hastened to her sister's room "more dead than
alive," she does not omit to tell us, very coolly, how she
went out, "changeant de chemise, parcequ'U m'avoit
toute couverte de sang"; and it does not appear that
she felt that the adventure furnished any excuse to shirk
her business on the following morning.
•Few modern mothers, who consider one or two healthy
children and the conduct of a simple household suffi
cient warrant to talk of overstrain, but would marvel at

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 269
the stoicism of Lady Fanshawe, who writes of her four
teen chUdren, of wandering, penury, privation, the
birth and death of baby after baby, the ague, the
smallpox, with an apparent philosophic fatalism. But
Lady Fanshawe is not always so stolid, and when she
sees a ghost she says: "I was so much frightened that
my hair stood on end and my night-clothes fell off."
The candor of Robert Blair, which has just been
noticed in reference to his religious ecstasy, is of equal
service to the reader when it concerns other adventures.
At college, Blair tells of his regimen: "I chose to
forbear every other day one meal of meat . . . and
resolved to watch at my studies every other night."
Our modern ideas would consider this a very favorable
arrangement for ghost-seeing, nor are we surprised to
read: "I have seen a spirit in the likeness of one of my
condisciples . . . whom I chased to a corner of the
chamber where he seemed to hide himself; but when I
offered to pull him out I could find nothing." Blair's
strong character placed him above weaker fears; he
triumphed over "these apparitions in the night-season,
so that I slept very sweetly." Later in life he hears
a voice prophesying his wife's death, as he hastened
homeward. Blair's experiences are all tinctured with
the austerity and beauty of his character, which was
genuinely pure and uplifted. The early date of his
record almost warrants a certain coarseness, which yet
is absent from his nature. It is with full conviction that

270 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
we read of his action when he stumbled upon a volume
of Petronius. So astonished and disgusted was he, that
he impetuously stuffed it into his chamber-fire with the
tongs. Fear — sheer, blind, unreasonable terror — is not by
any means the torment of the imaginative and unbal
anced only. These records show it to be present as a
force in the lives of the most literal and level-headed
persons. Those two hard-headed Scots lawyers, Sir
John Campbell and Sir Samuel Romilly, both avow a
dread of the dark. The first says: "When left alone at
the midnight hour I cannot help a feeling of eeriness
or superstitious dread coming over me . . . and if the
wainscot cracks, the hair of my head writhes up!"
while the second says that tales of witches and devUs
"are sometimes very unwelcome intruders upon my
thoughts"; and a greater Scot — Burns — avows the
same fears.
Terror of the unknown played a large part in the
early lives of those two intellectual women, Harriet
Martineau and Sonia Kovalevsky; the former declares
that she was afraid of everything. The first memory
Herbert Spencer had was his fear of solitude. Bussy-
Rabutin was mostly afraid of being afraid. Nearer to
our own day comes the experience of Lord Brougham,
who, being in a warm bath, and very tired, sees the
vision of a comrade. The coincidence was startHng,
since the man died that day; but Lord Brougham does

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 271
not hesitate to say that he believes himself to have
fallen asleep for an instant unawares; he also adds that,
in his opinion, "every seeming miracle is capable of
explanation." On the other hand, Alexander Carlyle
was cured of his superstitious terrors by the death of an
intimate friend who had sworn to reappear to him. His
failure to keep the promise rid Carlyle of such terrors
forever. The four volumes of A. J. C. Hare's Story of My
Life, stripped of description and outside anecdote, pre
sent an hereditary and family situation of religious
overstrain which one must return to Guibert de Nogent
to parallel. The influences surrounding the writer on
all sides make for extraordinary superstition, and the
visions, the supernatural experiences of the various
main characters, deserve a catalogue in themselves. It
is a particularly suggestive example of the contagion of
religious and supernatural terrors, operating on a mod
ern famUy instead of a mediaeval monastic community.
Among the ghosts of earlier date is one of his dead
mother seen by Agrippa d'Aubignfe at six and a half
years old. Again we are not surprised, for we are told
that at this age he could read Latin, Greek, French, and
Hebrew, while a year later he translated the Crito,
which was published with a frontispiece of his "effigie
enfantine." The recurrent childish phantoms seen by
Jerome Cardan, — the red cock, the transparent figures
rising from the carpet, — are due to a plain case of

272 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
early nervous strain. A very different person, the
Englishman Samuel Roberts, had pretty nearly the
same dreams and visions. The modern cases of night-
terrors in Leigh Hunt, Anne Gilbert, Frederick Locker-
Lampson, J. Addington Symonds, and Edmund Gosse,
are similar, both as to effect and cause. In Heine's
childish dreams he always figured as his own great-
uncle, whom he much admired; these dreams seemed as
vivid as visions.
The salamander seen by Benvenuto Cellini was, he
declares, impressed upon his mind by his father's beat
ing; his age at the time, three years, renders this testi
mony dubious. But Cellini had no doubt whatever
concerning the devils he saw in the Coliseum. No more
had the astrologer WUliam Lilly about his conversation
with Queen Mab; he describes her appearance and
manner minutely.
In his Confession, Patrick describes how once "Satan
fell on me like a huge rock, and I had no power in
my Hmbs ... it came to my mind that I should call
out ' Helias ! ' and in that moment I saw the sun rise
in the heaven, and whUe I was crying out 'Helias!'
with all my might, behold, the splendor of that sun
fell upon me, and at once removed the weight from
me." This is a remarkably interesting and picturesque
experience, inasmuch as the only facts contained in it
are those of a weight on Patrick's limbs which was
dissipated by a sight of the rising sun. The mystical and

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 273
religious connotation lies all in his mind; and the word
he used as an invocation was entirely applicable, not
like the stuff with which Jerome Cardan's tutelary
genius used to perplex him in dreams. "Te sin casa,"
the first phrase said to Cardan, was neither good
Latin nor good Italian, and the second phrase, "Steph-
anus Dames," was sheer gibberish. But the use of
verbal invocation by Patrick is very significant, show
ing that, though a Christian, he had not traveled far
from the barbarous magic of the native British creeds.
The Mogul Emperor, Timur the Great, is assured of
his future success by visions and voices. Praying in his
tent, he is told by an unseen voice: "Timur, victory
and conquest are thine." "Convinced it was an angel,"
he comments, "I felt strong of heart." This incident
was not classified with those mystical phenomena in
the last chapter which are unconnected with religion,
because, superficially at least, it appears to have a re
ligious cause. Examined in the Hght of Timur's whole
book, it will be readily granted as not properly a re
ligious experience at all. Timur's religious feeling is
cold and conventional; he is no more of a fanatic than
Napoleon. Like Napoleon, however, he has a high
fatalism, a fanatic belief in his star. His autobiography
is an inteUectual document, permeated with a sense of
the divine right of kings, which increases his self-im
portance and gives him solemnity. Timur is careful to
state his faults, or what appear to him as such; he tells

874 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
of vanity and pride, and of good moral resolutions to
overcome them. In a serious mood he writes : " I left off
playing chess; adhered to the law, and followed the
dictates of religion; resolved not to injure any creature,"
and is deeply regretful that he had stepped on an ant.
Strange sensitiveness in one of the bloodiest of con
querors ! That susceptibility to warnings from the other
world often goes hand-in-hand with practical abiHty,
with warlike courage and daring, is shown in other
cases than Timur. Flavins Josephus notes three sepa
rate divine warnings received by him in dreams. Blaise
de Monluc, that ruthless fighter, wept copiously at the
evU presage of a dream; although this may be but an
instance of what Dr. Calamy calls Monluc's "rhodo-
montading around!"
Strong-minded persons, men and women of inteUect,
share the prevalent superstitions: creduHty, as has
been noted in the case of Jerome Cardan, is more a
question of temperament than of intellect. The pros
and cons of the great mathematician's supernatural
behefs have already been discussed. Even Herbert of
Cherbury, that clear intelligence, asked for a sign from
Heaven as to publishing his book: "One fair day in
summer, my casement being opened toward the south,
the sun shining clear and no wind stirring ... a loud,
yet gentle noise came from the heavens (for it was Hke
nothing on earth) and did . . . comfort and cheer me."
He protests that he is not superstitious, and proceeds

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 275
— very like Cardan again — to give his circumstantial
reasons for believing the occurrence to be supernatural.
"A loud yet gentle voice," is Herbert's description
of angelic warning. To Cardan his demon spoke always
in a murmur, which "in disputation or argument be
came a roar of voices." Low, insinuating whispers of
doubt affect Teresa and Madame Guyon. An authorita
tive, commanding voice from heaven leads Augustin,
Henry AUine, and Fox to a change of thought. EUza
beth Ashbridge, an EngHsh Quaker, writes: "I thought
myself sitting by a fire in company with several others,
when there arose a thunder-gust; and a noise, loud as
from a mighty trumpet, pierced my ears with these
words, 'Oh eternity! eternity! the endless term of long
eternity!'" With John Crook the voice cries: "'Fear
not, oh thou tossed!' Whereupon all was hushed and
quieted within me."
So much for auditory phenomena; the visual also
have much in common. AUine writes : "I was alone
and pondering on my lost condition when all on a sud
den I was surrounded by an uncommon Hght, Hke a
blaze of fiLre," and, later, "I thought I saw a small body
of Hght as plain as possible before me. " AUine Hved only
tiU his thirty-sixth year, and his newly acquired mental
peace is followed, almost at once, by the physical symp
toms which finally killed him. Suso's visions, in the
beginning, are that kind of gracious and lively imagin
ings of heaven and angels which are common to many

276 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
young souls; they progress steadily toward definite
hallucination. Toward the end of Haydon's life we find the gradual
approach of mental disease noted in his autobiography
with rare fidelity and accuracy. In the beginning were
night-horrors, recurrent nightmares, fits of frantic
energy alternating with listless coUapse. Later on, his
eyes and digestion are affected; and his moods pre
occupy him to a morbid extent. Then comes a time
when he begins to hear "a sort of audible whisper,"
and to see "a creeping light," — one shuts the book
with a shudder, premonitory of darkness and the razor.
But in the light of such efforts as the recent attempt of
Mr. CHfford W. Beers to describe, analyze, and estimate
his own condition during an acute attack of melan-
choHa and suicidal mania, Haydon's case deserves a
closer attention than it has heretofore received.
The memoirs of the mentally or nervously unbal
anced lead us, by natural steps, to the broader question
of human unhappiness and its cause. We are not stinted
as to documentary evidence, as is pointed out by Mr.
Ribot: "Quand on traite de la douleur on est embar-
rass6 par I'abondance des documents et la difficulty
d'fetre court; pour le plaisir c'est le contraire." Already
the reader has had occasion to agree with this general
ization, and to be grateful for M. Ribot's clearness of
definition and distinction. "La chagrin," he so aptly
says, "est li^e k des purs concepts ou a des reprfeenta-

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 277
tions idfeales. C'est la douleur intellectueUe, bien plus
rare, et qui d'ordinaire n'afflige pas, du moins long-
temps, le commun des hommes. TeUe est la douleur
de l'homme religieux qui ne se sent pas assez fervent,
du mfetaphysicien tourment^ par le doute, le pofete et
I'artiste, qui poursuit sans succfes la solution d'un
probleme. " Names occur to the mind at once as exam
ples of these intellectual sorrows. Every religious con
fession gives token of the first; John Stuart Mill, Al
Ghazzali, Maimon, devote pages to analyzing the second;
and among the poets and artists we may name Alfieri,
Leigh Hunt, CeUini, Haydon. Religion, particularly
on the side of fear, has been the great influence for
sorrow in the life of intelligent man. Both because
of persecution, and the practical difficulties which
it threw across the pathways of humanity's mental
progress; and because of its inward darkening effect
upon the spirits through fear, it is present as the most
frequent cause for the unhappiness of the thinking
creature. The Exemplar vitoe humance of Uriel d'Acosta
has already been mentioned among the reHgious con
fessions dealing with changes of faith; it contains
certain sentences which deserve quotation in this con
nection. "By reHgion," declares Acosta, with bitter
ness, "has my Hfe been made a scene of incredible
sufferings. I was educated, according to the custom of
that country, in the Popish religion; and when I was

278 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
but a young man, the dread of eternal damnation
made me desire to keep all its doctrines with the utmost
exactness. I employed my leisure time in reading the
Gospel . . . but difficulties rose before me; which
by degrees threw me into such inextricable perplexities
and doubts as overwhelmed me with grief and melan
choly. ... I began when I was about twenty years
old to question with myself whether or no it was not
possible for these things which were related of another
life to be forgeries, forasmuch as my reason did per
petually suggest to me things that were directly con
trary." Rarely in literature has the gist of religious unhappi
ness been presented in a paragraph more condensed
and poignant than this. If the remainder of Acosta's
tract is but a denunciation, this beginning is exemplar
vitcB humancB, indeed. Unfortunately, Acosta seems to
have lacked the iron fibre of the martyr for his suc
cessive opinions. First Catholic, then Jew, then apos
tate and again Jew, he suffered all the humUiations
which the bigotry of men could inflict, and aU the bitter
ness of persecution, both temporal and spiritual. No
wretchedness was spared him; not even a sense of faU
ure, nor attempt at murderous revenge, nor suicide at
the end.
The other strongly differentiated inteUectual miseries,
as observed by M. Ribot, may be found to a greater
or less degree in many autobiographers. Such is the

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 279
person with a grievance, a strongly marked type,
presenting features which deserve a closer study than
psychologists have, up to the present, accorded him.
The famous tragidienne. Mademoiselle Sophie Clairon,
is one of them, and Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna,
another. Cabals at the Comfedie-Frangaise permanently
soured the life of the former; her faUure to marry
Louis XIV, that of the latter. Even before poor
Haydon's mental disease began to show itself, he is
embittered by the public's lack of recognition. The
spirited mimoire of Hector Berlioz, the musical com
poser, traces the progress of a grievance throughout a
life, rolling up matter like the proverbial snowball, till
it is best expressed in his final sentence: " Je suis dans
ma 61* annfee; je n'ai plus ni espoirs, ni illusions, ni de
vastes pensfees; mon fils est presque toujours loin de
moi; je suis seul; mon mfepris pour l'imb§cUlit6 et I'im-
probit^ des hommes, ma haine pour leur atroce ferocity,
sont k leur comble."
This denunciation reminds one of the unhappy poet.
Sir Egerton Brydges, whose failure to impress his pecu
liar, exclusive and aristocratic views upon a broadening
and progressive society, turned his hypersensitiveness
to gall. "No one has met with more dampers through
life than I have. From my very childhood every sort
of chUl was thrown in my way"; and he goes on to
say: "My fears, my presages, my indignations, my
regrets, hang Uke barbed arrows in my brain!" His

280 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
belief is that "a poetical temperament is of all others
the least fitted to the world."
The Marfechal de Bassompierre ends his gay insou
ciant account upon much the same note of querulous
complaint. But perhaps the very wretchedest, and
surely one of the most instructive cases, is the unfortu
nate Joseph Blanco White. Morbid sensitiveness and
religious uncertainty led to bad health a constitution
never robust; and plunged him into a pit of utter misery.
White's situation is almost exactly the same as that
out of which Ernest Renan raises himself to tolerance,
indulgence, and serenity. No sermon ever preached on
moral health could do more good than a close compara
tive study of these two documents. Like Renan,
Blanco White was bred to Catholicism, which he later
renounces; like Renan, he retains the priestly tempera
ment, the clerical attitude. It is true the Frenchman
speaks of his own indecision, yet one feels his vitality,
his initiative force — a force which enables him to face,
to lift, and to dispose of a weight of doubt which bent
the weaker man to the earth.
Two varieties of the unhappy autobiography thus ex
ist for us — the weak and the strong. No more unhappy
life was ever written than that of Mrs. OHphant; it ceases
upon a note of passionate grief which wrings the heart;
yet never was an account more inspiring or invigorating.
"This fat, little, commonplace woman, rather tongue-
tied," says: "I have been tempted to begin writing by

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 281
George EHot's life, with that curious sort of self-com
passion which one cannot get clear of. I wonder if I
am a little envious of her. ... I am in very little dan
ger of having my life written!" The record, as we read
it, makes us feel that here at least is a note George
EHot never knew, for the larger part of her life was
sheltered from such poignancies. It is the average,
everyday woman's experiences this woman writes of,
and so courageously! All the strong and delicate can
dor of it; her struggle with common cares and bur
dens; the life, never free from drudgery; the marriage,
not altogether happy; the sons, not altogether satisfac
tory — aU the pulvis et umbra. Who can forget what
she says of her early married life? "Had I gone alone
with my husband — some unhappiness might have been
spared;" and adds, characteristically: "Who can tell?
There would have been other unhappiness to take
its place." Then, after a long Ulness, her husband dies
in Italy — "quite conscious," she writes, wondering
at, and almost resenting, the indifference of the dying;
" kissing me when his lips were already cold; and quite,
quite free from anxiety; though he left me with two
helpless chUdren, and one unborn, and no friends but
the  s."
She is able to the end of her life to support her own
family and that of a brother by her pen; and it is in her
attitude toward this fact and its influence that she is
especially suggestive. Work was easier to her than

282 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
economy; and she is wUling, like Cardan, to shoulder
the responsibility of this attitude for the weakening
effect upon the character of her sons. But, alas! save
to her mother-pride, it all mattered so little! for in the
last pages she speaks, like Calantha, only
"Of death! and death! and death! Yet I danced forward,
Though it struck home, and here, and on the instant."
Then she sounds the note of intensity which she never
struck in her novels, and which gives her autobiography
a place where she need not be afraid of George EHot,
nor of anyone else. Brave misery, gallant sorrow, they
are perhaps the most salutary reading in the world.
Mrs. Oliphant, the Italian poet Giuseppe Giusti, Madame
de Staal-Delaunay, Harriet Martineau, Jerome Cardan,
— are not their narratives worth a hundred triumphant
surveys of power and prosperity?
At what point the load of human misery becomes
too heavy for human shoulders, has been greatly specu
lated upon from early times until the present. Records
of the coroner's office furnish material for exhaustive
surveys like Enrico MorseUi's,' which treat of sex and
nationality, and of the social and psychological in
fluences at work. Personal narratives can enlighten the
subject but little, since the wish expressed in them to
end the whole business of living is necessarily unful
filled. They do, however, furnish suggestions as to the
' "Suicide."

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 283
sorts of unhappiness which serve to produce the suicidal
impulse, and to its extent and its physical and nervous
reactions when produced.
Jerome Cardan, writing of his own boyhood, makes
the remark: "There were times when I did not lack
heroic passion, so that I have contemplated suicide;
but as I suspect this same thought to have occurred
to others, I shaU not dwell on it further in this book."
It wUl scarcely be believed that this shrewd and ac
curate observation was singled out by contemporaries
as a triumphant proof of the author's lunacy! Even
so late as 1854, Mr. Morley, Cardan's biographer, is
quite horrified by it, and hastens to assure us that he
believes the idea of self-destruction improbable, if not
impossible, to youth. To healthy youth he might have
said; but Cardan presses the abnormal conditions of
his boyhood upon one's attention, and makes the re
mark with his usual due appreciation of all the facts.
Modern scientific observers bear him out in this, as in
so many other points of personal psychology. Dr. G.
Stanley Hall,^ studying the problem of youthful suicide,
quite does away with Mr. Morley's ingenuous conven
tions about the joyousness of youth. The epoch of
disillusion. Dr. Hall shows, combines with the age of
emotion to produce acute conditions of wretchedness,
from which self-destruction seems the only issue. Truly,
as William Bell Scott puts it: "Childhood has the
' "Adolescence," vol. ii.

284 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
credit of being a garden of Eden; but it is rather an
enchanted island, full of strange noises, and haunted
by a Caliban."
Certain cases and causes are worth examination.
Vittorio Alfieri, a child of eight, devoured the rank
herbs of the court-yard in a vain endeavor to make an
end. The reason appears to be home neglect, and a
lack of home affection toward a chUd morbidly emotional
and demonstrative. Cardan's own reason was his am
bition, chafed by servitude and poverty, and embittered
by base birth. John Stuart Mill, at twenty-one, faUs
into a nervous reaction from his strained and one
sided education, which makes him morbidly conscious
of his difference from other lads of the same age. During
this depression he sees "no reason why I should go on
Hving," and contemplates throwing down the heavy
burden. Religious doubts and perplexities, of course,
most frequently give rise to this impulse. J. Addington
Symonds, whose fragmentary autobiography is in
teresting largely because of his great love for these
records, connects his own wish to kill himself with re
ligious doubt and Ul-health. John Bunyan and John
Crook both longed for death; in Crook's case, he was
afraid to have a knife in the room.
Tolstoi, in his Confession, declares that during his
long and intense reHgious struggle he was not at
all iU when he wished to take his own life. "On the
contrary," he writes, "I rejoiced in a moral and

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 285
physical force which I have rarely met with among
people of my age." To him suicide was a method to
be employed by strong and logical men. At sixteen,
Chateaubriand tried to shoot himself, but the musket
missed fire. The clouds of sentimentality hang very
thick over the Mimoires d'Outre Tombe, and it is hard
to accept in explanation of this act that invention of
an imaginary lady-love, which the youthful Chateau
briand took far too seriously.
An unusual reason for self-destruction is given by that
intrepid friend of Catherine II of Russia, the Princess
Daschkaw. Her son's misbehavior, culminating in a
misalliance, humiHated her to such a point that she
seriously contemplated her own death.
Much more easily comprehensible is poor little Har
riet Martineau, at eight years old, deaf, and ailing, and
full of terrors, who goes into the kitchen to get a
carving-knife to cut her throat, but fails to find one.
"The impulse dwindled," she writes, "into the desire of
running away." George Sand rather closely analyzes
her own suicidal impulse; she believes it to be hereditary
and pathological, but immediately the result of religious
doubt. "Si vive, si subtUe, si bizarre," she caUs it, "une
espfece de folie." A narrow escape from drowning, due,
at least partially, to this impulse, shocks her into a cure.
That singular figure, Solomon Maimon, in one of his
perpetual drinking bouts, decides upon drowning, and
gets into the water as far as his waist, when the cold

286 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
rouses him. He does not take the incident in the least
seriously, however, but speaks of it as a "serio-comic
scene." Allusions to suicide become more and more frequent
with Haydon as the impulse increases. His is one case
where we may watch it grow to the point of actual
accomplishment. Nor should it be forgotten that
Haydon fed on morbid horrors even before his mind
became affected. We find him — a most affectionate
and devoted father, by the way — sitting by his dying
child to sketch "that look of tragic power in dearest
Georgy's convulsion fits!"
Haydon carries out his intention; others, as we have
seen, chance intervened to save. Among these is Edgar
Quinet, whom an unhappy love-affair had driven to this
extreme. Loading his gun, he places the end of the barrel
in his mouth, and runs some distance through the thick
wood. But fate spares him, and he accepts the'verdict.
The fourteen examples above cited give certain evi
dence as to the age of the suicidal impulse. This has,
of course, been studied by Morselli and others from the
larger outlook furnished by official statistics, which
these cases but confirm. Alfieri and Harriet Martineau
were children of eight; Cardan, Quinet, Chateaubriand,
John Stuart Mill, Symonds, Crook, and Tolstoi, experi
enced it between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three;
the Princess Daschkaw was older, and so were Maimon
and Haydon, but in the last two cases insanity and

THE NERVOUS SYSTEMS OF THE PAST 287
drink furnish definite cause. Bunyan gives no details
as to age or circumstance.
The connection between so-called supernatural phe
nomena and other symptoms of a depressed nervous
system, such as a desire of self-destruction, may not, at
first sight, appear to be close; yet on the broader lines
of subjective human experience it is not without value
to glance at them together. Our depressions, our mor
bid moods, are better understood to-day; but we see
they are not peculiar to one age nor to one race. It is
true, as M. Ribot tells us, that one is embarrassed by
the number of documents which treat of human suffer
ing; whUe, as for happiness, it has no history. Exercise
of the artistic and intellectual faculties, which will be
treated later, is a thing apart; but as to misery, "the
whole creation groaneth and travaUeth together," and
a comparison of the causes and forms of mental suffer
ing, whether religious or natural or obscure, cannot but
be fruitful and helpful to such of us who may feel that
in these trials we stand alone.

CHAPTER XV
THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES
Although the study of autobiography repays us most
richly where it is most personal, yet there is a sense in
which we gain most by detaching ourselves from the
examination of particular cases, in order to try for some
generahty, and then to see what comment these cases
make upon our thought. General attitudes, rather than
special information, become interesting to seek, since
in the general attitudes of our ancestors He buried our
own concrete Hkes and disHkes, prejudices and convic
tions. "The dead," declares Le Bon, "are the only
undisputed masters of the Hving." Bearing this in
mind, and ridding oneself of the current misconceptions
on the whole subject, we may gather much from study
of the mutual attitudes of men and women.
For if there be one subject upon which the auto
biographer is likely to write fully, it is the sex-relation.
Second only to his religious feehng, the part this senti
ment plays in his life becomes the most important of
all its influences. No one writing with a serious inten
tion of self-study omits to treat of it. True, he may,
Hke George Sand or Goethe, aUow himself to be gov
erned in the writing by literary convention and senti
ment, rather than by the truth; or, contrariwise, like

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 289
Rousseau, he may permit this one topic to assume a
disproportionate relation. But he always gives it place.
Even David Hume, in the nine-page autobiographical
fragment bearing his name, is careful to make room for
the statement: "I took a particular pleasure in the
company of modest women "; and also here Heine must
have a laugh at himself: "I still love women: when I
was cut off from all female society at Gottingen," he
says, "I got a cat!"
If this be so with a writer, it follows that the reader
may be sure of one thing in any full and candid docu
ment: that the proportion which this subject bears to a
person's self-delineation, it has borne to his mind and life.
In partial cases, in lives of which the Dichtung und
Wahrheit and the Histoire de ma Vie are typical
examples, where the sex-life of the subject is veUed or
whoUy omitted, the reader may at least safely bear in
mind that the writer's prevailing attitude toward sex-
questions on paper, has been his attitude toward these
questions in life. If this be true, then, there is much
illumination to be gained from any sincere self-presen
tation, however slight or partial.
The two ideas above emphasized cannot be too
strongly insisted upon, from the reader's point of view.
The act of literary composition may distort or exag
gerate a feeling; it does not create the accent, the
emphasis, the quality of that feeHng. However wUd
Goethe's assertions about platonic love may seem to us.

290 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
yet, unquestionably, the sentimentality which caused
him to make them, underlay and colored all of his rela
tions with women. As an old man, he gives us only the
enduring residue of a sentiment which had governed
him in his exciting and excited youth. He has forgotten
the rest. Where the line between the intellectual-
nature and the sex-nature has been defined and sharp
in life, then it is equaUy defined and sharp in the
personal narrative. So it is seen in George Sand, in
Catherine II of Russia, in Vittorio Alfieri. Nature is
betrayed by the autobiographer's voice, and accent,
and emphasis; he cannot hide, disguise, or omit it. If
he is healthy, normal, idealistic, it shows; if he is per
verted, cynical, disproportioned, morbid, vicious, it wUl
out. In slight acts, little reflections, trifling habits of
mind, nature seizes hold of his pen, and writes what he
is, large and clear.
When Monluc declares of love that "celk est du tout
contraire k un bon cceur"; describes how he wore a lady's
colors: " Jeportoisgriset blanc pour I'amour d'une dame,
de qui j'estois serviteur lorsque j'avois le loisir"; it is
reasonable to infer that women meant comparatively
little to him. When Catherine II remarks of her love-
affairs: "I was a true gentleman," we feel it must be
as true as that she was no lady; she is able some
how to assume a masculine responsibUity toward the
subject, and it is a different responsibility. Neither
Catherine's intellect nor her sovereignty was influenced

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 291
by her successive lovers; she preserved that side of Hfe
apart from her work, as a man does. Her predecessor,
the Empress Elizabeth, wiU never be anything in the
eyes of the world but a royal courtezan; whereas the
masculine vigor, the masculine aloofness of Catherine,
serve, at least, to place her in another category.
That honest and jolly Madame Mfere du Rfegent
presents the attitude of the reasonable wife desiring to
make friends with a husband who does not love her.
Like Catherine, like Marguerite de Valois, she decides
to be the confidante and the good comrade of this
stranger, to whom, through no will of either, she is
linked. The other two ladies, being persons of tempera
ment, found the business unremunerative and ennuyeux:
they therefore, after a while, by murder and divorce
freed themselves from the task. But the outspoken
Madame is not of their type. She worked thirty years
to gain her lord's esteem and confidence, and then —
she tells it with real bitterness — he had to go and die !
Her judgment of the Due d'Orleans' character, her
analysis of his weaknesses, is capitally impersonal; yet
it lacks the biting touch which causes Hortense Mancini,
Duchess de Mazarin, to describe her husband. "Jamais
personne n'eut les maniferes si douces en public, et si
rudes dans le domestique," says Hortense, angrily; and
the charge is not uncommon. Most illuminating and
humorous is this last lady's extreme boredom with the
sentimental emportements of her sister Marie. Being of a

292 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
cooler disposition herself, she teUs us, almost with a
shrug, how Marie expected her to be in love all the time,
and what a bore Hortense found it. In this she is Hke the
Electress Sophia of Hanover, who found ItaHan society
insupportable, because "nothing is thought of but love."
Sophia endures with dignity and patience a jealous and
boorish husband, for whom she seems to have felt sincere
affection. When the marriage is proposed, she candidly
avows, "a good establishment was all I cared for," and
of the suitor she says: "I, being resolved to love him,
was delighted to find how amiable he was." Yet, not
withstanding his rude and wearisome jealousies, her
marriage was not, on the whole, unhappy. Despite the
irony of Wilhelmine of Bareith, she treats tenderly of
her husband and of their marriage; whereas she rarely
mentions her daughter, and then with coldness.
Here are extracts enough to show how inevitably
the writer's attitude will come to the surface, wUly-
nilly. It is interesting that they are aU women, because
women are far more reticent as to the sex-life than are
men. There are absolute reasons for this, no doubt;
the whole business is more important to the woman.
Frankness like Madame's as to her marital arrange
ments, or that of Marguerite de Valois about her hus
band's mistress, la Fosseuse, or of both Mancinis, and
the Electress Sophia, is not usual. An English actress,
Ellen Terry, in her recent Story of My Life, aUudes
to "my love of being in love," and to what she terms

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 293
other "bourgeois quaUties," such as "the love of a
home and the disHke of solitude." This confession
comes upon one almost with a shock, although women
in general acknowledge the truth of these sentiments.
The famous Mademoiselle Georges, indeed, gives the in
timate detaUs of her liaison with Napoleon, in a manner
and with detaUs of a startling candor; whUe, on the
other hand, a contemporary French actress, Sarah
Bernhardt, amazingly full in detaUs of f amUy Hfe, chUd
hood, education, ideas, etc., cuts the whole subject, in
what may be best described as a pointed manner. Marie
Bashkirtsev is often cited as an example of candor,
but the love she minutely describes is one she felt at
twelve years old for a man she never met; as she
grows into a woman she becomes reserved. Perhaps
the rarest admission of all is Miss Cobbe's: "No man
has ever desired to share it [her life], nor has she seen
the man she would have wished to ask her to do so."
The entire question of the relation which the sex-life
bears to the inteUectual life of men and women respec
tively, is indeed obscure; and if the jottings in this
section serve no other purpose, they may at least serve
as a gathering of material for some future handling of
the topic.
Just as the Italian cases are found to be most repre
sentative in their expression, along the line of human
experience in general, so we find their pages holding the
most salient and typical pictures of affection and pas-

294 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
sion. Again, one must insist on the immense value of
the Italian abUity to distinguish between passion and
lesser degrees of feeling. Few as are the Italian sub
jective autobiographies, their quality m this regard
lends them the highest value, and gives their data im
mense importance to the student. Each single figure
stands luminously forth, a type of human temperament.
Let us say what we will as to the advisabUity of observ
ing individualities as types, of yielding perhaps too
readUy to the temptation of so defining them, yet when
such a type is found, it becomes at once more suggestive
and more human. When I see in a friend certain CeUini
or Goldoni characteristics, I understand much that
would seem otherwise perplexing in his nature.
The artistic sensualist to-day, no doubt, is less highly-
colored than was Cellini, for nature to-day uses no such
brUliant palette as she did in the Renaissance; yet one
recognizes as whoUy famUiar the fact that CeUini's only
idealism on the subject of woman is part of his love of
art and his worship of beauty. More appeaHng to our
modern ideals of character evolution is Vittorio Alfieri's
life of himself. Alfieri's autobiography might be taken
as a text-book of how not to treat a chUd. In every single
instance one would act differently to-day. At school he
says he was "asino fra asini e sotto un asuio." ' He
had bad food, bad influences, bad discipline. The book
paints in touches of minute fidehty a young boor,
' Ass among asses and under an ass.

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 295
violent, morbid, vicious, and Uliterate, turning grad
ually toward self-education and development. In the
earHer portions Alfieri describes a lack of self-control
amounting almost to madness; he lives, in fact, what
he terms "una vita vero bruto bestia,"' adding that he
blindly obeyed his own nature, — "ubbedendo cieca-
menta alia natura mia." His temper was so violent that
he nearly kUled a faithful valet for accidentally pulling
his hair. He was badly educated, untrained, idle, and
fond of horses and low companions; but through it
all he was a strong man. To cure himself of an un
worthy infatuation he bound himself to a chair with
ropes, and remained there, sobbing and cursing, until
past this "access of furious imbecUity."^
When Alfieri met the Countess of Albany he had
already begun to try and free himself from the violences
of his nature. He heads this portion of the Vita,
Real Liberation : the First Sonnet, but it is his love
which opens the true springs of poetry. Exceedingly
susceptible to woman's influence as he was, it is an
honor to this woman that she exerted hers wholly to
encourage him in study and the creative life. What
he had of natural genius was little compared to his
splendid capacity for self-development. Eccentric and
original he remained always, but from this moment he
turned all the impetuous fervor of his disposition into
' The life of a truly brute beast.
' Quel accesso di furiosa imbecillit^.

296 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
work and study. He rode over literature as he had
ridden in the Roman streets; his education was made
up in leaps and bounds; his passion for creative work,
and for the lady, appear to have equally increased.
The terms which he uses to describe her and her
influence, even MiU has not surpassed. His love was,
indeed, "impetuous and fervent, but not the less pro
found and felt and lasting." In her biography of Louise
of Albany, Vernon Lee attests the truth of Alfieri's
self-portraiture, — his " numb, morbid boyhood, the at
tempt at chUd suicide," — and suggests (with justice)
some probable nervous condition, later outgrown.
This author remarks on the unattractiveness (to every
one else) of the Countess of Albany. Their relation had
all the sincerity, the mutual inspiration, of marriage in
its highest form. No modern ideal partnership of taste
and aims seems ever to have been more completely
realized. The comparison of MUl comes readily to the mind,
but it is a comparison rather of results achieved than
of likeness in kind. In the case of Alfieri, inteUectual
stimulus was what he most needed to make him a
healthy and sane creature, and this Louise of Albany
gave; in the case of John Stuart MUl, it was an emotional
stimulus which he most needed to make him a sane
and healthy creature, and this Mrs. Taylor gave. Un
doubtedly the world would have been greatly the
poorer had these two women been of a lower type —

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 297
the type, let us say, of Frau von Stein. The tragic limi
tations of MUl's education had bred in him an intense
idealism, which disiUusion must have turned to bitter
ness. Every one of MiU's readers knows the words in
which he draws the heights of his wife's character, and
of their friendship in marriage. It amuses the Carlyles
and other omniscient acquaintances to laugh at this,
to suggest that Mrs. Mill profited by her husband's in
experience of women. Another view suggests that it
might be a harder task to deceive as to her intellectual
qualities a man of Mill's attainments and standards,
than if he had been more a man of the world. In any
case, there is drawn an ideal relation between a man
and a woman by John Stuart Mill, by Vittorio Alfieri,
and, in a slighter case, by Giovanni Dupr6, which may
truly serve to reanimate the faint-hearted idealist.
Men's notion of what woman's superiority consists
in is, in truth, variable enough. The historian Agrippa
d'Aubign^ deeply wept his young wife's loss, yet all he
can tell us of her virtue is the one anecdote that he sent
her a sealed box "avec defense de I'ouvrir, ce qu'elle
observa contre I'ordinaire de son sexe." Evidently
Eve, Pandora, and Fatima stood for the typical woman
during this era also!
What we term the expediency view of marriage is
as frequent in the personal narrative as the idealistic
is rare. Often, also, it is carried to an extreme which
shocks our modern feeling of romance. The German

298 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
scholar, Thomas Platter, thus describes the important
event: "My cousin and his wife recommended me to
marry their housekeeper, Anne . . . and [said] they
would make us their heirs. I allowed myself to be per
suaded and celebrated the wedding." This simpHcity
is surpassed only by Thomas Bewick, the English en
graver, who says of his future wife: "Though her
character was innocence itself, she was mentaUy one of
the weakest of her sex." This admirable qualification
made Bewick the more determined, and he records the
marriage as a success. The husband chosen for Made
moiseUe Delaunay, the Baron de Staal, is depicted
in terms no less candid, one of her first requisites
being that he should keep a sufficient table; but
we know that this match was a pis alter, and that
Mademoiselle Delaunay had already passed through
her little romance with M. de SUly. She treats of
this with her own inimitably light touch and with a
smiling cynicism, yet there was a wound of which
she cannot conceal the scar. Then there are wounds
which leave no scar. Kotzebue, though frantic at
the loss of his wife, forgets to tell the reader that he
married again. Dr. Edgeworth weds one sister at
the request of another; and Jung StUling's djdng
second wife urges him to take her friend, Eliza, for
his third; which he does. Madame Roland's marriage
of respect she declares to have been happy; and she
believes that the inteUect should always guide one's

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 299
choice; there are traces, however, throughout her life,
of imperfect emotional development. George Fox lifted
the question of matrimony into the realm of direct
reHgious inspiration, taking, as it were, his orders
from the Deity, in these words: ... "I had seen
from the Lord a considerable time before, that I should
take Margaret Fell to be my wife; and when I first
mentioned it to her she felt the answer of Hfe from
God thereunto ... It opened upon me from the Lord
that the thing should be accomplished." A quaintly
self-deceitful account is given by "that ancient ser
vant of Christ," Stephen Crisp, of his second marriage,
to which he first alludes in merely general terms:
"I received an opening in the Truth that the Lord
would give me another wife "; but a little further on
there is a pious mention of "my dear friend, whom I
had seen would be given to me to wife" — thus showing
that the affair was not quite so impersonal to Crisp as
he would have us think. AU happy and successful
Quaker marriages are dwelt on much in these terms;
those which did not turn out so well are mentioned
as "snares," or as "chastisement from the Lord's
hand." So completely a pious matter is the marriage of
John Livingstone, Robert Blair's friend, that he thus
treats of it: "It was above one month after, before
I got marriage affection to her, although she was for
personal enduements beyond many of her equals.

300 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I got it not tUl I obtained it by prayer; but thereafter
I had greater difficulty to moderate it."
In certain cases of religious conversion, the very
happiness of the tie is used as an awful example of the
low spiritual state of the subject. Jane Pearson, Friend,
cannot forgive herself for being happily married at
twenty-one. "United to a choice husband, I swimmed
in an ocean of pleasure!" she exclaims, in horror at
her lost condition. Tolstoi's marriage turns him tem
porarily from the dark paths of religious despair, though
it cannot keep him away. Dr. Edmund Calamy thus
states his reasons for the step: "The lady had univer
sally a good character, was a member of  con
gregation, of a singular good temper, and one of my
mother's own recommending." The requirements of
Bishop Newton, the famous Dean of St. Paul's (about
1750), run to a formidable catalogue, for the lady must
have some "knowledge and experience of the world,
be clever, sensible and a prudent manager and econ
omist," one who could "lay out his money to the best
advantage . . . supply his table handsomely, yet not
expensively, and do the honors of it in a becoming man
ner." She must be also a tender nurse, and not be "per
petually gadding abroad"! Fortunately for Dr. Newton,
he had known this paragon from a "little chUd in a
white frock "; and he is careful to print what others
thought as to her extreme suitability. But his ideas had
surely become enlarged, since his first wife is simply

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 301
described as "an unaffected, modest, decent young
woman"! That singular phUosopher Solomon Maimon,
married at eleven, and was a father before he was four
teen. That his marriage ended in divorce does not sur
prise us after reading the account of his habits and
personality. He asserts that his wife was a "woman of
rude education and manners, but of good sense and
courage." The only reason given us by Flavius Jose
phus for divorcing his first wife, is that he was not
much pleased with her behavior; of his second choice
he speaks in high terms. The attitude of Madame
d'Epinay toward her husband, and of Jean Jacques
Rousseau toward his Thferese, are simply that of their
age and society; they present few distinctive features.
The same is true of their love-affairs. One may get
much amusement by reading of EmUie's sentiments
for M. Dupin de FrancoeuU, and those of Jean Jacques
for the fair Madame d'Houdetot, but one gets slight
illumination from them on the eternal subject. A Hne
of Alfieri is worth more than their entire existence,
for there is little reahty about them.
Goldoni's extreme prudence in matrimonial arrange
ments has already been noticed; it is surpassed
only by the two EngHsh lawyers, Roger North and
Sir Symonds d'Ewes. The first is deeply in love with a
young lady, "but her fortune and mine were not
enough to support the outward form of honor in the
way of Hving ..." So he himself arranges for her a

302 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
match with another, and observes with satisfaction that
it turned out well. As for d'Ewes, his desire to arrange
everything for everybody in a systematic manner, pre
sents a most diverting picture to modern eyes. His first
attraction is to a lady ten years his senior, but he aban
dons the match because this disparity "would doubtless,
in process of time, have bred much nauseating incon
venience." The term is strong, but d'Ewes evidently
felt it, since he finally settled on a girl of thirteen.
"She was every way so comely, as that alone, if aU the
rest had wanted, might have rendered her desirable,"
is his comment. After dwelling for pages on the social
and pecuniary advantages of the aUiance — which
fluctuates uncertainly for a time, owing to "the mar
velous inconstancy" of the bride's grandmother, —
they are finaUy wed; but the marriage is not con
summated for more than a year, d'Ewes declaring, "it
being perhaps the first example that ever was of that
kind," and furnishing us with a series of prudent reasons
for this postponement. His cool disposition and his
energetic meddling in his own and his wife's famUy,
brought to pass a number of quarrels and breaches,
by which d'Ewes is sorely tried and vexed. When his
own father wishes to re-marry with a young lady he
takes this tone : " I should not only reap much discom
fort in my present life," d'Ewes writes, indignantly,
"as he might be drawn to give away his estate to the
issue of a second wife . . . but . . . having abundant

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 303
experience of his inconstancy . . . my wishes were to
see him well and happily married to some good and
ancient widow every way fit for him." D'Ewes's father
— "who was naturally marvelous inconstant " — does
not take at all to the "ancient widow" idea, and there
ensues a bitter quarrel which the reasonable son cannot
understand. Is romance really dying out? The marriage of Paul
inus PeUaeus, after a series of amours with the slaves
of his father's house, reads Hke an eighteenth-century
affair. When one reads stories like this, or Herbert of
Cherbury's account of his own marital arrangements,
they give us pause : we are not so sure. Do people now
adays arrange marriages for sons of fifteen as "a due
remedy for lasciviousness"? At this age Herbert mar
ries an heiress of twenty-one, from deliberate motives
of physical and worldly expediency, among which is
the wish to "save the cost of a steward on the estate."
When Lady Herbert refuses, ten years later, to follow
her husband to France, he states her refusal as a valid
and sufficient excuse for infidelity, protesting only
that his adventures were not accompanied with the
"dissimulation and falsehood . . . commonly found
in men addicted to love women."
Here, at least, is an attitude whose candor one
may respect; how much more sturdy it is than that,
for instance, of Chateaubriand! "Madame de Chateau
briand m'admire," etc., and his talk of owing "une

304 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
tendre et Sternelle reconnoissance k ma femme" for
not making trouble over his infideUties, which, of
course, fill him with regret. "How sorry should I be
to cause a moment of chagrin to Madame de Chateau
briand! " he exclaims with the most polite insincerity.
From his boyhood's imaginary lady-love, noted by no
less a scientist than M. Ribot, down to Madame de
Beaumont, the vicomte's relations with women are
shadowed by clouds of haze. His own Olympian
condescension toward the sex produces an effect of
indescribable fatuity.
Gibbon must not be forgotten, who " sighed as alover,"
but " obeyed as a son," in the case of a match unexcep
tionable from the personal point of view, and obeyed,
moreover, that father whose death he records as "the
only event which saved me from a life of hopeless obscur
ity and indigence "! Under the circumstances, not for
getting either Gibbon's remark that he could not regret
the early death of his five brothers and sisters, be
cause their life "would have been sufficient to oppress
my inheritance," one feels inclined to congratulate
Mademoiselle Curchod on her escape. In his Hfe of
Gibbon, Mr. Morrison comments on this coldness, and
believes Gibbon was more affectionate than the memoirs
show. Since he can instance in support of this view
only that Gibbon behaved in a considerate and dutiful
manner toward his aunt and stepmother, the reader is
disposed to take the Memoirs at their face value. In-

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 305
deed, to any sensitive nature the ugliness of these sen
tences could not have been permitted to stand; they
would in themselves have jarred, demanding further
explanation, even if their recording had been due to
some special conscientiousness. To a temperament
like Franklin's, a wholly utUitarian Aaew of marriage
and the sex-relation generally seems entirely consistent
with the rest of his reasonable philosophy. It is inter
esting that this attitude is shared by such unedifying
examples as de Retz, Bussy, Bassompierre, de Bernis,
so that Franklin's remarks on the subject read like a
translation from the French. They, doubtless, repre
sent a consistent eighteenth-century view. In the
case of Goethe, it has been seen how much his view
of the subject was affected by the age at which he
wrote — an age when most men turn a quiet back
ward glance on the emotions of their earlier vigor.
Many and many writers of personal records are tinged
in all their ideas with middle-age dogmas of conven
iency and expediency. It cannot be forgotten how this
latter change has affected the narratives wherein Augus
tin and Ab^lard tell of the passions of their youth.
And yet, notwithstanding their self-disapproval, the
reader beholds them scarred, suffering: Augustin un
able to forget the woman who had borne him chUdren;,
Abelard tortured by an even deeper humiliation.
Confessions of genuine passion are undoubtedly rare.
One of the most convincing and human of all is that

306 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
of Mademoiselle de Montpensier; it is, perchance, the
more affecting as it stands out against a background of
stiff and artificial magnificence. Not a few books have
been founded upon this memoire; not one of them is
so interesting or so valuable as the book itself. This
bigy jolly, bouncing Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans states
naively her arrogant reason for the undertaking. "J'ai
autrefois eu grande peine k concevoir," she observes, "de
quoi I'esprit d'une personne accoutum^e k la cour, et nfee
pour y fetre avec le rang que ma naissance m'y donne,
se pouvait entretenir, lorsqu'elle se trouve rfeduite k
demeurer k la campagne; car U m'avoit toujours sem-
bloit que rien ne me pouvoit divertir dans une eloigne-
ment forcfe; et que d'fetre hors de la cour, c'fetoit aux
grands fetre en pleine solitude, malgrfe le nombre de
leurs domestiques et la compagnie de ceux qui les
visitent." MademoiseUe goes on to observe that, not
withstanding these conditions, she was able to pass
her exUe agreeably enough, by setting down, as exactly
as possible, the events of her Hfe from chUdhood to
the present hour. One is irresistibly reminded of Mrs.
Elton and Maple Grove and the barouche landau, when
ever Mademoiselle touches on her own extraordinary
eminence. By nature active, generous, impulsive,
stormy; antithetical in every way to the stiff and formal
surroundings; she is a figure of restless energy, perpet
ually struggling to maintain her balance on the lofty
pinnacle whereon she finds herself. Her over-flattered

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 307
chUdhood caused her early to develop, she says, "un
esprit de vanity fort incommode." She is as candid
as possible: "Je ne fusse pas belle " is her observation
of herself as a parti; and all her impetuous and touchy
pride is set only on the idea of an establishment be
fitting her exalted position. This becomes a fixed idea;
like the proud princess in the fairy-tale, she is very
hard to suit; match after match falls through, till
her father, and Louis XIV, her "beau cousin," get
thoroughly tired of her exigencies. She was the
richest princess in all France; quick-tempered and
rough, she loved riding and bUHards and climbing
{"je grimpai comme un chat "), and rude practical jokes.
All this she knows, and that her "imagination vive"
often pushed her to extremes. True she was not sensi
tive, for she opened and read the private letters of her
friend, Madame de Fiesque; and yet she says: "I have a
good heart "; and when her father died, she burst out
bawHng Hke a baby! The whole of volume four is taken
up with the unfortunate passion which befeU this
proud woman at forty-three years of age; and it is de
veloped with feeHng, with sincerity, and with the most
touching self-abnegation. The Due de Lauzun is quite
evidently not serious, and is much perplexed and
overwhelmed when he finds that she is. In the first
rush of her feeling and impetuosity, she very nearly
gets the King's permission for the match — the in
tensity of her sincerity shakes even that royal iceberg.

308 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
She makes every sacrifice of pride; she does the pro
posing; she writes "C'est vous," on a slip of paper and
hands it to Lauzun in the dance. She is so mortified
by the extent of her agitation that she longs to be alone;
she describes piteously how she does not even know
what she said to him. Then the King's consent is with
drawn, and the tepid lover gets into cover as quickly
as possible. MademoiseUe, poor soul, begs and pleads;
she neither eats nor sleeps; she laments in public, tiU
Lauzun himself begs her to cease; she weeps even in the
dance, before all the court. It is indeed strange, she
thinks, that, "nie avec des grandeurs et des biens con
siderables . . . Dieu a permis que ma vie a etfe traver-
see par mUles affaires d^sagrfeables "; which reproach
shows again her attitude. Nothing more touching was
ever read, and the disUlusionment of the end is the
final stroke of fate.
Then, among others, there is Leonora Christina of
Denmark, who bore her twenty-one years of imprison
ment wholly on account of love and loyalty to Corfitz
Ulfeldt, her husband. And Marie Mancini, who says
much less of her love for le roi soldi, but her one ad
mission is significant. "Jamais rien en ma vie n'a tant
touch^ mon 4me" are her words; and they are sincere.
Other passions, in and outside of marriage, are mov
ingly drawn for us; such as Lady Anne Halkett's and
Sir Kenelm Digby's. But Sir Kenelm's flowery euphu
ism means less than the wifely fire of Margaret, Duchess

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 309
of Newcastle :" When absent from my Lord, it did break
my sleeps and distemper my health"; or the simple
statement of another loving woman. Lady Fanshawe:
"We never had but one mind throughout our lives."
Theobald Wolfe Tone, Sir Samuel RomiUy, P. G.
Hamerton, Marmontel, W. Hutton, and the merry
CoUey Cibber, are examples of those who carried a
high degree of feeling into marriage. This last also
mentions, in his whimsical way: "My muse and my
spouse were equally prolifick"! Ali Hazin, the Persian,
connects the whole idea of love with the poetic era of
his youth. The Italian sculptor, Giovanni Dupr^, is
practically made by his passion for the rare and beau
tiful girl who became his wife, and of whom he writes
in extravagant terms. On the other hand, what pathos
in that page of Proeterita which contains John Rus-
kin's only allusion to his life's unhappiness! "I
wonder mightily," he writes wistfully, "what sort of
a creature I might have turned out, if at this time
love had been with me instead of against me. . . .
Such things are not allowed in this world. The men
capable of the highest imaginative passion are always
tossed on fiery waves by it." And there is a man like
Herbert Spencer lamenting the absence of emotion from
his experience, and the consequently maimed appear
ance of life to his own eyes. Summing up, he writes;
" At any rate one significant fact has been made clear,
that in the genesis of a system of thought the emo-

310 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
tional nature is a large factor; perhaps as large a factor
as the mteUectual nature." Significant words these,
which dignify and justify any comparative study one
may make of these emotions. Also do they serve to
suggest that to the scientific observation the presence of
idealized feeling has its especial place and value for the
mind of high quality, and for the nature of high attain
ments. The various experiences placed here have an
especial use in showing that the ideal of marriage as
friendship touched with passion is an ideal for which,
and through which, much has been and wUl be accom
plished. At first glance no situation would appear to have
altered more during the last four hundred years than
that of women; no question shifted more in its broader
aspect than the sex-question. Most of us believe that
woman's attitude has not only changed toward man,
but toward the world, and toward herself. Yet there
have been others to point out — not without cynicism
— some of our returns upon the past; to suggest that
our boasted advance is not perhaps so wide as we be
heve, and that in actual accomplishment the area
covered has been comparatively small. That in the
position of women there have been vital changes, no
one can for an instant deny. An entire class has been
created; the woman worker has appeared on the world's
stage, bringing with her new liberties, laws, responsi
bUities, and justifications. As a self-supporting agent.

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 311
as an intellectual force, woman practicaUy enters upon
existence with the nineteenth century; but as sweet
heart, as daughter, as wife, as mother, as friend, she did
exist before. The respect and equality which we have
granted and are granting to the working woman has
already served to modify the structure of society — for
good or evU, according as the theorist sees it — and to
alter the existing face of things. But when the European
woman of the past is shown us in pictures painted by her
own hand, she is depicted in surroundings much less like
the Oriental harem than later reformers would wish us to
believe. Grant her a position sufficiently high in the
social scale, and she enjoyed no mean degree of liberty,
independence, and power. FuU legal rights were not
hers, but had they been, it is surely true that legal
rights would have modified very little the course of a
Catherine of Russia, a Teresa of AvUa.
Change in the position of woman, when it is examined
in the light of recorded personal experience, is seen to
be really an approach by the women of the lower work
ing class to the enjoyment of the same degree of liberty
as their sisters of the leisure class. It was upon these
working women that the chains were knotted, that the
burdens of life were laid, and made heavier by the fact
of sex. Of the sunburned creatures, male and female,
bending in the fields, whom La Bruyfere saw, it was the
female who suffered the more intolerable miseries, it was
the female who rose to partake of a more hysterical

312 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
vengeance. The rfele of woman in the French Revolu
tion is a leading, not a supplementary, rfele; and this
fact is, in itself, explanatory, for the personal attitudes
and opinions of such sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth-century women included in the catalogue
of mimoiristes, are enough to show why the woman's
movement was delayed so long. MiU's Essay on the
Subjection of Women is written in the interest of a class
which sprang into being with the nineteenth century;
and which aimed, at first, more to equalize existing
conditions than to create new ones.
It is a great pity that autobiographers in general
have faUed to record the symptoms in themselves
accompanying the development of the sexual instinct.
Rousseau does so fuUy and valuably; Brandfes gives a
note to the effect that the revelations of coarse boy
companions brought him bitter misery; and one or
two others touch upon this topic; but the loss to edu
cators from a general neglect of it through authentic
experiences remains great.
Examination of the relations of the sexes by means
of these individual ideas and feelings, shows at least that
it is their exterior, rather than their interior relations,
which have been altered by civilization. The great inti
mate and immutable feelings display the same strength,
the same variety. Such jottings as are made in these
pages touch, after all, only familiar scenes and pictures,
though in unfamUiar speech and dress. The mutual

THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES 313
affection of Augustin and Monica, of De Thou for his
parents, of Margaret of Newcastle for her husband, of
Cardan for his unworthy son — these are the things we
see and understand. Much, much has changed. Youths
of fifteen do not to-day decide to marry as "a due
remedy for lasciviousness"; few mothers nowadays
receive the confidences made by her son to Madame de
Sfevigne, or would retaU them afterwards in letters to a
young daughter. The attitude of servant and master,
of employer and employee, has turned its front as com
pletely as the attitude of the cultivated person toward
nature. It is not customary now for us to apply to
Alpine scenery the epithet "nasty," as did Sophia of
Hanover; and the terms of affectionate contempt with
which writers speak of their menials and servitors have
vanished with the class itself. But these are outside
things; whether we like it or not, we must recognize
that with the addition, perhaps, of an increased mutual
respect, men and women still stand toward each other
much as they did in the younger years of the world.

CHAPTER XVI
HUMOR
The seriousness of the autobiographical mood teUs
against deliberate humor, though it frequently throws
an unconscious humor sharply into reHef. He who is
gifted with what Gozzi calls the "democritic" spirit is
not apt to be moved to self-study, since the prerequisite
to self-study is the habit of taking oneself seriously.
Now a self-student may take himself seriously in two
ways: either with or without an appreciation of the
seriousness of anybody else. The elder records rarely
take their surroundings into account; humor in them,
therefore, is restricted to coarse, practical joking, to
repartee of the "You 're another" variety, and to anec
dotes, such as of a lady falHng into a fountain and
emerging covered with mud. In the eighteenth cen
tury begins that deeper-dyed humor, which comes of
feeling oneself to be serious in alien or grotesque sur
roundings, — of laughing partly at them and partly at
oneself; as does Mademoiselle Delaunay at the patro
nesses who promenaded her from salon to salon like a
monkey. This is more nearly humor as we know it
to-day — the acute perception of a lack of proportion.
The joke, so-called, is given less space; and the percep
tion becomes positive or negative, so that we laugh

HUMOR 815
with the writer or at him. In such an example as
Professor Huxley's telUng us that he was named after
the disciple with whom he felt the greatest sympathy,
we smUe because he has seen the connection first.
When Ann GUbert at eighty does not feel "grown up,"
we smile at her naiveti, and sigh at our own perception.
When Miss Frances Power Cobbe, writing of a deep and
important crisis in her life, says: "I cut off my hair and
faced the future!" we laugh because she does not see
the lack of proportion at all. Negative perception leads
to the description by Herbert Spencer, in accurate
and scientific language, of his finding a place to board
"where two Httle girls became the vicarious objects of
my philoprogenitive instinct"; and also to the immortal
paragraph in which he warns the American against the
evUs of iced water. Again, we have Chateaubriand,
priding himself on his English, so that he translates for
us the description on his English passport, "Favoris et
cheveux bruns," as "Brown hair, and fits"! M. de
Chateaubriand becomes sublime on the subject of his
marriage: "Madame de Chateaubriand m'admire, sans
avoir jamais Iu deux lignes de mes ouvrages!" he ex
claims, in a wonderment that goes to the heart.
But we hurry on too fast. Let us linger awhile in
those days when, if the smUe were rare, the laughter
rang Homeric and full; the days when practical jokes,
of the type restricted nowadays to the hoarded and
secluded energies of youth at college, then diverted and

316 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
occupied the greybeard and phUosopher. That brave
woman, Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, thought it inex
pressibly amusing to dice for drinks (incognito) with
the soldiers of the guard. When Hortense Mancini's
sister went to sleep with her mouth open, and inad
vertently bit the intruding finger of a gouvernante,
the entire court was convulsed by the incident. Hor
tense also devoted two pages to the description of an
elaborate jest played by the whole court on her Httle
sister of six years old — a jest too shocking and too
coarse to repeat. The lowest slum tenement to-day
would not combine so to abuse the dignity and inno
cency of chUdhood; and it makes one feel the truth of
what Dr. Gummere writes of "the cruelty of primitive
humor, the beatings and hammerings, and bloody
heads, and broken bones." As an amusement, this sort
of thing is hard for us to comprehend; whereas, CeUini's
famous jest of the Spaniard Diego at the supper-party,
is one that would always wring response, because it
has its roots in the very foundation of masculine nature.
That a gentleman, whose tender mood had been some
what heightened by the pleasures of the table, should
make advances to a lady present, only to discover that
the rich dress disguised one of his own sex, — this,
even if encouraged to proceed to the point of crudity,
is stUl an excellent and humorous jest, and doubtless
has been an hundred times re-enacted at similar sup
per parties. AU the jokes which practise on the be-

HUMOR 317
fuddled senses of a friend in liquor, from the Caliph
Haroun-al-Raschid and AH-Hassan to simUar experi
ences of Christopher Sly, the tinker, strike a certain
sort of person as irresistibly funny. No doubt these are
the people who think it is humorous to make their
cats and dogs, or even their cows and chickens, tipsy,
and who crowd the playhouse to roar at a drunken
scene. And there are others to whom such a sense of
humor seems vestigiary, Uke the vermiform appendix.
CeUini is rich in examples of rough and cruel jesting,
but if we think this accounted for by his swaggering
personaHty, let us turn to the quarrels described by
his contemporary. Cardan. The lecture-room squabble
with Cardan's coUeague, Branda Porrd, and the en
counter with another professor, Francanzano, are told
in a similar vein. In the latter story, Francanzano,
wishing to avoid meeting the mathematician, left the
laboratory in such haste that he became entangled in
his long robe and feU to the floor, amid the jeers of the
bystanders. It is characteristic of Cardan that this is
the one anecdote he gives for no other reason than its
humor, although he often writes of his own peculiarities
with a twinkle in his eye. Neither his ironical, scepti
cal mind, nor CeUini's rough irreverence and love of the
ridiculous, had apparently the slightest effect in modify
ing their intense superstition. Evidently, such super
stition was general and not individual. Sometimes the
m,imoiriste deHghts to teU us the effect of the jest on

318 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
himself. MademoiseUe de Montpensier rarely omits to
tell how she laughed at herself; and even so rigid a
person as the Due de BouUlon dwells on his capacity
for fun, before he began "to think seriously of my
soul." Bussy, we remember, could laugh like Pantagruel,
and he had also wit, humor, and quick perception.
Bassompierre, quick at repartee though he was, is
more gay than humorous; he has none of Bussy's insight
and intelligence, yet he has a light touch. Of a certain
year, when he had an ugly suit for breach of promise
on his hands, other amorous entanglements, and debts
to the amount of 700,000 Hvres, this is how he describes
their dismissal: " Je fus dfelivrfe k mfeme en peu de temps
de tons ces divers et facheux inconvfenients " ! This is
not overstating the case, and at least the lever of the
writer's gayety has served to raise the desperate situa
tion. In the same merry mood Goldoni wanders, hun
grily but cheerily, over Italy. So Gozzi quits his home,
and bids his mother adieu forever with "hilarity."
Gozzi is truly the laughing cynic, a more genuine De
mocritus jr. than Richard Burton was. Of the " demo
critic" spirit also is WUhelmine of Bareith; in her atti
tude toward her parents and her surroundings, toward
her husband's relatives, — a theme, by the way, which
whets the meekest tongue, — she shows a brave humor
deeply rooted in cynicism. This "democritic" spirit
goes hand in hand with cheerfulness and courage; it

HUMOR 819
is the serenity of the true pessimist. Next to the robust
and Rabelaisian temper, it is the more frequent form
taken by humor before 1750. Dauntless it is where
CoUey Cibber exclaims: "Let them call me any Fool
but an unchearful one!" It alone enables Madame
Mfere du Rfegent to bear with equanimity her difficult
life; Gourville, to write serenely of the happiness of his
invalid days; and the good Morellet, to regard the Revo
lution in the manner of a benign Swift. In the hands of
Madame de Staal-Delaunay, the Thackerayan cynicism
has also the Thackerayan tenderness. With what a
humorous pride she describes her progress in the train,
first of this patroness, then of that, led about like a mon
key; while the sketches of her benefactresses are done
with infinite vivacity, yet without malice. Mademoiselle
Delaunay, like Fanny Burney, was the victim of people
who thought they knew better what was good for her
than she did herself — people who deemed it fitting
that a cultivated woman of inteUect should become
a sort of upper waiting maid to the Duchesse du Maine.
Poor, shy MademoiseUe Delaunay, clumsy from near
sightedness and nervousness, kept from the books and
studies which she loved, conscious in despair that her
gifts and talents were being utterly smothered, she is
drawn with touches of genius. Her situation, though
not unlike Miss Burney's, is more poignant, because
she is more clear-sighted, more sophisticated, and more
alone. Fanny is always under the awe and charm of

320 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
royalty, however uncomfortable she may be; and she
has brief respites with Mrs. Dulany, with her father, and
her friends. Mademoiselle Delaunay has no respites and
no holidays; never is her life her own, and never for
one instant is she so dazzled by her patron's rank as
to overestimate her character. One sees her shrug her
delicate shoulders as she writes.
Fate was kinder, after all, to the little Burney. She
had tasted sweet success and much affection; and she
was released in time to have many happy, tranquil years
of marriage and motherhood. Mademoiselle Delaunay
was really forced to select a husband as a means of
escape, and then, after aU, she was as much prisoner as
ever. Madame du Maine would not hear of letting her go
to the quiet country home; she was not even permitted
to retire to the little cottage bequeathed to her by her
best friend. Then, almost for the first time, she sheds
bitter tears, for through most of the story she smUes;
she knows what life means to the dependent; she knows
all the tyranny in the whims of the great. With her
brave humor she looks about her, she smiles, she shrugs,
she thinks "It might have been!" Her courage, her
phUosophy, her deep love of study sustain her. It is a
dauntless record, this optimism of the pessinust, this
humor of the seeing eye. Here lies no iUusion; and
endurance is made possible only by the quiet analysis,
the broad, aloof point of view, and the thorough under
standing which this courageous woman brought to her

HUMOR 321
situation. Of her one girlish love-affair she writes with
grace and dignity. She had all a sensitive woman's
love of beauty, and knew herself to be plain; her one
vanity, she declares, was a wish to be reasonable; and
she takes her pen in hand for us, smiling, observant
of every detaU in her own little corner of that base
and splendid world. Like Mrs. Oliphant, this record of
disappointment is the most bracing and salutary read
ing in the world, — salutary in the case of Mademoiselle
Delaunay, largely because it shows what a true and
developed sense of humor may accomplish.
Recalling the painful solemnity of the Georges — so
distinct that it almost set the fashion of a lack of humor,
— one regrets that their great ancestress bequeathed
her son so Httle of her gift of laughter. The Electress
Sophia wrote her Hfe in lively French, to keep up her
spirits during her husband's absence. The portrait
she paints of her young self is full of verve: a girl of high
spirits, "interrupted only by violent fits of devotion,"
of a clear insight, and not very ardent temperament,
whose gayety carries her safely over many pitfalls and
vexations. Her humorous observation of men and
things amuses us stUl. When she goes to see Marie Man
cini (whom her husband greatly admired), she draws
the sentimental beauty with caustic touches, and dryly
notes that Marie was doubtless "livelier with men than
with women." She pokes fun at the eternal love theme
in Italian conversation; at the stingy gifts made by

322 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Louis XIV, "a box set with poor pearls"; at Mon
sieur's little fussy ways; at the great, empty country
houses of the poorer nobility — at everything, herself
included, which strikes her keen sense of the ridiculous.
Another humorist whose wit had a biting edge is de
Retz: his mimoires are managed with infinite entrain.
Any reader of Madame de Sfevign^'s knows this must
be so, remembering how she loved the " coadjuteur."
Humor, indeed, is almost the first passport to Madame
de Sfevignfe's good graces: she is never tart except about
some person who lacks it. De Retz, of course, is one of
the great historical and political mimoiristes; he has
been already cited among those chroniclers to whom
the historical novelist is most in debt. His book was
called the Breviary of Revolutionists, though to our
mind the term "politician" comes nearer the mark —
the busy, active, cynical intriguer, working and plot
ting amid the indescribable confusions of the Fronde.
But for laughter de Retz never lacks matter; his own
conduct perpetually amuses him; he has gay phUos
ophy, cynicism and a love of jesting, all together.
Of his quickness in retort there are many examples.
None is more characteristic than his reply, when in
sulted by La Rochefoucauld: "Vous fetes un poltron
(je mentois car U est assur^ment fort brave) et je suis
un prfetre; le duel nous est dfefendu." Here the parenthe
sis and the antithesis are de Retz to the life.
We have mentioned Gourville in passing; his imper-

HUMOR 323
turbable cheerfulness deserves to be emphasized. No
infirmity, he tells us, can cloud "ma gaietfe ordinaire;
je m'amuse avec mes domestiques, je fais des plaisan-
teries avec eux." His slight personality and genial sin
cerity became dignified in his later life into something
of a higher quality. Toward the end he counts his days,
smUing; hoping each spring he may live to taste the
strawberries, "et quand Us sont passfees j 'aspire aux
pfeches"; and in this meUow mood he sits tranquilly
tiU his page is closed. Much more fretful in tone is that
witty unrest before the French Revolution. Marmon
tel and Morellet show less capacity for easy laughter.
Horse-play has largely disappeared, and those jokes
with which Marmontel tries "parfois ^gayer mon
rfecit," strike us as unendurably dull. Yet he has the
humor of observation, abundant and keen. Who can for
get the visit to Madame de Pompadour, or the reading
of his play before the Comidiel The practical joke has
its recrudescence in the Napoleonic era. Marbot plays
the jest of an earlier day; the pages of Alexandre Dumas
ring with laughter. We laugh with the indiscreet Mar
bot at the jest which overturns the majesty of the
First Consul. One is inclined to think that it is per
haps due to this abundant flow of animal spirits that
Marbot's Mimoires stand head and shoulders above
the huge mass of Napoleonic personal records; he
animates, he vivifies the scene; he is never duU, daz
zled, or overawed, and the mantle of Monluc at mo-

324 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ments seems to have faUen on his shoulders. In any
study of the psychology of the Frenchman of 1800,
Marbot must serve as an important example.
There are mimoiristes, otherwise perfectly sensible,
who have absurd whims, or impossible theories, which
grow over and clog their sense of humor like some
traveling weed. Of such is Baron Holberg's description
of his symptoms of iU-health: "When my disease at
tacked the region of the heart I used to be seized with
a mania for reform." Alfieri shared this notion of the
reaction of physical on mental states, and carried it to
the point of times and seasons. These ideas seem amus
ing to us now, just as we think MademoiseUe Victorine
de Chastenay funny in her sense of the proprieties. She
met young Napoleon Bonaparte somewhere and they
discussed Ossian together, but when he rode over to call,
with a volume of the poems, she would not see him.
She sighs as she tells it, and evidently thinks that she
narrowly escaped being Empress of the French.
The absence of any sense of humor is characteristic
of those persons with a grievance, whose confessions
contain such bitter revUings of the world. ]\Iademoi-
selle Sophie Clairon, the famous tragidienne, is one of
these. Sir Egerton Brydges is another. Brydges, so
suggestive in criticism, so keenly appreciative and in
tellectual, is yet worked upon to such a degree by his
morbid sensitiveness and lack of humor as utterly to
lose all perspective, aU natural proportion. In Hector

HUMOR 325
Berlioz, the musical composer, existed the most start
ling alternations between a total lack of a sense of humor
and a keen abUity in exterior humorous description.
It is hard to reconcUe the defiant solemnity with which
he mismanages some of his private affairs, with the
delicately humorous perceptions of such a scene as his
dialogue at the opera between "un jeune homme
fepluchant un orange, et I'inconnu, son voisin, en proie
k la plus vive Amotion."
"Mon Dieu, Monsieur; calmez-vous! "
"Non, c'est irrfesistible, c'est accablant, celk tue!"
" AUons, du courage! Vous offrirai-je un morceau de
cet orange?"
"Ah, c'est sublime!"
"Elle est de Malte!"
"Ah, Monsieur, quelle musique!"
"Qui, c'est trfes joH."
Arnold ascribes Shelley's famous letter to Harriet
as due to a monstrous lack of sense of humor ; and
there are certain quarrels of Brydges, certain excuses of
Berlioz, which approach it in monstrosity. Reading
of them, one is inclined to feel that humor acts like a
protective tissue to certain qualities of the human
sensitiveness, so that its absence lays bare those deli
cate fibres which are not intended to stand the outer
air. Conversely, the protective tissue may be too thick,
and so certain dullnesses wUl follow. Your practical
joker is apt to lack dignity of mind. A good example

326 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
is shown in Solomon Maimon, the Rabbi, who writes
of his own attempt at suicide as "serio-comic," and
of other serious experiences of Hfe, his desertion of wife
and family, for instance, in the same vein. The coldly
cynical humor of Talleyrand added to his deficiency in
personal ethics, and caused him to be more universally
hated than many a solemn and fatuous prig.
Already the reader must have noticed the prepon
derance of Latin examples — the ItaHan, the French.
Comparatively early, it is seen, a strong perception of
the absurd existed among them. The solemn person
with no sense of humor or the humorous, is to be found
most often on Anglo-Saxon soil. Chateaubriand, al
ready cited, is the most striking French example of
this, and he is modern. Could one take Lamartine's
Les Confidences as worth anything at aU they might be
placed beside Chateaubriand. But Lamartine simply
strikes one as "pinnacled high in the intense inane."
If the early French and Italian autobiography is al
most never too serious, the early EngHsh one is almost
never anything else. Such a remark as Professor
Huxley's about his name is practicaUy unheard-of
before the nineteenth century. The EngHsh seff-bio-
graphy from about 1600 to 1700 is fierily serious;
from about 1700 to 1800 fatuously serious. The cases
in which the lack of humor is as marked as color
bUndness, are largely in the majority. Take Dr.
Richard Edgeworth's account of himself. At coUege

HUMOR 327
he had, it appears, "a want of taste for the joys
of intoxication"; and married early because "he was
fond of aU the happiness which female society can
bestow." His choice of a wife was unfortunate: "She
lamented about trifles; and the lamenting of a female
with whom we live does not render home delightful,"
he justly observes. AU the proceedings of Dr. Edge-
worth and his friend, Mr. Thomas Day, are perfectly
original in their intense gravity. One is not surprised,
though considerably amused, to hear that he took his
boy of eight years old to see Jean Jacques Rousseau, in
order to get that practical person's opinion of the
child. Imagine the fluent generalizer helpless before a
Hteral British father! But, however serious, Dr. Edge-
worth is simple. It is reserved for the imitator of Rich
ardson, Hayley, or "Perdita" Robinson, to display
to us the results of a tortuously solemn overwriting.
When WUliam Hayley's mother rented a house, he puts
it in this way: "The excellent mother, who with the
greatest vigilance and anxiety had conducted her
single orphan through all the perUs of infancy and
youth, had taken a house which gave to the windows
of the young poet's library a pleasing appearance of
verdure and retirement." When he falls in love he
terms the lady "the blooming object of my future
wishes " ; and he speaks of his crazy mother-in-law,
who gave them no end of trouble, as "the deranged
parent of the hapless, though lovely, EHza."

328 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
But it is Perdita, after all, Mary Robinson, writing
seriously enough, heaven knows! who carries this style
to the extreme which renders it entirely humorous.
Hers is an apology we begin to read with laughter,
but end, falteringly, close to tears; an amazing com
bination of the naive and artificial, strong in its revela
tion of personality, however restricted in the means of
expression. Notwithstanding Perdita's self-contempla
tion as a heroine of romance — a self-contemplation
which usually quite does away with candor — yet the
reader obtains an ineffaceable impression of sincerity,
of that deeper sincerity which is conveyed by true
seriousness. In all her tortuous affectations of style,
Mary Robinson yet paints herself with the touch of an
uncompromising realist; we see her as she Hved, gay,
pleasure-loving, romantic, affectionate.
"Every event of my life" (thus Perdita takes her
elegant pen in hand) "has been more or less marked
by the progressive evUs of a too acute sensibUity."
The lady in charge of her education "was mistress of
the French and Italian languages, was said to be a per
fect arithmetician and astronomer, and possessed the
art of painting on sUk to a degree of exquisite perfec
tion." The sequence of these accomplishments shows
the writer's own estimate of their importance; no false
literary pretensions ever cause Perdita to hide her
honest opinions. While stiU a chUd, she marries; there
foUows a rustic retirement combined from Rousseau,

HUMOR 329
Richardson, and Mrs. Radcliffe. It gives the inexpres
sibly delightful picture of the writer, clad "with
peculiar but simple elegance — in a light brown lustring,
with plain round cuffs," rocking a wUlow cradle under
the window hung with woodbine, — in sooth, a veritable
Romney. But, alas! this happiness is interrupted by
Mr. Robinson's "pecuniary derangements," which
cause a return to town, and to the stage. There his
attentions stray towards a certain female "who was
devoted," says Perdita, severely, "to a Hfe of unre
strained impropriety." She goes on to describe her
rival's dress: "Sattins, richly embroidered, were her
daUy habUiments," for Perdita loved dress, and at
every crisis in her life her costume is detailed. Against
this too-powerful charmer her own "nightgown of pale-
blue lustring with a chip hat," failed to win back the
recalcitrant Robinson, but it called to the wearer the
attention of the Prince of Wales.
Perdita's portrait shows a young woman, slight,
piquante, and plaintive. Her confession is seriously
intended: "These pages are the pages of truth una
dorned by romance, and unembeUished by the graces
of phraseology," she declares; and sometimes the truth,
touched with that "too acute sensibUity," produces
startling results. It takes away one's breath, for in
stance, when she is going to a ball, to read: "I was
at least some hours in decorating my person for this
new sphere of fascination . . . because my shape at

330 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
this time required some arrangement, owing to the
visible increase in my domestic solicitudes"! Yet this
mincing nicety of phrase is swept out in honest sorrow
when the baby dies; and it is with a deep, intense devo
tion she speaks of the surviving daughter, to whom she
clung in aU her illness and poverty.
This record breaks off just at the point of her capitu
lation to the Regent, one of the most pathetic and sig
nificant breaks in literature. She can find no real
excuse, and the romantic strain gives her no aid. She
was young and beautiful and an actress; her lover was
"George the Good, the Magnificent, the Great"; and
she is not artificial enough to convince herself. For she
is not artificial, however simpering her prose. Her
mother-feeling was warm and true; she had deHcate and
just perceptions; she was bedazzled and in love; she is
whoUy real. The picture of her in her youth and beauty
in her little day of triumph, and her long abandonment
of Ulness and misery, work on us as if she had existed
in the pages of Samuel Richardson rather than in life.
The poignant reality of great fiction is seldom attained
by the half-existence of most human beings.
"And this," our reader asks, with raised eyebrows,
"is this humor?" Perhaps not; yet the muse, as we
remember, holds the tragic touching the comic mask.

CHAPTER XVII
SELF-ESTEEM
The Memoirs of the late Mary Robinson, written by
Herself, belong to the apologetic type of autobiograph
ical writings. Discussion of the Apology, so-called,
would tend to lead us far from self-delineations in
general, since in the initial meaning of defense or
vindication many of the great apologies are not even
autobiographical in tone. In truth, the earlier among
them suffer for this very reason. No one reading the
defense of Socrates, or that of Giordano Bruno made
before the Inquisitorial Tribunal of Venice, but feels
they have lost in convincing power by their incomplete
subjectivity. They remain the defense of opinion, of
phUosophy. Socrates confines himself to exposition;
any personal references are most carefully made to his
actions only; he answers his accusers rather by counter-
opinion and a characteristic display of dialectics, than
by direct self-explanation, direct challenge to proof.
The majesty of his concluding prophecy is but the
accidental witness to his real indifference as to his fate.
Surely, had Socrates deigned to show the men of Athens
"he in himself as he really was," his reasons for the
beliefs they controverted, the evolutionary process by
which he had arrived at them, his mental progress to a

332 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
change of view, one cannot say he would have lived,
but one can say that sentence of death would have been
even more reluctantly passed upon him.
The examination of Bruno is more modern, his re
plies stick closer to the point; yet he, too, disdains all
appeal which might have been made by a clear self-
analysis, a candid and full self-explanation. The two
cases hold this in common, that both men are whoUy
sure of their own standpoint. They but answer, with a
legible contempt, the grossly ignorant and narrow
charges of a majority whom they have learned to
despise. Certainty, therefore, robs them of incentive to
J self-delineation, and so their apologies are kept to the
limits of the objective. If this be so, it must be that
there are two forms of Apologia: one written or spoken
entirely to convince outsiders; the other partiaUy, if not
wholly, to convince oneself. Often, besides stating his
position to a critical world, the apologist is anxious to
restate it to his own soul. In such an event he begins
tentatively, with a personal narrative, which serves
later to develop his credo, and on which substructure he
may erect his final beliefs. Such apologies as those of
Newman, of Al-Ghazzali, of Uriel d'Acosta, of Lorenzino
de' Medici, of Abelard, of Marshal Marmont, however
diverse, yet all show a conclusion firmer, more definite,
and written with more conviction than the commence
ment. Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua was suc
cessful in its (unconscious) primal object, aiding the

SELF-ESTEEM 333
writer to feel that the criticism against him was un
just and without foundation. Compared with his
brother Francis Newman's Phases of Faith, some of its
peculiarities will be found hereditary. In both cases,
creed ideas have entirely obliterated family and
friendly affections. In the bald, high-keyed story of
Lorenzino de' Medici, the reasons for his committing
murder, when written down, seem cogent enough: the
telling steadies him, the ending is tranquU. To the
peculiar state of mind revealed in Ab61ard's celebrated
letter, physical causes, no doubt, contribute; yet the
open mind may read that he is arguing himself into
conviction; and that all the later calm, patronizing
counsel to H61oise on theological points and the con
duct of her convent, is the outcome of his success.
The indictment of Marshal Marmont was of a type
which, beyond all others, a man of spirit finds hard to
bear: time-serving, ingratitude, disloyalty to the master
who had made him, were least among its articles. Mar-
mont's eight volumes are chiefly filled with historical
and political material illustrative of the Napoleonic
epoch; the self-analysis is placed where it may favorably
interpret certain events which had apparently con
demned him. In the process of writing his uneasiness
gives way to assurance. Uriel d'Acosta lashes himself
into a fury by dwelling upon his sufferings, and so
justifies to himself his somewhat rapid changes of
front in religious matters. Al-Ghazzali's treatise is

334 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
an apology only in the doctrinal sense; yet he quite
evidently upholds and confirms his change to siifiism by
retracing the evolutionary process of his ideas. Even in
slight, in trivial apologies, there is a simUar develop
ment from the desire of self-justification. Sir Walter
Scott, in his General Preface, is a Httle uneasy at the
various deceptions which had been necessary to pre
serve the secret of the "Great Unknown." He makes,
as it were, a clean breast of it, and at the ending he
feels better. The mimoires of Marie Mancini and of
the Margravine of Anspach, display, in Mrs. Ward's
delicate phrase, all the familiar emotions of femme
incomprise, who must tell herself, again and again, that
she is right, and the world unjust. In the latter case
the Margravine succeeds so weU that before the end
she is quite ready to assert that black is white.
One can but repeat again that the great apologies of
literature singularly faU to convince. To-day no jury
would condemn to death Socrates j^or Bruno, yet the
reader, acting as juror, feels with impatience that
neither Socrates nor Bruno made the best of his case.
The Apologia of Newman never satisfied his critics,
and was not regarded with enthusiasm by his partisans.
The truth that "qui s'excuse, s'accuse" is profoundly
felt at bottom to underlie a man's attempts at self-
justification, especiaUy since it must needs underlie his
manner of presenting them. The absence of aU apolo
getic trend in lives like Jerome Cardan's, or Herbert

SELF-ESTEEM 335
Spencer's, or George Sand's, or even Benvenuto Cel
lini's; their setting forth of the facts impersonally, has
added enormously to their weight and dignity without
dulling their sensitiveness or perception. They are as
quick and ready to set down their own wrongdoings as
any apologist; only they have more desire to paint a
truthful picture of an entire creature than to soothe
an irritated self-esteem. "I am not ignorant," we re
member Cardan's asserting, "that nature has created
me irascible and libertine; among my chief sins are
pride, pertinacity in contention, imprudence, and a
desire for revenge." These are the facts, but to pre
sent them does not jar the writer's self-esteem; and it
is such a jar which produces the apologetic trend in
narratives autobiographically planned. Its very essence
thus foredooms an apology to faU in its particular aim,
however it may succeed in other ways. The quantity
and quality of a writer's self-esteem is seen to be,
therefore, a very large factor, affecting both the char
acter of his work, the character of his success, and his
conception of both. This factor largely determines
whether his attitude shall be apologetic or non-apolo
getic in his self-presentation. The vanity or modesty
of the self-student, his own estimate of his qualities, of
his faUure or his success, may be profitably compared,
if only for the better understanding of his autobio
graphical intention, and for its execution.
Charles Darwin, in speaking of his success, declares

336 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
it due to his "moderate abilities — love of science —
unbounded patience in long reflecting over any sub
ject — industry in observing and collecting facts, a
fair share of invention as weU as of common-sense."
TroUope, in a similar summing-up, lays "claim to
whatever merit should be accorded me for persevering
diHgence in my profession." He dwells on the necessity
for the "habit of regarding his work as a normal con
dition of his life." John Stuart MUl asserts that he
possessed but one natural gift, a "disposition to
thoroughness," while he attributes a large share of his
ideas to his wife. Lack of self-confidence and the ac
cent of self-depreciation are frequently to be found in
minds of a higher order. Sometimes the true humUity
of religious feeling produces it; sometimes the love
and search for truth. Augustin tells us that he was
never a learned man; his deep humility on the subject
of his sinful nature is well known. Patrick calls his
own writings "drivel," and terms himself "the rudest
and least of all the faithful, and most contemptible
to very many. ... I blush to-day, and greatly fear
to expose my unskUfulness." Cardinal Bellarmin is
aware of his talent for the pulpit, but appears to be
very humble-minded about his other great talents.
David Hume allows himself only a keen ardor in
study; and there is surely a deep modesty in the pas
sage where George Sand speaks of "le manque d'^clat
de ma vie et de mon esprit," and characteristic pen-

SELF-ESTEEM 337
etration is shown in her self -estimate. "Je suis trfes
gaie," she concludes, cheerfully; "je dois avoir des gros
dfefauts; je suis comme tout le monde, je ne les vols pas."
Franklin might have echoed the words, for they are
equaUy true of his weU-balanced qualities. He dweUs
with most approbation on his own thrift and system
and, by way of summing-up, says: "I was free from
any wilful gross immorality and injustice ... I had
therefore a tolerable character "; — a very accurate
and moderate estimate. The impersonal account of
Gibbon's "naked and unblushing Truth" lends an air
of candor to his brief and modest review of his own
abilities. Although the serious sententiousness of Herbert
Spencer's style produces the impression of great self-
esteem, yet we find him making certain admissions
which are the result of real and deep modesty. One is
of carelessness, as when he says his knowledge of French
was gained "by scrambling through half-a-dozen easy
novels, content to gather the drift, and skipping where
I faUed to understand." This sort of admission is ex
tremely rare. Rousseau may analyze his sensuality;
Cardan may dUate on the depravity of his fondness
for gambling; but neither one would, for an instant,
permit it to be supposed that he shared the carelessness
or the inadequacy of the common world.
One of the most interesting things contained in the
fragmentary autobiography of the great Arabian phU-

338 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
osopher and physician, Avicenna, is his admission that
he faUed for so long to understand Aristotle's Meta
physics. Though he had read it forty times and knew it
by heart, he had said, "This bookis incomprehensible ";
untU finally a Httle treatise by El Farabi, picked up at
a street-stall, made it clear to him, much to his delight.
This is Avicenna's one admission of inadequacy, for in
other respects he allows himself no failures.
Ernest Renan, who speaks of "mon incapacity d'fetre
mfechant ou seulement de le paraitre," gives a minute
and most suggestive account of the curious character
which his scientific education buUt upon his decidedly
clerical temperament. His indecision, his ideaHsm, and
his tolerance were extreme — "tons mes defauts de
prfetre." But, what is more important to us, he avows
that, although in his writings he was of absolute sin
cerity, yet in conversation he failed of it. "Je dis k
chacun ce que je suppose devoir lui faire plaisir." This
is just the opposite of Cardan's great defect. Renan
thinks that he was not modest; that, though he Hved
austerely, " Je vis bien la vanitfe de cette vertu comme
de toutes les autres ... la nature ne tient du tout k
ce que l'homme soit chaste. . . . Je n'en persistai pas
moins, et je m'imposais les mceurs d'un pasteur protes-
tant." His great error Renan believes to have been his
coldness in friendship. A tendency to lying he frankly
avows, but claims to have eradicated and overcome it.
These pages in the Souvenirs might be taken for a

SELF-ESTEEM 339
text to show the clear light which such balanced self-
presentation may cast into our darker corners. The
same fundamental and modest self-understanding dis
tinguishes Marmontel, who appears on the surface
somewhat self-satisfied. In the account of his study to
remedy defects of memory, there is shown a full appre
ciation of his inadequacies. Jung Stilling describes his
many successful operations for cataract; and modestly
declares that he never performed it without "doubt
and trembling." B6ranger's naif humility is a part of
his most winning, sympathetic personality.
A man's admissions on the subject of his intellectual
achievement will be found to be the final criterion of
his modesty or his vanity. If their sincerity outweigh
the exultation caused by success, then his vanity is
not deep enough to be injurious, however it may overlie
the surface of his personality. Such an one is Goldoni,
self-admiring and self-pleased like a chUd, but never
losing hold of his real aims. Delight in one's success,
pleasure at the world's applause, together with a recol
lection of the stress of work to which it is owing, some
times gives' a false impression of fatuity. Macready,
the tragedian, shows this, and his Italian compeer,
Adelaide Ristori. Macready shows, in addition, a deep
religious feeling. Tommaso Salvini writes that he never
fully mastered his equipment, and that he committed
"involuntarily, lamentable and inartistic outbursts."
Study of these examples may show that a certain

340 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
standard is established by which to measure the depth
"and extent of an autobiographer's self-esteem. When
we find a man satisfied with his work because of its
effect, sure he has genius because he has success, sure
his labors have been conscientious and thorough be
cause the public is impressed, then we have intrinsic
vanity. Such is the fatuous vanity of Chateaubriand,
already mentioned; of Richard Cumberland, whose
tiresome plays have not survived their day; of the ec
centric Baron Holberg, of Trenck, of Marie Bashkirtsev,
of Arminius Vamb^ry, and of Hans Andersen. It is not
to be mistaken for the much less serious manifestation
seen in spontaneous natures whose high spirits and
vitality give them frank delight in their own powers.
Baron Marbot and Alexandre Dumas exemplified this
simple and innate joyousness. To such natures there
is no line drawn between work and play. It is as dif
ferent from the hypersensitive egotism of a Rousseau
as light from darkness. Yet a true understanding of
Rousseau at least makes plain that this undue self-
consciousness had its root in an excess of diffidence and
self-distrust. The Confessions form an elaborate sur
vey of the unhealthy conditions produced by poverty
and talent. The humiliation of his boyhood and youth,
the perpetual mortification of that keenly sensitive
fibre, the absence of healthy self-confidence, of healthy,
equal friendships, of free and encouraging surroundings,
bred so violent a reaction that only in self-contempla-

SELF-ESTEEM 341
tion, in self-admiration, in self-created faith, could this
irritable nature be at aU calmed and soothed. Such a
temperament is forced to create a protective tissue for
its own morbid nerves. If one is poor, distressed, sen
sitive to beauty, and overcharged, perpetually in one
sort of servitude or another, one's self-esteem must
be self-fed. And no detractor of Rousseau's errors of
ethics and taste is more severe to them than he is him
self. With remorseful severity he speaks of that dis
posal of his children to the Enfants Trouvis, which is
the chief blot upon his life, because its one deliberately
bad action. The egotism, the vanity of Rousseau is
extraordinarUy complex, and has never been taken into
account in the critical estimates of his nature. His work
is as powerful and penetrating in its self-analysis as
it is weak and unjust in its estimate of others. Take his
account of Madame de Warens: it is incredible, absurd,
contradictory; evidently he has omitted some primal
spring of action. No "cold, chaste" woman makes
paramours out of her servants for intellectual reasons!
Either Jean Jacques is simple and easUy imposed upon,
or else he is indulging his fancy. In place of saying:
"Men I know," he should have said: "Myself I know,
but nothing of other men." In every paragraph
Rousseau shows that he has less intellectual than
imaginative power, less inteUectual than emotional
genius. He is incapable of verbal memory, never " con
ceived" he says, but "felt"; his capacity for study.

342 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
and for the logical development of thought, was sHght.
But he was able to watch and to cast into words the
play of Hfe upon his vibrating, hypersensitive nerves,
as few others have been able to do; and the value
of the Confessions deepens with the advance of
pyschology. Frequently one may notice in an autobiographer one
beloved vanity standing out from a mass of careful
sincerities. Petrarch's scattered fragments of autobi
ography, placed together in order (in A. d'Ancona's
Raccolta), show him to have been possessed of vanities
unusually complex. In each breath where he gives
himself praise, he then quaHfies that praise with some
humility. If his "familiarity was desired by great per
sons" and he grew vain therefrom, he hastens to assure
you that there is no reason for such vanity. He ap
pears to have had a restless and evanescent egoism,
which touched only in passing the real emotional and
intellectual force of the man.
Vidocq is proud of his style, which he declares a
French chanceUor read with pleasure. GourvUle dis
plays a conviction of his own great political importance;
believes that he swayed the movements of France. No
one but GourvUle, however, thinks so. A like vanity is
seen in De Blowitz. To Mademoiselle de Montpensier her
own susceptibiHty to kindly feeling seemed very unusual
"parmi les grands"; and when her father died, and she
burst into tears, she comments: "J'ai le ccsur bon."

SELF-ESTEEM 343
Monluc is proud of his ferocity; Gozzi of his devotion
to the purity of the ItaHan language; Madame Roland
of nursing her baby, and of her generally scientific
motherhood; Heinrich Heine of his irony and his suc
cess with women. Agrippa d'Aubignfe greatly admired
his own faculty in debate; on one occasion his discus
sion with the Bishop of Evreux lasted for five hours,
and is thus described: "Le susdit prfelat s'efforQa de
resoudre les difficult6s que je lui proposals par de grands
discours feblouissans; ce que m'engagea k lui faire une
demonstration en forme, dont les deux premiferes pro
positions fetoient tirfees en termes formels de ses propres
arguments. Cette contrebatterie mit mon antagoniste
dans un tel embarras que les gouttes d'eau tomboient
de son visage sur un Chrisostome manuscrit qu'il
tenoit k la main."
Cardan seems vainer of his rapidity in acquiring
Greek, and of his dreams, than of all his medical and
mathematical discoveries. Cellini is as vain of his sword-
play as Alfieri of his horsemanship, or Bussy of his
facility in composing agreeable little verses. Miss
Frances Power Cobbe owns to a vanity in her com
petent housekeeping, much as Catherine II admires
her own really precocious self-restraint and intellectual
understanding of others which alone preserved her life
during the first years of her marriage. Richard Cum
berland is hugely vain of his notable acquaintance;
Psalmanazar of his talent for deception; Sir Egerton

344 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Brydges of his aristocratic exclusiveness; WiUiam Henry
Ireland of his songs in the Shakespearean manner; Alex
andre Dumas of his ability as a cook. A self-educated
person like Lackington, the bookseUer, is naturally
vainer of his cultivation and citations, than of his in
nate qualities of energy and industry. An example of
complete vanity is given in the singular memoirs of the
Margravine of Anspach. This lady's conduct is frankly
that of a person without dignity or morals. Separated
from her husband, she lives for years as the Margrave's
muitresse en titre, and when she finally marries him, is
amazed by the refusal of her daughters to see her, and of
EngHsh societj'- to receive her. In the passages of his
Apology, Cibber struts to and fro, like a bantam cock;
yet there are moments of modest candor which more
than redeem the little man.
These instances are sufficient to demonstrate the
capriciousness of vanities in people of weight. Touches
of nature, too, they may bring near to us some of the
more remote among our mimoiristes, and give us that
friendly insight which is indispensable to our better
understanding. But for a full aid and comprehension
in the matter of intellectual growth it is not to these
slight sketches we turn, but to the classic self-studies.
He who wishes to see what self-education and self-
control may accomplish, opens Alfieri; who wishes to
observe the constitution and working of the mind
called scientific, has before him Herbert Spencer's two

SELF-ESTEEM 345
volumes. Of whatever lacunce we may justly accuse
George Sand, yet the Histoire de ma Vie remains to us
the most complete, striking, and finished presentation
of the development and progress of what we term the
creative imagination. It is true that the four volumes
contain so much besides, that it is not always easy to
disengage the vital matter from the trivial. At times,
also, the novelist's touch may be discerned, to the con^
fusion of the facts; but this is not where the self -study
is in question. The data are all given the reader, if
he has but patience to sift them and to reject what
is purely rhetorical and literary. What remains is of
such value that one is at once reminded of M. Alfred
FouU16e's admirable generalizations on the French
mind: "Nous raisonnons plus que nous n'imaginons, et
ce que nous imaginons le mieux, ce n'est pas le monde
extferieur, c'est le monde interne des sentiments et sur-
tout des pens^es." In depicting this internal world of
sentiment and thought George Sand is at her very best,
and here she bequeaths matter to all time. Her he
redity receives its full attention; she devotes an entire
volume to her parents. The child of an aristocratic
Napoleonic soldier, and of his mistress, — a woman of
more than doubtful virtue and of the lowest antece
dents, — she inherited a high degree of temperament,
imagination, and vitality. Educated by her father's
mother, the strongest efforts were made to overcome
her mother's strain in her, to suppress what was lawless,

346 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
and to develop qualities of reason and of self-restraint.
They apparently succeeded; at least untU she was a
grown woman she was sensible, quiet, maltresse de
minage, a country chatelaine; and she then made a
marriage which she expressly states was one both of
reason and of affection. Yet when, later, she finally left
her husband — an amicable break at first — to seek
further education and experience in Paris, all this veneer
and artificial restraint rubs off; she becomes her mother's
chUd, adventurous, lawless, Bohemian, with the ener
gies and insensitivenesses of the peasant type. This
is one of the strongest cases extant showing the power
of heredity over education. Imitation played no part
in it; she is given to the grandmother at three years
old; she sees her mother little, and only on short visits.
UntU she is well into her twenties, she sees and hears
little that is not gentle, refined, conventional, austere.
By the rigid upbringing of the old school, her heady
temperament was schooled and controUed. Yet the
relapse into the life of another class, when it came, was
complete, nor is there a suggestion that she had sensi
bilities to be trouble'd or jarred. All the sentences in
the Hfe which deal with her mental and ethical quah
ties, are clear and comprehensive. She was a late-
developing, dreamy girl, fond of music and of revery.
Exceedingly healthy and spirited, she yet was not
pretty, having only "un instant de fralcheur et jamais
de beaute." She was always wholly feminine, despite

SELF-ESTEEM 347
later appearances; high-strung, excitable, loving beauty,
color, luxury, jewels, and having all the tender piety
of the naturally ardent young woman. Her talent from
the first lay in observation of people and things. Of
deep interest is her account of her first imaginative
attempts. These took the form of improvisations, for
she wrote late. She invented a chUdish religion, a god
named by her Corambi, and even a ritual; she built an
altar, before which she worshiped. Corambi was a
gentle and beneficent woodland deity, the imaginative
offspring of classic myths; and this part of the chUd's
growth links her to the larger growth of equally child
ish, savage peoples. But she was not only a dreamer,
she had active, practical ways; much frugal blood ran
in her veins; as mother, as chatelaine, as business
woman, she appeared competent and decided. Through
aU her life she owned a robust constitution; her chU
dren were borne with little pain; she hardly seems to
know the meaning of fatigue. When she once begins to
write, the pen is in her hand daUy, hourly, incessantly.
On the entire subject of her relations with men after
her freedom, she is, as has already been remarked,
nebulous, evasive, and literary. But to atone, there
are those marvelous passages clothed in Hving, limpid
style, in which her intellectual shifts and positions are
laid bare to us; her religious development, her reading,
her love of nature, her gayety, the possession of her
imagination by a series of free, graceful, romantic,

348 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
high-colored figures — like some never-ending classic
frieze. Surely, it is much to have this, even if we have
not aU; much to have a sketch of George Sand's head,
even if we cannot possess a fuU-length portrait. The
book is more worthy to be called Truth and Poetry than
Goethe's; we are tempted to cry out: "Would that
Goethe had given us as much!"
In the light of the Histoire de ma Vie, which might
as truly have been called Histoire de mon Imagination,
what has one to learn from simUar self-expressions by
other learned women? There are points of Hkeness in
Madame de Genlis, who had the same passion for
long, dreamy, imaginary dialogues. Mademoiselle de
Chastenay reminds one forcibly of an English "blue";
she is as seriously and intelligently unimaginative as
Harriet Martineau or Miss Cobbe herself. A fine exalted
strain, on the contrary, runs through the deHcate self-
portraiture of Sonia Kovalevsky, whose mathematical
abUity never assisted her to intellectual serenity. In
tellectual serenity, however, distinguishes such women
as Madame de Staal-Delaunay in the midst of her gall
ing servitude, as Madame Roland quietly facing death
as she writes in her prison, as Catherine II beginning
her curious confession with a characteristic syUogism to
prove that her rise to power was the plain result of her
qualities of character. Lack of personal morality does
not seem to affect her intellectual morahty — a state of
things commoner by far with men than with women.

SELF-ESTEEM 349
Tacitus, Montesquieu, Plutarch, Cicero, were her favor
ite reading; and in these memoirs it is possible to
observe the formation of her extraordinarily lucid and
positive mentality. When there is added to this serious
study a remarkable prudence, and a steady observa
tion of the life and characters about her, one is hardly
surprised at the position maintained by such a girl at
seventeen. Intellect, as we see here, not only guides but creates a
career. So it does with other women. No more forcible
example could be cited of the power of intellectual
development to make a life, than the case of Harriet
Martineau. A querulous, deaf, ailing girl, barred from
the natural life of her sex and age — this she was at the
outset. And yet these two volumes form an inspiring
study of vigor, usefulness, and optimism. The book is
not delightful, but it is strong; a noble task, nobly
executed. Harriet Martineau was one of those nervous,
ill-nourished, and deaf chUdren, who to-day would be the
subject of special care. Instead of special care, she re
ceived special neglect; and was obliged to struggle along
under the burdens of nervous dyspepsia and increasing
deafness, until such symptoms became chronic. Her
life, she declares, was full of fear; she longed to end it;
and the sense of injury with which a maturer knowledge
caused her to regard her parents' indifference, lends the
account a tinge of bitterness. She knows, as we know,
that she might have been greatly helped, if not cured.

350 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Study did not early appeal to her, because of ill-health;
but she was always courageous and methodical. Her
earliest passion, she believes, was a love of money;
she was affectionate and extremely jealous. The first
healthy influence in her life is her freethought: "I
found myself, with the last link of my chain snapped —
a free rover on the broad, bright, breezy common of
the universe." Once rid of the fataUstic view of her
infirmity as a chastisement of God, she sets systemati
cally and sensibly to work to understand and ameliorate
it where possible; and, under "the deep-felt sense of
progress and expansion," becomes cheerful and calm.
Her enthusiasm for work is stimulating; her enjoyment
in her translation of Comte is absolute. Long, tranquU,
successful years of intellectual occupation are described;
it hardly matters that her books are so Httle read to-day,
when we know of the character they helped to build.
She received definite sentence of death from her physi
cians. "I never passed," she comments, "a more tran
quil and easy night"; and in this spirit she sits down
to a full and conclusive self-analysis. No doubt such
tranquUlity helped to produce the respite which fol
lowed, for she lived on for twenty-one quiet and happy
years. Setting her affairs in order, she enjoyed what
she calls her "holiday"; and she ends with these words:
"The world as it is, is growing somewhat dim before
my eyes; but the world as it is to be looks brighter
every day." Her religious tone towards the conclusion

SELF-ESTEEM 351
of her Hfe has an accent by which one is reminded
of the comment made by Renan on Marcus Aurelius,
that his religion was simply that " qui rfesulte du simple
fait d'un haute conscience morale placfee en face de
I'univers."

CHAPTER XVIII
WORK AND AIMS
When a serious mind, stirred by the autobiographical
impulse and guided by the autobiographical intention,
turns to survey the field of investigation, it will observe
three broad divisions of the subject. " As I stand above
to look down upon myself," thus the thought may run,
"I scan a country, various indeed, and full of natural
whims and wonders; but capable of thorough survey if
roughly blocked into three main divisions. My religious
development, my emotional development, and my in
tellectual development, if properly proportioned and
related, will give the main facts about me which it is
necessary to know. To study these things in order,
therefore, I will set myself, even if the rest must go. For
when I have made plain my attitude toward religion,
my emotional capacity and standards, my inteUectual
equipment and methods, surely it wUl not be difficult
to determine the shape and color, as it were, of my
personality." This plan of the ideal self-student covers, in truth,
all that is of undisputed value to the reader. There re
main details of merely curious interest — the rococo
of autobiography. The effect of the season and the
weather upon Alfieri, his curious attacks of avarice

WORK AND AIMS 353
and generosity; Baron Holberg's remark that his en
thusiasm for reform "invariably gave way to a few
laxative piUs"; Dumas' appetite; Baron Frenilly's
boyish visit to Voltaire; Mrs. Eliza Fletcher's dislike
of the sea, which she never willingly beheld, — trifles
like these do help to make the person seem real and
near. So does all that matter which is in a memoir yet
not of it, those incidents, stories, and personalities
which indirectly only concern the autobiographer. And
who could forget them? That extraordinary Hare
family, for example, as much the victim of omen and
superstition in 1850 as Cardan himself in 1550. Mrs.
Hare presents her child to a cousin with the remark:
"Here is the baby, and if you should know any one
who wants a child, please remember that we have
others"! So we remember George Sand's mother;
Thomas Day, as described by Richard Edgeworth;
Colonel Meadows Taylor's Kiplingesque stories of
Hindustan; and Madame Blavatsky, as painted by
her devout disciple, Annie Besant. One is tempted to
linger before this cabinet of curiosities, but after all,
our chief affair in this chapter is with ambition and
with work. To examine some considerable minds and
methods seems in order, since we have already beheld
the owners of them upon other business. And no other
business, it may be suggested in passing, is quite so
important, since such examination leads inevitably in
the direction of the large question of genius in its rela-

354 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
tion to the normal Hfe. Whether the adjective be used
in the superb sense of George Sand's ringing sentence:
"Man's ideal life is his normal Hfe as he shaU one day
come to know it," or rather in the customary sense of
the mean, becomes just here immaterial, since we aim
at comparative suggestion and comment rather than
at conclusive definition. No intellect, it should be
borne in mind, can explain itself satisfactorily in cita
tions for such a book as this, which can catch only the
more salient aspects of its philosophy, direction, and
modus operandi.
And here the field is so very wide, the number of
examples from which to quote so large, the years
covered by them so many, that we are forced to retrace
our steps a Httle, and go over a part of the same route
which we traveled in Chapters X and XI. The inteUec
tual Hfe of the world took its rise in the East; no
comparative study of intellectual progress and attitude
can be convincing which does not take account, first
of all, of the Oriental mind and the Oriental learning;
and clearly postulate the Oriental standpoint. It is for
this reason that our scattered cases of Eastern self-
study have waited until this chapter was reached to
be considered en bloc. These examples are few, and
scattered chronologically as well as geographically.
For his part, Renan ' appears to think it due to the
fanaticism of Islam, that the vast body of Arabic cul-
' E. Renan, Preface to "Averrofes. "

WORK AND AIMS 355
ture and phUosophy "was suppressed, as it were, al
most instantly, without leaving a trace." Records of
important persons, therefore, are fewer in number and
less influential than those in occidental literatures.
Carra de Vaux, in mentioning Avicenna's autobiogra
phical fragment, observes that it was almost without
parallel in Arabic Hterature. And it is especially signifi
cant that it has not as yet been wholly translated.
Among the facts given by Avicenna are his extreme
precocity, his passion for study, and his opinion
(Hke Cardan) that in medicine, experience counted for
more than rules. His candor on the subject of his
difficulty in grasping Aristotle, has alreadybeen noticed.
He shares in common with the other cases of Eastern
self-study, a certain intellectual outlook, and standard.
Such cases must be taken distinctly as individual and
as sporadic, though conforming to the general prin
ciples governing autobiography.
The Emperor Timur especially declares that he was
not a cultivated man. His conviction of the divine
right of kings was deep and unshakeable, but it never
excused, in his opinion, any mental idleness. His quick
ness in retort and his excellent verbal memory, are
considered by him part of his equipment as a sovereign.
His love of study was developed early, and increased
by his high degree of energy and self-confidence. The
Baber-Nama, or journal of the Emperor Baber, his
descendant, is more fragmentary than the MulfAsat-

856 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Timtlry. Baber gives his decrees and decisions, his
study and estimate of his own resources, and those of
neighboring countries. Poetry was his chief diversion,
and he quotes many of his occasional verses. Less ar
rogant, less sure than Timur, he is more tolerant and
more cultured. His example was in tum followed by his
descendant Jahanghir, but the result gives us nothing.
It seems strange to us to find the Soudanese his
torian Abderrahman-Sadi-el-Timbucti, dweUing on the
need for culture and for poetry. The same love and
heed breathes through the pages of Ib'n Khaldoun's
autobiography. His studies are the only personal data
furnished by this learned man. In his search for truth,
the philosopher Al-Ghazzali shows a man whose un
certainties of temperament were graduaUy strengthened
and steadied by the operation of his reason. "The thirst
of knowing was filtered into me in the flower of my
youth . . . There is no philosophy which I have not
sounded; the search for truth is the end which I pur
sue." His constructive power of inteUect carries him
through a period of general doubt and despair, until
his reason gains complete control; and he goes into
retirement for purposes of meditation, tolerant, well-
balanced and serene. The essential spirit here is of
soundness and vigor, there is no fretful hair-splitting,
no waste of energy. The case of AH Hazin is fuUer and
more satisfying still, contained in one of the most illum
inating documents which have come down to us.

WORK AND AIMS 357
The Sheikh Muhammed Ali inherited his love of
letters from his father, of whom he draws a charming
picture. In a library of over eight thousand rolls, most
of them personally copied by this learned father, AU
passed his youth. At four years old he had " an extra
ordinary inclination to study." When eight years old he
records : " From poetry my well-adjusted mind received
great delight, and I was much given to compose verses."
(These ages, we must not forget, to the earlier maturing
Oriental, represent a stage of development which with
us would be reached, respectively, at eight and at six
teen.) Soon he turns in the direction of phUosophy and
controversy, and plans a course of study which shows
the utmost catholicity of mind. Personally, Ali is
quietly optimistic. His investigations show him "a
diversity of sublime truths." "Bestowing abundant
dUigence on this matter, I obtained the peace of mind
which my means afforded." It is hard to communicate
to the reader, secondhand, the inspiring effect of the
Persian's attitude, so free from carping and complain
ing, so smiling towards his world. Physically, AH was
always fragile; and his studious ardor finally induced
a sort of prostration. "In this strange condition the
powers of my mind fell dormant; and the page of my
memory becoming void of every particle of knowledge,
presented a perfect blank. In this state I continued
a whole year, at the end of which period my health
returned." Treating this condition in a manner we now

358 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
believe most likely to cure it, All's family placed him to
lie out-of-doors and be left absolutely alone. On his
recovery, however, he becomes exceedingly anxious to
retire wholly from the world; but his affection for his
parents proves an obstacle to this plan. Ali is not
only poet and savant, he is a naif human creature.
He never marries, because "celibacy was more suitable
to my tranquillity and freedom." But he is very much
in love at one time, when his poetical bent receives
especial encouragement; odes and couplets in choice
Persian arise from his " unsettled heart." Later in life,
financial losses deeply vex him. "My inclination is to
confer benefits and spread gifts among the whole human
race," he "writes; "with such a propensity, to live empty-
handed is the most vexatious and disagreeable of
all things." And he truly thinks it one of the worst of
misfortunes, "to have the soul of the high-minded, and
no power." In his quiet way he is somewhat vain,
though, like Cardan, he disHkes the nervous wear and
tear of visits and adulation. But he is neither a cynic
nor a stoic; rather an observer and a philosopher.
Poetry, treatises, critiques, and compilations, came
steadily from his pen during health; and this biography
is evidently intended as their supplement. He refuses
to make it political, refuses to berate the turpitude of
a government which exiled him to Delhi. His last words
are: "With the firm foot of patience and toleration I
have measured three and fifty stations of the uneven

WORK AND AIMS 359
road of life. . . . Now, weak and helpless, I sit listen
ing for the note of departure." This seems in very
truth a life mounted, in that unforgettable phrase,
upon the "edita doctrina sapientum templa serena."
As we read, some wide prospect of brown and purple
hills, clouds "shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind,"
sunlight falling upon the white temple on a distant slope,
opens before us, and there this old man sits smiling.
Minor Arabic mimoiristes supplement the attitudes of
these four. The author of the Tarik 'i Soudan, as we
have seen, is merely an historian, writing in the first
person, and with the verbosity and amplitude of simpler
times. With simUar amplitude and verve, Ousama gives
us a picture of the Prankish crusader as he seemed to the
Syrian Emir — a barbarian with neither intellect, sen
sitiveness, nor honor. The personal part of Ousama's
autobiography is missing. The more modern case of
Lutfullah has reached us really through the factitious
interest inspired by the writer's sympathy with the
conquering English, a sympathy very unusual in a
Mahometan and a Munshi. The volume has slight
importance. Between the two great Arabian sages the comparison,
as we have seen already, has been fruitful in revealing
their prevailing attitude toward the intellectual life.
The Sheikh, AH Hazin, has received little consideration
from the critics after this manner; but Al-GhazzaH, by
reason of the weight of his body of phUosophy, has not

360 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
been without his students and commentators from early
days to the present. Similarity of his treatise, Le Pri
servatif de I'Erreur,'^ to Newman's Apologia, has been
suggested, although the weight here Hes with the Ara
bian; but more suggestive still, as Lewes ^ points out,
is a comparison of its method and results with those
of Descartes. Here both pursue the search for truth,
the interrogation of dogma, and the construction of a
fresh and novel method to reach these ends. In each
case the impulse is intellectual rather than reHgious,
in each case attainment comes after the first fretful
energy is abated. Descartes' Discours de la Mithode
"pour bien conduire sa Raison is not a complete auto
biography, although its study of intellectual develop
ment is planned in autobiographical form. Descartes,
at twenty-three, a soldier in a German camp, becomes
convinced of the illusory and unsatisfactory results
of the philosophy of the schools. He had, he says, a
love of letters, a particular enjoyment of languages and
mathematics, but felt, as he puts it, that the " ancient
moralists lead nowhere."
His attitude was conventional: "I revered theology
and aspired to reach heaven; but I did not presume to
subject revealed truths to the impotency of my reason."
This belief — that the investigation of so-called in
spired truths demanded an especial help from heaven —
' Translation of Barbier de Meynard.
' " Biographical History of Philosophy."

WORK AND AIMS 361
turned Descartes away from phUosophy, and he writes:
"Thus I gave up letters and resolved to seek no other
science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great
book of the world — to make myself an object of study,
and to employ all the powers of my mind in choosing
the paths I ought to follow." His retirement into seclu
sion is followed by the invention of a method which
Descartes thought would lead to great truths by direct
chains of simple reasoning; of which he proceeded to
make immediate use in his Meditations on the First
Philosophy. Descartes' words have an especial signifi
cance for us by reason of his avowed belief in self-
study, his following out of Cardan's dictum, and also
his failure to grasp the significant fact in the achieve
ment of the Italian, namely, the iaiductive method.
Whereas Cardan, reviewing under a careful classifica
tion masses of physical and mental data, furnishes us
with all his material for inductive conclusions, Des
cartes undertakes his self-investigation in a manner
completely a priori. But we have strayed for an in
stant from the main comparison. The case of Descartes,
and the two Arabians, aids us in forming a clear con
ception of the difference between the Eastern and the
Western philosophical attitude. The primary object of
Descartes is to invent a method of reasoning by which
phUosophy of the schools may be simplified and clarified
to meet the needs of the logician. On the contrary, it
would seem that the Eastern mind is chiefly charac-

362 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
terized by its greater contentment with the purely
abstract. Neither AH Hazin nor Al-GhazzaH expresses
the slightest desire to simpHfy existing systems of
thought, or to bring the ideas which he pursues
within the limits of concrete terms. To their imagina
tions, the first token of a man's inteUectual power is his
ability to remain without restlessness in the realm of
pure metaphysics. The Western mind, on the contrary,
may be equaUy powerful in its grasp of the abstract;
but the sequence of philosophers and phUosophies in
Europe is sufficient to show that it has never rested
wholly satisfied in this realm. The dicta of each new
philosophy, the claim and ambition of each new philoso
pher, has been first of all to move from abstract to con
crete, to clarify, to simplify, to use what has been
thought. Dissatisfaction with metaphysics has led West
ern thought through phUosophy to science. What re
turns there may have been made upon pure abstractions,
have been for the especial purpose of clearing the
ground for the fresh advance of classified knowledge.
The Oriental thinker has felt no such impulse; he
remains at home in the realm of the purely abstract.
He has undergone no such development, he has made
no such advance, as the development and advance of
Western thought from philosophical doctrines to scien
tific doctrines. One often hears the terms the " Eastern
wisdom " the " Oriental phUosophy," and it is at
least interesting, if not useful, to pause for a moment

WORK AND AIMS 363
and consider what main difference is impHed in these
adjectives. Most of us will be found to mean just that
contrast which Hes between Descartes and Hume on the
one hand, and AH Hazin and Al-GhazzaH on the other :
namely, the mind dissatisfied, or the mind satisfied, to
move in a sphere of pure metaphysics.
Men Uke Al-GhazzaH and AH Hazin possessed all the
advantage to their development of an early, a definite,
and an important aim. What an advantage this may
be, is seen more clearly when it is contrasted with the
vain chase for an object which has retarded, and even
wasted, so many rich energies.
The self-education of Alfieri was accomplished only
at immense loss of time and vitality, for the lack of a
clear aim. Gibbon starts half-a-dozen separate tasks
before he is gripped by the inspiration of the Decline
and Fall. Goethe's observation: "I had a mind to pro
duce something extraordinary, but in what it was to
consist was not clear," records a very frequent prepos
session of youth, though not usually justified by the
production of a Faust. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, the
essayist, for years pursued the career of a painter; and
the didactic writer, Samuel Smiles, thrice changed
his occupation before settling down to literature.
BSranger, whose songs appear beyond dispute the
outcome of a direct and definite lyrical impulse, never
wrote a line untU after a banking career, during which,
and at the age of twenty, he had made over forty

364 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
thousand doUars. John Gait aU his Hfe regrets his suc
cess as a novelist, his failure in business. Sonia Kova
levsky began by writing fiction, and indeed never
reUnquished her ambition to be a noveHst, even when
her success in mathematics became assured. To Rous
seau, his musical composition played a large part in
his ambitions untU he was a middle-aged man. Burns
says: "the great misfortune of my Hfe was never to
have an aim."
Those persons are too many to quote, whose careers,
whose talents, whose ambitions, have been whoUy
shifted and altered by some religious crisis. With
certain natures it would seem as though their natural
forces lay awhUe dormant, awaiting a touch which
should turn them into energy. Thus a lack of definite
aim in youth means little, provided we are sure of the
storage of power.
Yet there is witness after witness upon the other
side. Never was there an instant in Haydon's boyhood
when he did not intend to be a painter; nor in Cellini's,
a sculptor; nor in Giovanni Duprfe's, an artist. Goldoni
entered at once and firmly into fuU possession of his
powers; dramatic composition whoUy satisfied and occu
pied his mind. The later EngHsh scientific men — Darwin,
Huxley, Bain, Spencer — appear to have had clear-cut
scientific aims almost from boyhood, although such an
aim sometimes shifted in its particular form. Cardan
and StUling had similar experiences as struggling physi-

WORK AND AIMS 365
cians; after their first successful cures each one special
ized. The early bent of some natures is remarkable.
Cardinal Bellarmin preached at five or six on Jesus'
suffering, and delivered his first public sermon at fifteen.
Al-Ghazzali at nineteen, Avicenna at sixteen, Ali
Hazin at twenty, Descartes at twenty-three, have been
cited already as developed phUosophers. At fourteen,
Solomon Maimon was a full rabbi; Coleridge, a meta
physician; Sir Thomas Bodley, a graduate in Hebrew,
Divinity, and Greek. At twenty-one, the last named
dehvered a Greek lecture. Both Catherine II of Russia
and her friend the Princess Daschkaw plunged deep
into historical and phUosophical reading at sixteen.
The Princess before fifteen had been influenced by Vol
taire, Montesquieu, and Helvetius; and both of these
women retained through life an ardor for such studies.
Lord Brougham, who, although he speaks modestly
at eighty-three of his "enfeebled intellect and faUing
memory," yet undertakes a book in three volumes
which shows little trace of failure, must have had an
unusuaUy long span of intellectual powers. At sixteen,
he mastered the Binomial Theorem by induction, and
read works on pure mathematics with pleasure.
Pierre Abelard, Herbert of Cherbury, and P. D. Huet
were a trio of learned boys, while that curious person,
Arnunius Vamb&y, was at sixteen a wandering gypsy
who could speak six or seven languages. Beside this
achievement, J. P. Richter's familiarity at nine years

366 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
of age with Latin and Greek seems slight. And we are
less surprised that a small boy named Charles Babbage
devoured books on algebra at night, and in secret.
Even if the religious vocation be considered as a
thing apart from common aims and ambitions, it wiU
be found to follow the same lines. There are as many
examples of its early and definite manifestation as
there are of its sudden appearance after conversion.
If the reader will turn back to the section dealing with
the religious confession, he will find that an early de
veloped piety is almost always mentioned, notwith
standing later lapses, reactions, and backslidings, which
occur before the final conversion is reached. The Httle
Quakers almost without an exception were serious and
devout children, although many of them later feU away.
It is rare that we find a religious enthusiast or reformer
who does not show symptoms of the force at work in
him at the earliest possible age. It is rarer stUl to find
such a religious enthusiast and reformer with the usual
childish attitude of healthy indifference toward the
subject of his soul's salvation. That element of moral
education which is used by most parents and guardians
in a manner wholly empirical, awaiting the chUd's ma
turity until its provisions be really understood, has
now and again in the world's history reached, not care
less ears and groping, ill-developed instincts, but a fuUy
grown and highly sensitive perception, mature, active,
constructive, already a giant. Thus Patrick, a boy

WORK AND AIMS 367
tending cattle in the fields, heard and answered the call
to convert the heathen. Thus Bunyan, Fox, Guibert,
Robert Blair, Henry AlUne, Peter Cartwright, aU were
preoccupied with religious matters during their early
childhood. Madame Guyon, at four, loved church and
convent; we know how Teresa, at seven, played at
martyrdom; and how SaHmbene, a boy of twelve,
entered the Franciscan order.
Augustin's peculiar tenets on original sin, and his
disproportioned humility in describing his unconverted
self, leave us no data on his childish attitude. But even
in his sinful infancy he was occupied with his state, and,
when ill, asked for baptism. The child Ernest Renan,
the child Edmund Gosse, had acquired from their imme
diate surroundings a very pious hue of mind, which
later changed its tint. Giordano Bruno graduated at
fourteen in the humanities, logic, and dialectics; at
fifteen he took the habit of a Dominican.
Leaving the religious type, we observe similar de
velopments in John Flamsteed, Erasmus, and Edgar
Quinet. Coleridge writes: "At a very premature age,
even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself
in metaphysics and in theological controversy. Nothing
else pleased me. History and particular facts lost all
interest in my mind. Poetry itself — yea, novels and
romances — became insipid to me." This is a very
unusual case, in direct contrast with general experience.
An early manifestation of the trend of a man's mind

368 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
is seen to be the rule rather than the exception;
but we must not forget the exception. De Thou,
Harriet Martineau, Heine, Leigh Hunt, Mark Pattison,
Tolstoi, Georg Brandes, showed few signs of any par
ticular predilections, developing slowly in all intellectual
ways. The last did not care for any poetry untU after
twenty, which seems as old for poetry as Coleridge at
fourteen seems young for metaphysics. Without a
single exception, the soldier-autobiographers : Monluc,
SuUy, Timur, Marbot, Marmont, Lejeune, Lord Roberts,
Lord Wolseley, Bassompierre, Trenck, Meadows Taylor,
showed an early turn for mUitary affairs; and the same
turn for the drama may be read in the actor mimoir
istes, from Clairon, Colley Cibber, and Macready, to
Salvini, Ristori, Bernhardt, Mademoiselle Georges, and
EUen Terry.
Surely it is true that nothing is more suggestive than
to observe the diversity of operation in that force we
call talent. The comparison of its manner and effect,
as noticed in these records, acts as a perpetual corrective
to sympathy, and aid to perception. Intellectual under
standing of the gifted human being has been woefully
and proverbially inadequate, because each one has stood
by himself in the eyes of his amazed or outraged entour
age. Had it been possible to compare the case and
symptoms of this genius, with another similar genius,
both would have been stimulated and encouraged. We
aU know what it means to hear that the healthy

WORK AND AIMS 369
Mr. Jones had precisely our dyspepsia and sleeplessness
last year; or, to use another instance, that Mr. Jones's
son — that successful financier — was violently poetical,
like our son, in his twentieth year.
The time is by no means wasted, therefore, which is
spent in considering the aims, vague or definite, and the
equipment, method, manner, and attitude toward work,
set forth by the conscientious self-presentation. No
help in the universal scheme can be compared to that
which the intelHgent and sensitive person obtains by
seeing others succeed where he fails, or fail where he
succeeds; and in this fact lies one of the reasons for the
powerful influence of the autobiography over so many
minds. Unquestionably, the self-student has realized
this influence, and it has unconsciously guided him in
classifying his material. When Cardan tabulated the
condition of his health and nerves in his Caput de
Valetudine, he was far from grasping the significance
and importance of that action.
Education, which is to-day just beginning to take
account in the schools of such conditions as myopia,
retardation, and deafness, will no doubt in the future
rely much on results from study of the relations of
physique and mind. This will be found often in self-
delineation, in the elucidation of certain personal eccen
tricities and abnormalities.
Roger North observed in himself "somewhat of con
fusion and disorder of thought" and an "aptness

370 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
to oversee [overlook?]", which he ascribes to "a cruel
fit of sickness in youth." By this he insists his memory
was permanently weakened. But he also, with a quaint
frankness, believes this cause accounts for the reason
why "I am not altogether so salacious as others of my
family!" The frail physical health of de Thou, the his
torian, and Flamsteed, the astronomer, appears to have
affected the rapidity of their work rather than their
method or capacity; and the same may be said of
Herbert Spencer, who could work only when alterna
ting the labor with hard physical exercise. In three
noteworthy instances, Alfieri, Giuseppe Giusti, and
Leigh Hunt, horseback exercise alone made mental
work possible. Alfieri, when he first began to ride, was
on the borders of youthful melancholia; Giusti and
Hunt had been dyspeptics. On the other hand a man
like Bishop Huet found any exercise superfluous, and
could remain in a chair studying for days without in
convenience. We aU know Wordsworth's intense joy
in nature, a consciousness of which with him preceded,
accompanied, and foUowed any intellectual effort. Her
bert of Cherbury preferred fencing and riding the great
horse as recreations; which were healthier than the chess
and dice that Cardan loved.
Although Catherine II had a certain taiste for un
dignified pleasures, yet her health was preserved by
her own exceptionally intelligent regimen, which ex
tended to her constant, systematic mental occupation.

WORK AND AIMS 371
Rarely does a learned man openly profess his pleasure
in taverns and brothels, as did Solomon Maimon, but
then his life was one long irregularity. No doubt some
such collation as Galton wished to make of facts con
cerning the bizarreries of poets and inventors, would
bring to light many suggestive points upon this topic.
At first sight variety seems to be infinite, so as to pro
duce merely an effect of chaos. But this is hardly so
if one looks closer; the most opposite intellectual types
serve to illuminate one another, and to reveal essential
qualities in common. There is Alfieri, who in youth
confesses that he felt neither the inclination nor even
the possibUity of casting into verse his moods or his
ideas; yet who, in middle life, wrote his ATkestis —
"con furore maniaco e lagrime molte," with a maniacal
fury and many tears. And there is the converse in Dar
win's atrophy of poetical taste: "I tried lately to read
Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it
nauseated me." The intention here is obviously not
to contrast Darwin with Alfieri, a futile proceeding,
but simply to point out two extreme types. Alfieri
accompanies every stage of his mental development
with emotion. What began with excitement over horses
and amours, becomes, in study, a "boUare di mente,"
or a "deHrar d'intelletto." Alfieri loved music, was
always stimulated by it, and composed his tragedies
after hearing it. When he undertakes to learn Greek,
the task assumes the shape and color of a passion. He

372 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
is emotional from start to finish. But Italian poet and
English scientist are alike in that each drove his intel
lectual machine with a deliberate effort of the wiU. The
energy is controlled from the first moment by a hand
upon the throttle.
There is a type in which the natural talent simply
flows on, quick, limpid, easy, and unconscious. Dumas
sat down at midnight, with a laugh, to write an act of
Henri III et sa Cour, and finished it before dayHght.
Goldoni, pouring out comedy after comedy, sixteen
in one year; George Sand, beginning a novel the day
after she had finished one, with no sense of effort;
these talents give forth from an inexhaustible weU-
spring. And there are those who can absorb in a
manner equally passionate and unremitting, such as
Erasmus. To such as these the life of the body is
nothing. Thomas Platter, in order to study Hebrew,
became a ropemaker at twopence a day; and to stiU the
pangs of hunger chewed sand and drank salted water!
Men Hke Arminius Vambfery and Solomon Maimon
taught themselves to read the necessary languages by
the aid of a second-hand grammar and a self-invented
method. J. A. de Thou, Avicenna, Agrippa d'Aubignfe,
Madame Roland, MiU, Bellarmin, Bishop Huet, Her
bert of Cherbury, Walter Scott, fed their inteUi
gence with books, as one would stoke a furnace. Sir
Walter, as a youth, deliberately read through a town
library. Catherine II, when fifteen years old, read

WORK AND AIMS 373
every work of phUosophy she could lay hand upon;
John Flamsteed and Charles Babbage did the same in
mathematics. Cardan was able to repair the deficien
cies of his early education so rapidly that he himself
thought it the work of a daemon. Slower, but equally
steady, "without haste, without rest," are such minds
as Herbert Spencer, Ernest Renan, Alexander Bain, and
WiUiam Wordsworth. In the last named, the actual
acquirement of knowledge was somewhat desultory,
" Many books
Were skimmed, devoured, or studiously perused.
But with no settled plan."
Wordsworth had Goethe's aspiration toward some
great work, and indecision as to its form. The ex
cesses of the French Revolution came as a shock
to his enthusiastic mind; and- precipitated the same
crisis which we have already observed in MUl, in Al-
GhazzaH, in Descartes, and in religious cases such as
Augustin, namely, the doubt of reason. This is fre
quently caused by reHgious emotion, or connected with
it, although not so necessarily. The Prelude is un
usually clear and convincing upon this crisis in Words
worth's case, and may be trusted as if it were not poetry
at all, but rather scientific prose. Wordsworth calls
"precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds," to the bar for
examination; becomes "bewildered and distracted,"
and at last, "wearied out, yielding up moral ques
tions in despair," begins to doubt the operations of

374 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
reason herself. In MiU and in Al-Ghazzali physical
illness supervenes at this point: Wordsworth returns to
nature for restoration. "This was the crisis of that
strong disease," he says; and his recovery (not unUke
MiU's) is due to revivifying emotion.
" Thus moderated, thus composed, I found.
Once more in man an object of dehght,
and from nature
That energy from which he seeks the truth;
From her that happy stillness of the mind."
Among poetical autobiographies, The Prelude is by
far the most important. This form was more fashion
able in early days; the Prefatio of Prudentius and the
Eucharisticos of Paulinus of PeUa have already been
mentioned; the life of Gregory Nazianzen and Com-
modion's Carmen Apologetica are further examples.
There is a Carmen de Vita Sua written by one Fervel in
1583; similar curious English poems, by Thomas Sta-
pleton (1535-1598), by Thomas Tusser, and scattered,
partiaUy autobiographical cases, wiU occur to every
reader. Professor Misch even includes Ovid's Art of
Love. But The Prelude is the only work of the kind
from which any data of real psychological value may be
obtained. In spite of some fine passages, it is generaUy
regarded as one of Wordsworth's faUures; and justly,
for scientific observation is not best clothed in blank
verse. Whereas one may regi-et that Wordsworth did
not see that the survey he wished to make of his own

WORK AND AIMS 375
powers, was a subject unfit for verse, yet there is much
in The Prelude one would be sorry to have lost. On
certain aspects of its writer's development it is strikingly
lucid and suggestive; its clumsy verse is frequently set
with vivid phrases of self -delineation. Above all, it per
mits us to link Wordsworth, at crises, with other great
minds and temperaments.
Personal mood, governing the lyrical impulse, is no
doubt responsible for the poetical autobiography. An
artificial fashion, it was never greatly followed. Desire
of self-affirmation and self-expression has usually
chosen other forms; and this is to our advantage,
since we are able to obtain more clearly our glimpses
into the worldng of important minds.

CHAPTER XIX
GENIUS AND CHARACTER
Though the autobiography be the work of a con
siderable mind, it does not, by any means, foUow that
its revelations are the revelations of genius. Upon
this most important subject, the data contained in
autobiography must, of necessity, be limited and im
perfect. As we have seen, the very impulse to self-study
is more frequent among scientific minds and tempera
ments than among the poetic and artistic, whose self-
affirmations are apt to take other forms. Since the
particular idiosyncrasies accompanying what we caU
genius are generaUy more often displayed by its artistic
and poetic exemplars, it follows that biography rather
than autobiography has been the chief storehouse of
these characteristics. Nor does it take genius to leave
valuable autobiographical material. No one thinks of
applying this word to Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Oliphant,
Goldoni, Gozzi, Madame de Staal-Delaunay, Mademoi
selle de Montpensier; yet they stand among great auto
biographers, whose self -delineation is as important in its
way as that of Rousseau, Alfieri, CelHni, Cardan. Lists
in the appendix make it plain that, although such self-
presentations of genius as these four, with those of
Renan, MiU, Franklin, let us say, will always be among

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 377
the richer and more striking records, yet a large share
of important matter may be obtained from the sober
autobiographies of balanced and reasonable men and
women of ability. One advantage of our preliminary
survey of the whole field of autobiography, has been to
dispel the impression that such work must needs be the
outcome of restless egoism, or of a neurotic tempera
ment, or of an unbalanced mind. From earliest times
untU the present, the body of revelation has been pre
sented by persons who stand very near if not exactly
on that elusive normal line; persons differing not greatly
from ourselves in experience, or in ideals, or in cir
cumstances, but in capacity and ability alone. Quint-
essentially normal people, if one may put it thus, —
just a Httle more so in every respect than you and I;
painted by nature in hues somewhat brighter; stored
by nature with vitality somewhat higher; these, after
all, are the persons with whom we have been made
acquainted. It is their humor, and work, and attitudes
toward marriage and religion, which have filled the
preceding sections of this book. And the result, it is
hoped, has been to establish relations of greater friend
liness, intimacy, and understanding.
But just so soon as it is required to set apart from two
hundred and sixty persons of abUity, the particular
records whose authors have been termed persons of
genius, which are to be examined with a view to their
bearing upon that perplexed term, — that instant the

378 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
whole attitude is changed. Curiosity and criticism
replace sympathy and friendliness — a rapprochement
appears impossible. Immediately, the reader seems to
epitomize in his proper person the sentiment of a public;
for, however capricious the world's attitude toward
genius may be, however it fiuctuates from condemna
tion to adoration, — whether it poisons Socrates, burns
Bruno, grovels before Goethe, or bursts into tears on
being introduced to Voltaire, — yet, in truth, it never
hears the self-explanations of genius with patience.
Those who stand close to genius are always anxious it
should do the impossible. Their ideal is that of RusMn's
father : the genius-son should " write poetry as good as
Byron's — only pious; preach sermons as good as
Bossuet's, — only Protestant " ! nor can the world ever
understand why this should not be so. The attitude,
psychologically speaking, is really the attitude of an
audience at large : quick to applaud, to hiss, to admire,
to excuse — to take any position rather than that of
full understanding and equality. The sense of a dif
ference, of being removed from the average, at once
produces this attitude. For when we see the Thrales
around Dr. Johnson, or the house-parties at Ferney,
we see an audience pleased: and when we see B5Ton
hounded out of England, Cardan and GalUeo suffering
the deepest humiliations, we see an audience displeased.
It is no waste of time to formulate these attitudes,
since they appear to be so little understood by even

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 379
the theorists on this subject. The whole intricate ques
tion of the psychology of genius is further complicated
by an absence of definitions. Up to the present, among
the exponents of the pathological view, there has been
stated no explanation of genius which explains, and
no definition of genius which defines. The instances
made use of by Professor Lombroso and his followers are
simply those of noted persons, of all kinds, qualities and
degrees of talent. A definition which includes Darwin,
Cavour, Baudelaire, and Lesage under the same head
ing, must be as elastic as the tent of the fairy Peri-
Banou. That all noted or prominent persons (causes
for their prominence not analyzed) are insane; and that,
in the cases like Darwin's, where they appear to be sane
in every respect, the insanity is merely concealed, —
this is the proposition of the pathological opinion.
That such theory is wholly a priori, since the data to
support it has not been taken from original cases and
documents, but from hastily compiled and often in
accurate lists (like Trfelat's), seems self-evident and sus
ceptible of direct proof. The facts show what injustice
is done when the theorist seeks far-fetched, rather than
simple and natural explanations. Upon the testimony
of a single and very doubtful witness, Richelieu is in
cluded by Professor Lombroso among epileptics; whUe
upon a passing reference to an attack of giddiness —
"for giddiness," says Professor Lombroso, very seri
ously, "is frequently the equivalent of epUepsy," — is

380 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
based the statement of the concealed insanity of
Charles Darwin! To any open-minded reader of Dar
win's Autobiography, such a passing symptom is quite
simply explained in a man who suffered from dyspepsia,
and led a sedentary life; and the observation points
once more to that vicious custom of isolating single
statements from the surrounding explanatory text.
Such method has made monsters out of Rousseau,
Cardan, Renan, and even John Stuart MiU; and where
it prevails, the work done is rendered completely abor
tive. Attention has already been caUed to the cases of
"misinterpreted observation" in the mimoires of the
past. It will not be forgotten how, in the section upon
Religion, they were found to mUitate against those
mystical phUosophers who are so anxious for a com
promise. There it was seen how the phenomena which
seemed to be derived from a "something not ourselves,"
and which the subjects beheved to come from a " some
thing not themselves," embody, in nine cases out of
ten, a simple, natural, physical explanation coUed up
in each account of the facts. If the misinterpretation
is to extend to the theorist and be perpetuated and
exaggerated by him, then, indeed, wUl the work on the
psychology of genius be retarded in its progress toward
the goal of actual scientific value. If there is anything
to be gained from the study of individual psychology,
it can only be gained from a complete and thorough

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 381
examination, at first hand, of aU the facts in every case;
and to face that task our hasty generalizers appear
unwUling. No doubt the reasons for much of this prevaUing
misinterpretation lie in a lack of comprehension of the
laws and principles underlying the self-study, since it
is from self-study so much of the material must be
gathered. The shallow generalizations on introspection
have bred a lack of seriousness in the attitudes toward
the data of introspection. In Section IV, on Sincerity, of
this essay these attitudes have been considered, and it
is precisely in respect to genius and character that they
most frequently offend. But if much material on the
subject may be taken from the autobiography, it cannot
be the single and conclusive means to the study of
genius. Far more than autobiography must be included
to make such a study conclusive. Therefore, here we
can do, perchance, no more than turn on such light as
our self-students may throw into the darker corners of
prevaiHng misconceptions. And one of the most fre
quent of these concerns the happiness and unhappiness
of the intellectual life.
In his graceful book of essays on The Intellectual
Life, Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton treats of the ennui
of the scholar, the mental weariness, which has served
the mediocre so often as an excuse for mediocrity. No
really important mind, he thinks, has been without it,
from Solomon to Schopenhauer; and he cites as special

382 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
examples Wordsworth, SheUey, and Byron, who have
left deep traces of such melancholy in letters, con
firmed by the testimony of their friends. On the side
of healthy optimism and cheeriness, Mr. Hamerton
mentions the not inconsiderable names of Goethe,
Cuvier, and Alexander Humboldt, and passes at once
to generalization without pausing at the obvious point
for comment. The poet, Mr. Hamerton might have
suggested, is by the inherent nature of his inspiration
subject to peculiarly violent reactions. The ebbing of
that golden tide leaves the nervous force exhausted,
susceptible to depression. WhUe Goethe was yet a lyric
poet, his letters to Frau von Stein show that even his
vitality was not exempt; but he passed on to a further
stage beyond the alternations of mood, and it is here
that Mr. Hamerton makes use of him. The point is
worth noting only because it has become part of a
general opinion, which has even given birth to certain
special theories respecting the inteUectual life as the
abnormal, unhealthy, Ul-balanced life. Observation of
this particular and undeniable tax on the nervous force
of the talented or inteUectual creature, has assisted the
Lombrosian theories of genius as a neurosis, as a disease.
The melancholy of the scholar has been used as the
fundamental argument against the ideaHst. If a young
creature is found to have a touch of ambitious malaise,
the modern custom puts him at once through a hygienic
course of banking. That the weary cry of Ecclesiastes

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 383
strikes the critical ear much more as the lament of an
exhausted sensualist than as the depression of the true
student, does not affect the hasty modern position.
That waU has been responsible for many erroneous
ideas respecting the learned professions.
On such a question as the happiness of any given
person, it is surely more convincing to hear speak the
person himself. Testimony as to the health and hap
piness of the intellectual life is so overwhelming in
its abundance, that the difficulty lies in the choice.
In other types of energy, or in other sides of the
same subject's activity, there may be a frequent note
of satiety, disillusion, disappointment.. Politics, war,
finances, society, sovereignty, exploring, police-detec
tion — what you wUl; or Lord Brougham, Monluc,
Madame d'Oberkirch, Vidocq, Timur, or Catherine II, —
to become more concrete, — each one at moments shows
himself disgusted, weary of the game. It is just because
it is a game, — this practical life so extolled to-day, —
that men do grow weary of it. But his canvas never
failed to interest Haydon, nor his furnace Cellini, nor
his great folio Cardan or Huet, nor the infinitely little
variation Darwin, nor the infinitely vast definition
Spencer. Perhaps the reader does not think it con
vincing to cite such men as Ali Hazin or the learned
Maimon, because these are singly devoted to letters;
nothing else tempts them. Let him rather hear a more
complex type, a man of the world, to whom appealed

384 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
also the busy life and the exercise of power. Lord Clar
endon especially remarks that the happy parts of his
life were before and after his political career, while he
had leisure for "exer citations" of his own. Ib'n Khal-
doun echoes the very thought of Clarendon, when he,
too, was occupying the highest position a Sultan could
bestow. Herbert of Cherbury, Ambassador to France,
was a distinguished courtier, a renowned swordsman,
horseman, and dancer. "I ever loved my book," he
testifies, "and a private life, more than any busy pre
ferments." The legal life of Sir Symonds d'Ewes had
much in common with a business man's life to-day;
but his content was not in his successful, if harassing,
worldly career. "So my very study . . . grew more
delightful and pleasant unto me"; and, again, "Having
followed my study reasonably closely ... I found
much content by it." He is lifted out of the grief for
his chUdren's death. "To mitigate and moderate this
sorrow," he beautifully says, "I feU close to my sweet
and satisfying studies." The sincerest note in Kenelm
Digby's rhapsodical Private Memoir is his love for
the life of books. The gay and charming Baron de
FrfenUly, true type of the polite Frenchman of the
world, vouchsafes: "Je travaUlais comme on respire, la
diversity de travail en faisait pour moi le repos."
Poetry and study formed the chief features of his ex
istence. Carlo Gozzi, despite his cynical humor, became
serious in describing "those literary tastes to which I

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 385
have always clung . . . and which, now that my hairs
are gray, wUl be my solace to the end of Hfe." Anthony
TroUope, miserable in a clerkship; and B^ranger, un
happy, though successful, in a bank, are converse pic
tures. "I was always in trouble, I hated my work,"
says the former; and, later: "I trust for my happiness
stUl chiefly to my work [writing]; and lastly to my
books." As for B^ranger, his ambition was to "live
alone and to compose verses at my leisure." Further,
let us read the particularly significant sentences in
which he speaks of the general effect upon his character
of his development as a poet. "My spirits became
more serene," he says; "fits of melancholy disappeared.
I saw men as they are. My gayety, which had been
unequal and boisterous, became calm and sustained."
These are words we shall have cause to remember.
A successful English merchant, Samuel Roberts, a
distinguished English barrister, Sir Samuel Romilly,
take in study their chief delight. A shrewd manufac
turer, like Charles Bray, finds his taste for books so
repaying that he winds up his business in order to
have more time to give them. These are not shy, soli
tary persons, but men whose lives offered them the
choice of varied worldly occupations, and who yet
found more freedom and satisfaction in the secluded
atmosphere of the Hbrary.
Already in these pages we have heard testify, if only
by inference, some of those personalities on whom the

386 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
world's contact grates and jars, — the morbid, the im
pressionable, the hypersensitive; to whom intellectual
occupations hold the key of health and sanity. Miss
Martineau, Madame de Staal-Delaunay, are instances.
Alfieri terms his first sonnet "Liberazione Vera." He
carries out later and repeats this idea of freedom: "La
passione dello studio e la necessity, di essere o di farmi
libero per poter essere intrepido e veridico autore."
The composition and study of Persian verse was to
the Emperor Baber his great compensation for the cares
of government. Over and over again, Hke a theme in
music, the self -tortured Egerton Brydges repeats his one
happiness: "My misfortunes have far exceeded the
common lot of humanity and my wrongs have ex
ceeded my misfortunes," he exclaims with bitterness;
but he has kept "a passionate and undebased love of
letters." On every page of his two volumes, otherwise
painful reading, this love, this ideal is displayed. Pas
sages of rich and striking beauty follow upon querulous
complaint, but at the end he is more tranquU: "I have
touched upon my latter days, and I have passed through
a wilderness of thought. Of late I have been almost an
entire recluse; I am calmest and happiest in soHtude."
The late and slow development of a diffident youth
like Mark Pattison is saved from distortion and re
grettable errors by what he calls his "restlessness of
the critical faculty . . . and daily converse with the
poetry and literature of all time." Similar influences

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 387
save Edgar Quinet after a sentimental crisis. Words
worth, passing from a love of nature to a love of books,
preserves the two to his tranquil and dignified old age.
But for pure exultation of happiness Pierre Daniel
Huet, Bishop of Avranches, stands chief among savants.
A fragile man and frequently iU, he protests : " From this
unabating love of letters and perpetual occupation in
my studies ... I have derived this benefit — that I
have never felt that satiety of Hfe, that weariness with
aU its objects, of which other persons are so often heard
to complain." Later he is more specific: "No protrac
tion of study has ever given me a sense of fatigue or
languor. I have always, after six or seven hours without
intermission spent over my books, arisen from them
fresh and cheerful, sometimes in high spirits, singing."
Of what other occupation in life could this be said?
What kept the flame of vitaHty and cheerfulness alight
in such suffering bodies as those of Cardan, Giuseppe
Giusti, Heinrich Heine, John Flamsteed?
The utter destitute poverty of Thomas Platter was
made bearable to him because he was learning Hebrew.
The Abbe Morellet, both nervously injured and finan
cially ruined by the French Revolution, wished to
protest the one truth: "Je veux parler du secours
inestimable, incroyable, que donnent dans le malheur
les fetudes litt^raires, et I'habitude d'appliquer fortement
son esprit . . . Surtout en 6crivant beaucoup j'ai
tromp6 mes malheurs." Baron Holberg asserted:

388 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
"There is little misfortune which literature cannot
in a measure alleviate"; and Lord Campbell: "My
reading has supplied me with a never-faUing occu
pation, and lent a charm to my existence in every stage
of my progress." Leigh Hunt, during imprisonment,
was quite happy because of the uninterrupted oppor
tunity for study; and Gibbon, in summing up his for
tunate career, dwells on his happiness: "The love of
study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from en
joyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual
source of independent and rational pleasure." Now
Gibbon is classed by M. FouUlfee among the lymphatics
— temperaments incapable of the higher degrees of
feeling and emotion; and this is a temperament found
more often among men of business and active life than
among lovers of books. Yet anyone wUl notice how
much more keen is the note of Gibbon here than where
he speaks of other occurrences in his life — he actuaUy
makes use, for instance, of the word passion. Much the
same note of intensity and enjoyment is sounded by
Descartes in speaking of his study of mathematics,
poetry, and philosophy; by Count Cesare Balbo of
mathematics alone. To these examples of extreme
passion, Renan adds the fact that mathematical com
binations caused him to dream by night and by day.
The hours spent in study were the only ones in which
Wilhelmine of Bareith and Leonora Christina of Den
mark were able to forget their inferior and brutal sur-

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 389
roundings; had such hours been longer, WUhelmine
would have been a less embittered woman. Sir Thomas
Bodley tells us, with tranquil happiness, how he set
up his staff "at the library door in Oxon," where
indeed it would seem as if a little cloud of that happi
ness had clung, like some subtle perfume, ever since.
Agrippa d'Aubignfe contrasts the peace of his study with
the distracting disappointments of the Court; whUe
two famous Italians, Petrarch and Vico, asked nothing
more of life than the health and leisure to spend the re
mainder of it with the only friends who never betrayed
them. When Vico lays down the pen, and bequeaths
his manuscript of the Nuova Scienza to a friend, he
inscribes it with a little epitaph, as if erecting a
tombstone over his happy work; and all Petrarch's
tissue of brilliant vanities seems wiUingly laid aside for
that tranquillity of soul, wherein he shows himself
"without noise, without wanderings, without anxieties,
always reading and writing and praising God." ' Such
women as Madame Roland, Madame de Genlis, Mad
emoiseUe de Chastenay, share the happiness given by a
life of study; and to the first it seems even to have
replaced the ordinary feminine satisfaction of the
emotions. MademoiseUe de Chastenay, on the con
trary, avows her life to have been lonely, although she
adds: "L'fetude m'a comblfee de ses jouissances; mon
' "Pur tranquillo nell' anima, senza romori, senza divagamenti,
senza soUicitudini — leggendo sempre, e scrivendo, e lodando
Dio."

390 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
goiit pour toutes les directions de I'esprit a accru chaque
jour d'avantage." Since woman is so sensitively poised
in regard to what brings her sorrow or joy, aU that
female autobiographers have to say on the subject is
of interest; and a comparison of their experiences on
this point at least sounds encouragement for the future.
As we look back over these quotations, surely weari
ness of intellect is not the prevaUing note; on the con
trary, there seems to be present in them, as a whole, a
peculiarly vital freshness of interest. No doubt the
scholar's sense of his superior and recondite joy has
lent him an irritating aspect of patronage. His passing
moods of inadequacy and humUity at faUing short of
his ideal, have then been gratefully seized upon to con
trast with the fatuous and empty gayety of the world.
Thus tradition has been opposed to tradition without
encountering the corrective of thought. Not that your
inteUectual and creative life is necessarily a tranquil
one. Mill's education was dangerous to happiness, yet
Mill's life was happy, if not tranquU. The strain be
tween the inteUect and the temperament of Sonia
Kovalevsky interfered with her peace and her happi
ness. There is a price to be paid for every joy. If Dar
win regrets he cannot read Shatepere, yet he has no
moment of ennui during scientific observation. Un
even temperaments like Cardan's and Rousseau's must
suffer; yet the splendid force of the Italian is untouched
by intellectual satiety, and the only peace in the

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 391
troubled movement of the Confessions is when Jean
Jacques is steadily at work.
One could go on, if it were necessary, and give con
verse examples, showing the unhappiness of those who
might have shared these pleasures and who chose other
paths ; but little is to be gained. The cry of satiety, of
the vanity of knowledge, does not come from the intel
lectual man; it is a catch-word to bolster up the slothful
and the inadequate in his slothfulness and inadequacy;
it is based on observation, not of the great, original mind,
but of the little, imitative mind. No doubt the third-
rate have moments of intellectual weariness unknown
to a Goethe or a Humboldt. We may be sorry for them
and ourselves, yet we must be candid and meek. Our
misfortune it may be that we cannot partake of this
privilege — these joys, which alone outlive the loss of
health and friends, the loss of place and money. The
intellectual life holds the only enduring and vital hap
piness which humanity is like to know, since
" Beyond this place of wrath and tears,
Looms but the horror of the shade."
And if through the expression and operation of their
genius so many persons draw happiness and health,
what is the commentary on genius itself? And where
the development of a man's genius brings to bear upon
his life and character a steadying, tranquUizing, con
structive influence, how can genius be regarded as a
neurosis?

392 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Lombrosian theory has drawn its chief support
from consideration of those eccentricities so often at
tending on genius. Misconception of the psychology
and functions of the self-study has served to accent and
emphasize such data as the Lombrosian theory ob
tained; which misconception, if avoided, or even if
merely reconsidered, must have led to a total readjust
ment of the theory to meet the facts.
Both Ribot and Grasset point out the failure to take
into account those positive cases where, as we have
shown, the operation of genius has resulted in the sub
ject's renewed health of mind and body; or those nega
tive cases where intellectual superiority in no way tends
to lead a rational person away from his rationality.
Both have been cited in this chapter; for clearness it may
be best to repeat that Miss Martineau, Alfieri, Bferanger,
Petrarch, would be types of the first group; Franklin,
Gibbon, Renan, Scott, Goethe, of the second. Bferan-
ger's statement is unequivocal and definite, as we have
just read. Such a man as Edward Gibbon, working with
regularity and method, is as far as possible removed
from eccentricity or abnormality. Franklin's education
of his powers showed a system and persistency which
is the very soul of health. In truth, Franklin's genius
lay in his capacity to pass steadUy onward in every
thing he undertook, from the primer to the text-book,
as it were, stretching out his powers, little by Httle,
until they covered the ground. The same progressive

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 393
advance is found in Renan, in Herbert of Cherbury, in
Petrarch, in Descartes, in Al-Ghazzali. An assemblage
of testimonials to the happiness of these subjects has
at least this significance, that their happiness carries
with it the connotation of freedom and normality. And
since, as Ribot has noted, and we have read with con
viction, the exercise of the intellectual and artistic fac
ulties appears to be the only form of happiness with
some persons which is persistent and keen enough to
perpetuate itself upon paper — it follows that a high
degree of freedom and normaHty must have been pre
sent in those perpetuated moments of happiness. Per
haps the key-note of the life may have been bitterness
and sorrow, as when we close the record of BerHoz or
of Brydges; yet it is impossible not to see that the bit
terness and sorrow have been due to forces of tempera
ment working against and not with the genius of the
subject. If therefore the manifestation of talent in its
highest form, which we term genius, has been found to
lead to uninterrupted happiness in some cases, — to
their only moments of happiness in others, — what right
have we to regard the possessors of this genius as dis
eased, neurotic, abnormal, because of that possession?
The alienist teUs us that the very first effect of mental
or nervous illness is to disturb the sense of tranquillity
and joy. Fear, alarm, melancholy, distress, these are
among the first tokens that something is wrong. Save
in rare cases of a particular delirium, anything approach-

394 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ing natural, healthy joy is unknown to the insane,
and anything approaching serenity of mind is absolutely
impossible. Religious insanity may bring instants of
ecstasy, but these are invariably followed by long re
actions of fear and melancholy, and tranquillity is
conspicuously absent in the religious fanatic. This is
strikingly perceived in the case of Suso, the joy and
tranquilHty of whose early and normal religious feeling
^ve way, step by step, to the gloomy and morbid hor
rors of religious mania.
If the question of happiness in the intellectual life
thus has its bearing upon genius, the question of charac
ter goes at once to the very heart of the matter. Lom
broso dogmatically states that "geniuses have scarcely
any character," and he quotes the self-accusations of
Cardan and Rousseau as a proof of their lack of charac
ter. To us, who have just read that admirably-bal
anced and dignified paragraph in which the first psy
chologist presents his errors and virtues for our study,
starting with the remark that no subject is more diffi
cult of comprehension — this sweeping assertion brings
amazement and incredulity. As to Rousseau, indeed, he
may be handed over to Professor Lombroso, yet the
only character Rousseau seems to have shown has been
directed to self understanding in the Confessions. If
by character is meant the power by which we control
and regulate the forces and instincts of our tempera
ment and heredity, it appears to be often as much a

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 395
part of genius as genius itself. When Goethe, who was
nervous at high places, deliberately cured himself by
ascending steeple after steeple, he displayed character.
When Alfieri bound himself to a chair to break an un
worthy passion, the means seem to us violent, but the
act showed character. Who could have undergone in
Heine's way, the incredible tortures of his mattress-
grave, but a man of high character? The attacks of
pain borne stoically for many years by the great Earl
of Shaftesbury, the mUitary service undergone at the
caU of duty and patriotism by the infirm Giuseppe
Giusti, the youthful fortitude of Massimo d'AzegHo, do
not these things display character? Do every-day per
sons of no abUity and ideas show more character in the
conduct of their lives, and in adversity, than did such
scholars as Thomas Platter, such students as the broth
ers Chambers, such a man as Walter Scott, such famous
women as Lady Fanshawe, as Leonora Christina, as
Catherine II, as Margaret of Newcastle, as Madame
Roland? FouiU^e's view that inteUigence is an essential factor
of character, seems to the reader of autobiographies
wholly convincing. The conquest of self, if difficult
even with intelHgence, is impossible without it; your
stupid and dull person lacks character, though he may
be tenacious and obstinate. To the instances quoted
of strength of character, FouUl^e adds those of Dr.
Johnson and Harriet Martineau, epitomizing their two

396 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
cases with a distinction of phrase which must be re
peated: "N^s avec un tempferament mfelancoHque, Us
6taient des attristfes. . . . Mais, par leur intelHgence et
leur volonte, Us firent un noble tentative pour triompher
de leur tendance organique au d^couragement. ... A
la mglancolie du tempferament Us ont opposfe la sferfenit^
du caractere."
If an autobiographer of importance (genius, Professor
Lombroso would call him) possess happiness in work
and strength of character, it would not seem easy to
find the materials to manufacture a lunatic out of him.
Questions of hallucination, of special eccentricity in
personal habits, need to be somewhat more closely
scrutinized than heretofore, ere they can upset so soUd
a basis. For example, the visions of Cardan, of which
Lombroso and Lelut make so much, we have seen to
be precisely those common to high-strung chUdren the
world over; his impotency becomes on close examina
tion merely a youthfiU dread of impotency, whUe the
buzzing of voices in his ears is plain "misinterpreted
observation" of conditions produced by anaemia and
catarrh. The whole structure of the theory of his
madness crumbles when the facts are examined at first
hand; and all that is left is a certain repetition and
wandering of style in the De Vita Propria, surely not
unaccountable in a man writing at seventy-five — who
did not live to revise his work.
To what theory, therefore, on the subject do these

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 397
records add their weight? It is useless to repeat in this
book the examples which by their mere morbidity,
eccentricity, or abnormality, seem to support the Lom
brosian view. But, as M. Joseph Grasset ' points out
in a recent and valuable work, unless an explanation
covers all the facts, it does not explain. He states as
his opinion that, "scientifically, one thing only is
demonstrated, and that is: the frequent coexistence
of intellectual superiority and a neurosis in the same
individual"; and later makes the statement: "Genius
is not a neurosis, but a neurosis is more often the
penalty of genius."
The line between normal and abnormal in the intel
lectual Hfe is one perpetually in dispute; and a more
general and thorough study of important individuals
is necessary before it can be established. Only then wUl
it be possible authoritatively to do that which Grasset
declares is his purpose: "To study and point out the
relation in which inteUectual superiority stands to ner
vousness, to show the existence and the true nature
of this relation, and to define the position of the
abnormal intellectual superiority in the neuropathic
family." ^
Then, perchance, it will be easier to answer such a
question as Ribot asks about the significant figure of
Goethe, a question, by the way, which is not answered
by the Wahrheit und Dichtung. "On a souvent cit6
» " Le Demi-Fou." ' Ibid.

398 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Goethe," says the psychologist,' "comme une belle
exemple de pondferation et d'6quUibre; mais est-ce un
gfenie ou un caractfere?"
By his misconception of the value of self-study,
Goethe has deprived us of an opportunity to see at work
the high powers of a complex, weU-balanced modern
man, and this is indeed a deprivation. But at least
his record sounds the dominant notes of happiness and
health. Many prevaUing impressions of the uneven
temperament and nervous reactions of the inteUectual
worker, have been taken from letters and diaries,
wherein, as we have read, the fugitive mood is apt to
become exaggerated in crystallization. The total im
pression alone should count, — the sum total of such
moods brought under the corrective influence of the
autobiographical intention. And to receive such col
lective impression needs more receptivity, more open-
mindedness, than the reader of these documents has
generally been wiUing to give them.
In M. FouUlfee's Tempirament et Caractkre (from
which it has been a delight to quote), the author men
tions that Auguste Comte wished to enrich psychology
by a series of monographs on men of special and re
markable aptitudes, and had already commented on
their enormous variety. The work is worthy of a
broadly generalizing mind. Doubtless in reading such
studies it would be not so much the special aptitude
' "Psychologie des Sentiments."

GENIUS AND CHARACTER 899
of the person which would repay us, as the revelation
— to quote M. FouUlfee once more — of "le vferitable
caractfere de la personne, sa vie consciente et volon-
taire, la manifere dont elle rfeagit sur sa nature par son
inteUigence et sa volontfe."
And it is this after all, first and last, for which we
turn to the autobiography. Our interest in the mathe
matical faculty of Cardan is not the main interest of
De Vita Propria. The description of CeUini's bronze
casting, of Babbage's calculating machine, of Rafaello
da Montelupo's curious gift of left-hand drawing, of
"I'aptitude singulifere de me grimer " of Eugfene Vidocq
— these are not the chief things for which we look into
their lives: it is, first of aU, for "the real character of the
person." And secondly, I think it is their happiness or
unhappiness which moves us. We are idealists in the
main. The whole trend of the modern attempt to ana
lyze, to comprehend the phenomena of religion, the
phenomena of genius, is but an indication of our ideal
ism. We seek in these records a warrant for our ad
miration, a support to our ambition, or even a valid
excuse for our sloth. We wish to be able to point to
some great and successful exemplar in the intellectual
Hfe. And some of us think that we have but to look, —
that we do not need to regard ourselves as unbalanced,
neuropathic, or diseased, because we feel beating
within our soul the wings of some upHfting inspiration.

400 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
It would rather seem to bear us to higher airs of health
and happiness. And so, where we close the final pages
of some faulty, noble life, we catch an echo of its ex
ultation, and are able to exclaim, with a distinguished
Frenchman: "Heureux ceux qui dans la triste fepoque
oil nous vivons, ont pu se d^gager des m^diocrites qui
nous entourent; qui se sont fait, dans les pays en-
chanteurs de I'antiquitfe, k quelques pas du Parthfenon
et du Colis^e, ou dans les rfegions sereines de la science
pure, un coin de terre bfenie, oil n'arrive pas le bruit
des luttes stferiles; et qui poursuivent, dans le silence
et la paix, I'fetude des grands questions qu'Us ont
entrepris de resoudre." '
' Gaston Boissier.

CHAPTER XX
CONCLUSION
The two hundred and sixty capital autobiographies
which form the basis of the foregoing study contain
many characteristics which must escape classification,
many riches a general survey must needs omit. To
urge the reader to the volumes themselves must be,
therefore, a final task. Choice for another is at all times
ungrateful; if this book does nothing else, it may at
least provide investigators with a list of considerable
autobiographies to which they may turn for much
material hitherto difficult of access. Such ideas and
aims have caused us perforce to neglect the literary
aspect of many of these writers; and when one comes
to cast a backward glance over beloved pages, this
may seem a neglect indeed. What storied wealth,
what unforgettable passages have delighted us, have
rewarded our daily task! What creative, constructive
criticism from Goethe, at whom we have too much
cavilled! What pages of delicate and glowing description
from Renan and Marmontel! The high imaginative
beauty in the devotional outbursts of Augustin and
Teresa opened to the fervent readers of the past depth
upon depth of radiance and ecstasy. Sentences there
are in these records, and paragraphs, and incidents,

402 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
which have become the possession of all time. No
epic has given more of a thrill than Monluc in battle:
"Le capitaine Carbon, qui n'estoit point armfe, ayant
est^ auparavant bless6 d'une arquebuzade au bras
gauche, vint k moy et me dit ces mots: 'O Monluc,
mon amy, pousse hardiment, je ne t'abandonneray
pas! ' " There are battles too of another sort; with the
same stress of emotion we turn Mrs. Oliphant's last
wonderful page. The memory is crowded with pictures.
Some we have tried to draw within this book, but
there are others: Salimbene's father vainly imploring
the young mystic to return home; Jerome Cardan
pleading for the life of a wretched son; Ousama ib'n
Mounkidh and the FranMsh crusader; Alfieri writing
his first sonnet in the darkened bedroom of his mis
tress; Marguerite de Valois tending the Fosseuse, —
pictures which serve to show us as nothing else, how
between the past and present "there is a great gulf
fixed." There are words, too, unforgotten, gorgeous in quo
tation. "Midsummer, like an army with banners, was
moving through the heavens," writes De Quincey; and
similar splendor lingers in Egerton Brydges, some of
whose phrases do not deserve entombment with what is
dead in his two volumes. " All our feelings and buried
ideas instantly respond to them [the great poets] Hke
the strings of an .^olian harp to the breeze. They have
a transparency and native fire which lights up all the

CONCLUSION 403
slumbering and cloudy figures of our brains, and gives
an instant glow to the currents which circle around the
heart." Too much of patchwork is there, perhaps, in
this sort of citation; and yet Brydges has a love and
enthusiasm for literature informing aU his utterances on
the subject, which are a perpetual inspiration in them
selves. "Words," he says, "are unstudied breathings
from the fire of the imaginative power. ... I never
look upon the face of the earth and skies without a
sense of deep, mysterious impressions, which I feel a
longing desire to discriminate and embody in language."
Perceptions so delicate and so purely literary as these
arise, Brydges thinks, from "a flow of high feeling
casting its colors upon a richly-stored mind," and
are equalled but rarely; hardly even by George Sand
or Rousseau. They come upon us with fresh vitality
and suggestiveness, as forming part of a necessary
equipment of taste. Such criticisms as may be found
in Colley Cibber, or in Lord Clarendon's sketch of his
friend Ben Jonson, or in the estimate of Dr. Samuel
Johnson by men so dissimUar as John Ruskin and
Egerton Brydges, cannot but be inspiring to the
critical faculty.
But, after aU, one must not choose a reader's pleasures
for him, since the first pleasure of all is liberty of choice.
He wUl like us while he roves at wUl, and if he knew it
all before, surely he wUl Hke us even better. To glance
over, to repeat again, the striking passages and vivid

404 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
pictures in our library of autobiographies is impossible
here, yet it might have one advantage; for it would
serve to emphasize and renew that hope of friendliness,
with which we beguiled you in the beginning. As it is,
however, we have done by the way of an introduction
all one may; the further intimacy lies with you. There
is the crowded bookshelf, and there your friend awaits
you. At the very outset of this study its object was de
clared to be mainly suggestive, rather than conclusive.
Human nature resembles a work in many volumes, of
which the earlier are lost and the latest are unpublished.
No honest observer of personal records but would hesi
tate to draw hasty inferences from such material; and
he would be dull, rather than dishonest, if he were not
overwhelmed with their wealth of suggestion. But,
as was said in the introductory chapter, in spite of
all tentative openmindedness, during the progress of
this work certain conclusions were, of necessity, forced
upon one. The facts have drawn them; the writer
seems rather to become the passive spectator of an
orderly marshaling of data; and these data are general
as well as concrete. The whole subject of introspec
tion is peculiarly liable to misconception. Although an
understanding of subjective tendencies lies at the very
root of an understanding of Hterature, yet no sub
ject is less comprehended to-day. The ground about
it needs to be cleared, and the vague, prevalent ideas to

CONCLUSION 405
be classified and brought to book. Our witnesses are
treated much as witnesses in a court of law, and we, as
jury, may draw our own conclusions. If such conclu
sions have not been drawn hitherto, it is because the
whole subject of a man's attitude toward and under
standing of himself is a subject unresolved and unde
fined, relying hitherto not upon authority, but upon the
chance theory, the passing prejudice of the sciolist.
And, pending an examination of the field by an
authority, it will be weU to restate those conclusions
to which our present survey seems to point.
Beginning at the beginning, the indication is plain
that a subjective trend of thought made its appearance
in literature, rather suddenly than slowly, during the
first three hundred years of the Christian era. Exami
nation of its early manifestations shows the primal
cause to be religious emotion: for the second type of
the subjective document — that is, the scientific — did
not make its appearance until the sixteenth century.
These are facts demonstrated by history.
When one turns to the documents themselves, an
investigation begins most naturaUy with a comparison
of the reasons for writing them, and of the attitude they
take, with like attitudes in diaries and in letters. Results
of such comparison force upon us the conviction that the
obscure and deep-seated psychological condition which
produces the incitement to serious autobiography pro
duces also a governing power in the mind of the self-

406 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
portrayer, which we have termed the autobiographical
intention. Works written according to the autobio
graphical intention are written "as if no one in the
world were to read them, yet with the purpose of being
read." Conformation to this standard permits us (al
ways within recognized limits) to believe in their sin
cerity, and to trust their information. Cases apparently
contradicting this statement wUl be found, on closer
inspection, to be usuaUy cases of "misinterpreted ob
servation," of which the conversion-ecstasy of Robert
Blair, the halo of Cellini, the tutelary genius of Cardan,
are prominent examples. Finally, the law of the sub
jective self-study is seen to be that its manifestations
invariably precede and accompany movements of intel
lectual significance; and that, conversely, in times when
great warlike activities and political upheavals make
their special demand upon the objective energies of a
people, the subjective record diminishes in proportion,
or wholly disappears from literature. Such are the ob
servations to be made after a survey of the autobio
graphy in its more general aspects; and this definition of
them enables the reader to form a clear idea what the
documents are which he is about to approach, and
what causes and laws regulate their particular charac
teristics. The section on Groups, moreover, examined
together with its Appendix, endeavors to give some con
ception of the part these documents may be permitted
to play in sociological and historical investigation.

CONCLUSION 407
Passing on to the chapters dealing with the cases
themselves, they must be taken as merely suggestive to
the specialist of what may be found to do in this field.
Few inferences can be made within the scope of these
pages. It has not been uninteresting to note that the
first memory in healthy childhood appears to be always
of an object or group of objects; whereas, if the child
be abnormal or unhealthy, this memory is invariably
of a state or states of consciousness. The attitude of
the sexes toward each other and the position of woman,
wUl be found to have changed much less than attitudes
toward nature, and toward humor, and toward society
at large. That the prevailing feature in the inteUectual
life is its happiness, strikes pleasantly upon the mind,
and leads the reader to dissent from the pathological
theories of genius. FinaUy, to point out that the study
of religious confession has been, up to the present,
based upon an a priori method, wholly illusory and
misleading, is a duty which must not be shirked. Not
until the religious self-presentation be scrutinized in
its entirety, and especially in its relation to the scien
tific and phUosophic self-presentation, can anything of
value be drawn from it. This will be the life-work of
some future investigator of exceptional patience in
ferreting out unclassified and uncatalogued material,
as well as of reserve in withholding his results.
Such work, perhaps, may not be done till more serious
autobiography has been written. For men, like chU-

408 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
dren, ape one another; and there is nothing in the
world so inspiring as the relation borne by the powerful
autobiography to literature and to life. Men bequeath
their outworn heads and bodies to science for the good
of posterity; why should they not so bequeath their
living brains and souls? Each of us is a potential auto
biographer; to each of us come inner and outer experi
ences which may be the parent of great imaginations yet
unborn. Thus, even in another sense, "our thoughts are
as children born to us which we may not carelessly let
die." Men take down with them hourly into the grave
their radiant visions of the morning and cloudy visions
of the night, thus depriving us of our precious heritage
of aid and understanding. For we, who remain, have a
right to know what has passed with those who have
gone before. Whether expressed in Pope's crisp accents
of command: "Know then thyself, presume not God to
scan," or in the vaguer phrases of Browning's Cleon,
this right is acknowledged, and must not be frightened
out of us by any bogey-talk of introspection. Knowl
edge is good, healthy, and religious: a love of truth and
of their fellow-men guided the great self-students of the
past who have helped so many, and wUl guide the great
self-students of the future. There is, there must be, no
pause in man's desire to observe and to comprehend that
nearest, and yet most distant of problems — himself.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX A
REASONS FOR WRITING
SBLP-STtrDT AND SCIENCE
Acosta, Alfieri, D' Azeglio, Bain, Bashkirtsev, Bauer, B6ranger,
de Bernis, Brandos, Bray, Brydges, Bussy, Caldwell, Capel-
Lofft, Cappe, Cardan, Catherine II, Celhni, Chiabrera, Cobbe,
Coleridge, Comines, Crozier, Cumberland, Descartes, Dun-
ton, Edgeworth, Erasmus, d'ifipinay, Finney, Flynt, Fr^
mlly, Ghazzali, Gibbon, Goethe, Gosse, Gozzi, Giusti, Hay
don, Hayley, Ah-Hazin, Heine, Kovalevsky, Macready,
Maimon, Martineau, Mill, North, Pattison, Petrarch, Quinet,
Raffaello da Montelupo, Renan, S. Roberts, Rousseau, Sand,
Scott, Spencer, de Thou, M. de Valois, Vico, ViUeroy, Viterbi,
Wallace, Wordsworth.
Request op Friends
Balbo, Brougham, Charke, Claude, Daschkaw, Hare, Lacking-
ton, Lamartine, H. Mancini, de Retz, Ruskin, Smiles, Tay
lor, Vamb&y, Vidocq.
No One Else Likely To Do It or To Do It So Well
Arago, de Blowitz, Cibber, Goldoni, Hamerton, Hutton,
Huxley, M. Mancini, M. Newcastle, Oliphant, Roberts,
W. Scott.
Money Gait.
PnrDE OP Birth
Reresby.
Study op Insanity
Beers.
"To Emblazon the Power op Opium"
De Quincey.
To Revive His Latin
Taewell.

412 APPENDIX
Use of Children or Descendants
D'Andilly, D'Aubign^, Baber, Bewick, Blair, de Bouillon,
Bramston, de Brienne pbre, Campbell, Dupr^, Fanshawe,
Franklin, Gilbert, Grant, Herbert, Jahanghir, Leonora-
Christina, Livingstone, Locker-Lampson, Marmontel, Priest
ley, Pringle, Salimbene, Stirredge, Timur, Tone.
Religious Witness
AUine, Ashbridge, Augustin, Bellarmin, A. Besant, Bownas,
Bunyan, Cartwright, Chalkley, Clarke, Crisp, Crook, Davies,
Edmundson, EUwood, Fox, Gough, Fraser, Guibert, Guyon,
Hayes, Hull, Huet, Hutchinson, Lavater, Newman, F. New
man, Patrick, Paulinus, Pearson, Prudentius, Sansom, Scott,
Schimmelpenninck, Stilling, Suso, Teresa, Tolstoi, White,
Whitefield, Woolman, Young.
PuHELT Apologetic
Abelard, Anspach, Ashe, Bruno, Cibber, Ireland, Lorenzino,
"Perdita," Psalmanazar, Sorelli, Vennar.
For Amusement, or to Recall the Past
Andersen, Arnauld, Babbage, Bareith, Bassompierre, Ber
lioz, de Brienne fits, Bonneval, Borulaski, Bums, Calamy,
Carlyle, Casanova, Chastenay, Chdteaubriand, Cheverny,
Clarendon, Darwin, Delaunay, Digby, Flamsteed, Fleurange,
Forbin, Frith, Gourville, S. of Hanover, Hogg, Hume, Hunt,
Josephus, Kotzebue, Latude, Lejeune, Marbot, Marmont,
Monluc, Montpensier, Morellet, Moore, Motteville, d'Ober
kirch, Pasquier, Platter, Lord Roberts, Roland, Romilly,
Shaftesbury, Saint - Simon, Trenck, TroUope, Tusser,
Wolseley.
No Reason Given
Avicenna, Bagot, Bernhardt, W. Besant, Bodley, R. & W.
Chambers, Clairon, de Choisy, Crabb-Robinson, Dumas,
D'Ewes, Fletcher, Genlis, Georges, Gifford, Halkett, Harris,
Holcroft, Holberg, Khaldoun, Kropotkin, Layard, Lilly,
Lutfullah, Madame, Newton, Richter, Ristori, Rossetti,
Salvini, Spohr, Southey, Symonds, Talleyrand, Du Tilly,
Vasari, Whiston.

APPENDIX

413

APPENDIX B
Note. — To place an autobiographer in correct chronology, it is obvious
the date given must be that of his death. Yet it often happens that a man
may cover a certaia era in his autobiography, and be therein connected with
a certain group, and then live so many years after writing it that the date of
his death, taken by itself, would seem to connect him with a wholly different
epoch. The reader, therefore, is warned that had a strictly chronological
order been kept in the following lists the result would have been hopelessly
misleading. A degree of flexibility in arrangement is demanded by the very
nature of the material.

GROUPS OF FRENCH
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
[Study of French memoirs is
made easy by the admirable
collections of MM. Petitot and
Mommerqu^, Guizot, BarSre,
and others.]
List I. Early Chrpniclers and
Precursors
These early chroniclers are
not, properly speaking, auto-
biographdc, but follow the his
torical aim and method.
Guibert and Ahilard (letters)
are personal and subjective,
but no general tendency to
subjectivity is yet established. Died
Guibert de Nogent 1124
Pierre Abelard 1142
Boucicaut 1370
Villehardouin 1213
Joinville 1319
du Guesclin 1380
Pierre Salmon 1400
Jean d'Auton
During the fifteenth century
the chroniclers form a group in

manner and method. Before
the era of Henri IV, there is
practically no personal study
written. Died
Enguerrand de Monstre-
let 1444
d'llliers 1475
Gui Rape 1475
Agricola [Haussman] 1483
Jean de Troyes 1483
Robert de Clari l
Du Clercq V ab. 1475
Boyvin du VillarsJ
List II, containing Group I
Those starred may be called
the early military group.
Purely political examples are
marked with a dagger.
fOhvier de la Marche 1501
?Marguerite de Valois 1549
Louise de Savoie 1531
tDu Bellay, G. 1547
JDu Bellay, M. 1559
tComines, P. de 1509
*de Bay art 1524
*Fleurange 1537
Jean de Fabas ab. 1550
Henri de Mesmes ab. 1550

414

APPENDIX

Died
d'Antras de Samazan 1550
?Guillaume Paradin 1568
tVieilleville 1571
*Coligny [destroyed] 1572
Claude Haton 1582
St. Auban 1587
?Blaise de Monluc 1577
tMichel de Castelnau 1692
List III, containing Groups II
and III [Henri IV and Louis
XIII] Historical, military group *
Personal, philosophical
group t
[Innumerable are the spuri
ous memoires, by Gatien Cour
tilz de Sandraz et de Verg^.]
?Choisinin 1600
?Villeroy 1617
*de Thou 1617
?MaroUes, de ab. 1620
?Palma Cayet 1610
?Hurault de Cheverny 1599
?Brantome 1614
?du Jon 1602
?Pierre de I'Estoile 1611
tA. d'Aubign6 1630
tHenri de Bouillon 1623
?Richelieu, Cardinal 1642
?de Sully, Due 1642
?Henri de Rohan 1638
tBassompierre 1646
?d'AngoulSme 1650
?F. de la Tour 1652
*P6re Rapin 1669
tMarie le Jars de Goumay 1646
fRenfi Descartes 1650
?M. Merle ab. 1660
?Sirot [Letouf] 1650
?Guisquet 1650

Died
?Gui Joly 1650
*Cond6 1650
?D'Aumale et de Guise 1650
Groups IV and V [Louis XIV]
The number of autobio
graphies has doubled in fifty
years. The fashion has taken
a strong grip on the French
mind. Fifteen are subjective
out of forty-four, but all of
them have more subjective
qualities than before.
Personal, anecdotal group ?
Historical, pohtical group t
Le Chdtre 1644
Guillaume Laisn6 1655
?Lom^nie de Brienne 1666
?Tavannes, Guhlaume 1663
fConrart, Valentin 1675
Due de Nevers 1665
?Mancini, H. 1699
Mazarin, Cardinal 1661
Omer Talon 1652
fLenet 1671
JMontglat 1675
¦j-Mezeray 1683
tHenri de Beauvois 1684
Turenne 1675
?L. de Brienne, fUs 1698
Gramont 1678
?de Retz 1679
fLa Tremouille 1672
fFontenay-Mareuil 1683
*Ahh6 Arnauld 1694
Louis de Pontis 1670
Gaspard de Chavagnac 1679
tDuc de Choiseul 1675
tCanlet (Etienne) 1680
?Arnauld d'Andilly 1674
fLa Rochefoucauld 1680

APPENDIX

415

Died
?Sophia, electress 1680
tDuc de Montault 1684
tMme. de Lafayette 1693
tMme. de Motteville 1689
?Mile, de Montpensier 1693
tDe Cosnac 1708
tDangeau (Journal) 1720
tDuchesse de Nemours 1707
?Pierre Daniel Huet 1721
?Bussy-Rabutin 1716
?Jeanne de la Mothe-
Guyon 1717
fLouis XIV (note-book) 1715
?Marie Mancini 1715
TDuc de Luynes
tDuc de Richelieu
?Lekain, actor 1778
?Mme. mSre du R^ent 1722
tGourville 1703
List IV, Group VI [Louis XV]
Pre - revolutionary group ?
Historical and political t
tfilie Benolt 1728
?Mme. d'Avrillon 1729
tSaint-Simon 1755
tMme. du Hausset ab. 1765
*J. J. Rousseau 1778
?d':^pinay 1783
?Duclos ab. 1775
tdu Forbm 1733
?de Choisy 1724
?Morellet 1819
du Caylus 1729
?de Lauzun 1793
td'Argenson 1767
?Staal-Delaunay 1760
?Trenck F. de 1794
?de Bernis 1794
tde Maurepas 1781
JMathieu Marais 1737

Died
?Clairon 1803
*ColU [diary] 1782
?Louis Claude de St.
Martin ab. 1800
?Marmontel 1799
Among famous spurious
cases of this era may be men
tioned Mme. du Barri 1793
Mme. de Pompadour 1764
Card, du Bois 1723
Ctsse. Lamotte-Valois 1791
Faublas, following de Choisy
Ninon de L'Enclos
Marquise de Cr6quy
Group VII. The Revolution
Out of twenty-five memoirs
describing the horrors of the
time, only two are self-studies,
and Mme. Roland is of course
pre-revolutionary in tone.
Durand de Meillerain
Citoyen Formey 1797
Mol« 1802
Besenval 1791
Barbarous 1 794
de BouiI16 1800
Mme. Campan 1822
Mme. Roland 1793
de Latude 1805
Vigfe Le Brim 1842
Jean Bailly 1793
A. de la Ferronays ab. 1793
Mme. d'Oberkirch 1803
Mme. de Laferri^res
Gen. Dopcet
Mme. de Linguet
Larvet Weber Phihppe d'Orlfens 1793

416

APPENDIX

Died
Dusaulx
de MoUeville all ab. 1800
Rivarol 1801
Due de Broglie 1804
de Boissy 1798
de Cartrie 1793
Group VIII. Napoleonic
The Napoleonic memoires
may be divided into two classes.
The purely event mimoire, writ
ten about Napoleon and his
wars — and the apologetic mi
moire, written because the po
litical opinions and actions of
the writer have subjected him
to criticism. These are fewer,
but still a definite cluster, and
so are starred.
To estimate the proportion
one must divide the Napole
onic Group into two sections,
1805-1850 and 1850-1900.
Comte de S6gur 1805
Ney 1815
Rochambeau 1807
Riouffe 1813
Malouet 1814
du Tilly 1816
?Mme. de Stael 1817
Bourrienne 1769-1814
Fouch6 (d'Otrante) 1820
Mme. de Rondelet 1820
Rapp 1821
Mme. de R^musat 1821
Napoleon's Note-Book 1821
Dumouriez 1823
Lucien Bonaparte 1824
Pils, Grenadier 1823
Prince Eugtoe 1824

Died
Mme. de Genlis 1825
Sergent Fricasse 1825
S^ruzier 1825
Coignet 1825
Mme. Julhen 1825
Mme. Cavaignac 1825
Chaptal 1828
Savary 1828
Fr^nilly 1827
?Berthier 1829
?Consul Barras 1829
Rimini 1830
Mile, de Chastenay,
Duchesse de Gontaut 1836
?Talleyrand 1838
M. Dumas 1837
Due de Rovigo 1833
Lavallette 1830
Barfere 1841
Beugnot 1835
Miot de Melito 1841
Thiebault 1846
Macdonald 1840
Grouchy 1849
d'Ouvrard 1846
Lejeune 1848
Guillon, Abb6 1847
OdiUon-Barrot 1849
Group IX
?Marmont 1852
Richemont 1863
de Vitrolles 1854
Thibaudeau 1854
Marbot 1854
G^n^ral P6p6 1855
Mme. LarochejacqueUn 1857
?Mile. Georges 1867
?Guizot 1874
Queen of Etruria's
Diary ab. 1840

APPENDIX

417

ab. 1850

1862

Oudinot, Mme.
Philar^te Chasles
Gen. de Barail
Mme. Mire
Joseph Bonaparte
Pasquier The literary memoir is very
prominent: although too
heterogeneous to form any
definite group, it yet possesses
certain interesting group-char
acteristics, so is starred. This
list does not claim to cover all
the many interesting memoirs,
only representative cases.

Louis XVIII

1824

?Chateaubriand

1848

de Candolle

1841

?Eugenie de Gu^rin

1848

?P. J. B^ranger

1849

Vidocq, E.

1850

Dupin (avocat)

1865

Metternich

1869

Alexis de Tocqueville

1859

?Alfred de Musset

1857

Falloux

1856

?A. de Vigny

1863

?Lamartine

1869

?George Sand

1876

M. Claude

1865

?A. Dumas

1870

G&^ral Fleury

1884

Samson

1870

Villemessant

1879

?de Goncourt (Journal)

ab

1890

Maxime du Camp

1894

?E. Renan

1892

de Lesseps

?E. Quinet

?P. de Kock

Died Died
du Haussonville
Canler
?E. Legouv^
Maine de Biran all ab. 1870
?Daniel Stern 1890
Gravilres 1890
Sarah Bernhardt 1906
GROUPS OF ENGLISH
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
List I, containing Groups I, II,
and III
Our first four names are
those of writers whose auto
biographies are brief, mere
terse accounts of events, do
mestic or political.
Thomas Tusser 1680
Sir Thos. Bodley 1609
Richard Vennar 1614
Lucy Hutchinson 1620
In twenty-five years more
we find a group of detailed and
subjective self-studies (?), of
which Blair and his friends are
definitely religious.
This is a group apart from
the Quakers.
The starred names (*) show
the domestic record continu
ing, and in the hands of women.
Those marked with a dagger(t)
are of political and objective
chroniclers merely.
Note that out of eighteen
autobiographies, but six de
serve to be termed self-studies.
I
?Margaret of Newcastle 1645
?LordHerbertof Cherbury 1648
418

APPENDIX

Died
?Symonds d'Ewes 1650
?Sir Kenehn Digby 1666
?Robert Blair 1666
tLord Clarendon 1668
?James Fraser of Brae 1639-
?John Livingstone 1672

?Walter Pringle

1666

?Lady Fanshawe

1680

?William Lilly

1681

tShaftesbury, Lord

1683

ni
tJames Melvill

1683

tSir John Reresby

1689

JRichard Baxter

1696

fJohn Bramston

1699

?Anne, Lady Halkett

1699

fJohn Bunyan

1688

Group IV. English Quakers
The English Quakers here
hsted, form a continuous and
compact group, running stead
ily, without variation in man
ner or method, as late as 1840.
17th Century
John Audland 1663
Samuel Fisher 1666
Richard Farnsworth 1666
William Caton 1666
John Crook 1699
Stephen Crisp 1694
Edward Burroughs 1662
James Parnel 1656
Isaac Penington 1679
Alex. Jaffray 1673
Wm. Dewsbury 1688
Charles MarshaU 1698
Frances Howgil

George Fox
Dr. John Rutty
WiUiam Evans
Alice Ellis
John Wibur 18th Century
Gilbert Latey
Elizabeth Stirredge
Alice Hayes
Margaret Fox
Richard Claridge
Richard Davies
Thos. EUwood
John Banks
Wm. Edmundson
Christopher Story
George Whitehead
Thos. Story
Sam. Bownas
Jas. Dickinson
John Woolman
Thos. Chalkley
Elizabeth Ashbridge
Job Scott
Jas. Gough
Oliver Sansom IQth Century
Jane Pearson
Abraham Shackleton
Henry Hull
Thos. ShiUitoe
Daniel Wheeler

Died 1690

17051706
1720170217231708
171317101712 1720
1723 174217531741 1772
17411775179317121710

18161818 1834
1836
1840

List II, containing Groups V
and VI
Contemporaneous with
Group IV (Quaker) is the first
smaU cluster of genuinely scien
tific self-students (*). Seven

APPENDIX

419

names are similar in idea and
in method, of whom the great
est is Franklin . Of the remain
ing names, we find four writing
religious confessions wholly in
dependent as to creed (t). Died
Gilbert Burnet 1715
?John Flamsteed 1719
Wm. Taswell 1731
?Edmund Calamy 1732
fJohn Dunton 1733
?Roger North 1734
tW. Whiston 1749

self-study in English. The list
covers about fifty years. Died
?Thomas Holcroft 1809
Rich'd Cvunberland 1811
?Wm. Hutton 1815
?Rich'd Edgeworth 1817
?James Lackington 1816
?Sam. RomUly 1818
tWm. Hayley 1820
Arthur Young 1820
?C. Cappe 1821
?T. Bewick 1828
?Wm. Gifford 1826
Alexander Carlyle 1821

CoUey Cibber

1767

C. Charke

1769

Walter Scott

1832

Geo. Psalmanazar

1763

fEgerton Brydges

1834

?David Hume

1776

tJohn Gait

1834

Thos. Newton

1781

James Hogg

1835

?Benjamin Franklin

1790

Robt. Burns

1796

Mary Robinson

1790

tCapel-Lofft

1837

?Edward Gibbon

1794

tJ. Blanco White

1840

T. W. Tone

1798

Robt. Southey

1843

W. H. Ireland

1796

fB. R. Haydon

1846

?Joseph Priestley

1806

?Sa.muel Roberts

1848

fWilliam Wordsworth
1850
tGeorge Whitefield
1770
fLeigh Hunt
1859
fHenry AUine
1784
T. de Quincey
1859
?Ann Gilbert
1860
List III, containing Groups
fSamuel T. Coleridge
1834
VII and VIII
?Robt. and Wm. Chan
1-
Imitators of Franklin and of
hers
1871
Gibbon (?) form a defined
Group from 1809 to 1826.
List III also contains a
subsidiary Group (f) of literary
self-analyzers — religious and
introspective in tone.
Out of twenty-seven names
twenty are strongly subjec
tive, approaching the zenith of
IX. Scientific Group, 1850-1900
A clearly defined contempo
rary group.
?Charles Darwin
*T. Huxley
?Alexander Bain
?Herbert Spencer
?John Stuart Mill
420

APPENDIX

?Alfred Russel WaUace
?C. Babbage
?Charles Bray
?Harriet Martineau
?Frances Power Cobbe
?Mark Pattison
?Edmund Gosse Diary
?George John Romanes
Later
Frederic Harrison
Group X. Miscellaneous Later
List, 1850-1900
The only cluster approach
ing a group is the literary-
artistic formed about the Pre-
Raphaelite movement. These
are starred (?). Important
subjective cases (f).
A. W. TroUope
fAnnie Besant
Walter Besant
Lord Brougham
Lord Campbell
Mrs. E. Fletcher
W. P. Frith
fEliz. Grant
tA. J. C. Hare
?W. Holman Hunt
Henry Layard
Col. Meadows Taylor
Lord Roberts
F. Locker-Lampson
Macready
fCardinal Newman
?W. M. Rossetti
fM. O. W. Oliphant
?J. A. Symonds
Zerah Colburn
Lady Morgan

Geo. Harris
?Geo. Moore
U. S. Grant
Andrew White
?John Ruskin
Samuel Smiles
Lord Wolseley
tF. W. Newman
J. F. Clarke
L. Agassiz
Mrs. Charles Bagot
tJohn Beattie Crozier
tc. G. Finney
fP. G. Hamerton
GROUPS OF ITALIAN
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
First Group [Roman-Christian]
This is the first clearly de
fined cluster of self-students,
aU religious, aU Christian, aU
subjective. Two are prose con
fessions and two are poems. A. D.
Aurelius Augustinus 354-430
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens 348-405
Paulinus Pellaeus 376-460
Patricius 398-469
List I. Chromclers, etc.
The Florentines wrote per
sonal and family chronicles as
eariy as 1200-1300. The habit
is firmly established by the
14th centurj', although among
these early historians there is
not, as yet, any self-study.
The fragments of autobio
graphy taken from Petrarch's
letters (see A. d' Ancona's Rac-

APPENDIX

421

colta) are the first evidence of
subjective work of any value.
Only one subjective study
out of a list of ten. Died
Ricordano Malespini 1281
Dino Compagni 1312
Fra Salimbene 1284
Giovanni Diacono 1342
Lapo da Castiglionchio 1381
*Francesco Petrarca 1374
Leon Battista Alberti 1472
In the Miscellanea di Storia
Italiana, pub. at Turin, in 1862
are Gianbernardo Nicolo : Cronaca.
Cesare NuhUono: Cronaca da
Vigevano.
Gio, Andrea Saluzzo di Castel-
lar, memoriale di 1482-1628.
Group I
The first group of self-stu
dents is starred (*). Note eight
out of eleven are highly sub
jective.?Jerome Alfendri 1642
Francesco Guicciardini 1540
?Lorenzino da Medici 1548
?Benvenuto Cellini 1571
?RaffaeUo da Montelupo 1570
?Girolamo Cardano 1576
?Lodovico Cornaro 1566
Giorgio Vasari 1574
Benedetto Varchi 1565
Fragmentary
?Andrea Vesalius ab. 1560
?Nicold Tartaglia ab. 1546
List II
?Subjective.
?Cardinal Bellarmm 1621

Died
Cardinal Bentivoglio 1644
?Gianbattista Vico 1743
?GabrieUa Chiabrera 1614
?Giordano Bruno 1600
Montecucculi, G6n&al 1709
[war memoirs] Later
A. M. Querku 1769
Group II
Great 18th century group.
?Subjective.
?Vittorio Alfieri 1803
?Carlo Goldoni 1793
?Carlo Gozzi 1806
?J. de S. Casanova 1800
Group IV. Revolutionary,
ab. 1860
? Subjective.
?Giuseppe Giusti 1850
GaribaldiMassimo d' Azeglio 1866
?Silvio Pellico 1821
Marco Minghetti
Montanelli Confalonieri
Nerucci Gessi
TuUioU
Barbara Lanza (giomale)
Conti
?Giovanni Dupr6 1884
Hayez
Marchesa Venuti
Enrichetta Caracciolo
Giuseppe Campanella
Conte di Arrivabene
Luigi Bianchi

423 APPENDIX
Died Died
Cardinal Pacca Viterbi, Luc Antonio 1821
Guido SoreUi ab. 1821
Cfesare Balbo 1844 Tommaso Salvini 1829
Ugo Foscolo (fictional) Adelaide Ristori 1906

APPENDIX C
PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS
Poets
Alfieri, B&anger, Brydges, Burns, Goethe, Giusti, Hayley,
Heine, Hogg, Hunt, Lamartine, Locker-Lampson, Moore, De
Musset, Petrarch, Rossetti, Southey, Wordsworth.
Novelists
Andersen, Besant, Dumas, Gait, Oliphant, Scott, Sand,
Tolstoi, TroUope. Historians
Abderrahman, D''Aubign6, Brant6me, Comines, Gibbon, Hume,
Josephus, Khaldoun, De Thou.
Playwrights
Cibber, Cumberland, Goldoni, Gozzi, Kotzebue, Marmontel,
Vennar. Artists
Bashkirtsev, Cellini, Bewick, Dupr^, Frith, R. da Montelupo,
W. B. Scott, Vasari. Musicians
Berlioz, Spohr. Court Personages
Arnauld, Anspach, Bramston, Ii.de Brienne {fils) , De BouiUon,
Cheverny, Daschkaw, Delaunay, Digby, Fanshawe, H. Mancini,
M. Mancini, L. de Medici, Montpensier, Motteville, Newcastle,
D'Oberkirch, Reresby, Shaftesbury, Saint-Simon, ViUeroy.
Monarchs
Augustus, Baber, Bareith, Catherine II, C«sar, Jahanghir,
Leonora-Christina, Louis XIV, Louis XVIII, Madame, L. de
Savoie, S. of Hanover, Timur, M. de Valois.

APPENDIX 423
Prisoners
Kropotkin, Latude, L. Christina, Trenck.
Soldiers
Balbo, Bassompierre, Bussy, Fleurange, Grant, Forbin, Le
jeune, Marbot, Marmont, Monluc, Roberts, Taylor, Tone,
Wolseley. Statesmen
D'Andilly, D' Azeglio, de Bernis, L. de Brienne {pere). Claren
don, Franklin, GourviUe, Guizot, Herbert, Pasquier, de Retz,
de Sully, TaUeyrand. Lawyers
CampbeU, D'Ewes, Greville, Harris, North, Robinson, RomiUy,
Young. Actors
Bauer, Bernhardt, Charke, Clairon, Georges, Heiberg, Mac-
ready, "Perdita," Ristori, Salvini, E. Terry.
Doctors
CaldweU, Stilling. Freaks
Beers, Borulaski, Colbum, Viterbi.
Rogues and Impostors
Ashe, Bonneval, De Choisy, Ireland, Psalmanazar.
Adventurers
Casanova, Flynt, Du TiUy, Vamb^ry.
Police Agents
Canler, Claude, Fouquet, Vidocq.
Divines
Calamy, Carlyle, Newton, Taswell.
Merchants
Bray, R. & W. Chambers, Dunton, Gifford, Holcroft, Hutton,
Lackington. Domestic
Bagot, Cappe, Fletcher, Gilbert, Grant, FrfeUly, Halkett,
Hutchinson, Morgan, S. Roberts.

424 APPENDIX Religious
Abelard, AUine, Ashbridge, Augustin, Blair, Bownas, Bunyan,
Cartwright, Chalkley, Clarke, Crisp, Crook, Davies, Edmundson,
EUwood, Finney, Fraser, Fox, Gough, Guibert, Hayes, Huet, Hull,
Livingstone, Morellet, Newman, F. W. Newman, Patrick, Pear
son, Pringle, Prudentius, Salimbene, Sansom, Schimmelpenninck,
Scott, Stirredge, Teresa, White, Whitefield, Woolman.
Philosophers and Scientists
d'Acosta, Agassiz, Arago, Avicenna, Babbage, Bain, Bodley,
Bruno, Cardan, Cobbe, Darwin, Descartes, Erasmus, Flamsteed,
Ghazzali, Hazin, Holberg, Huxley, Kovalevsky, Layard, LUly,
Lutfullah, Maimon, Martineau, Mill, Pattison, Platter, Priestlev.
Quinet, Spencer, Wallace, Vico. Writers
Besant, Blowitz, BrandSs, Capel-Lofft, Chastenay, Chateau
briand, Coleridge, Edgeworth, d'^lfipinay, Genlis, Gosse, Hamer
ton, Hare, Lavater, Paulinus, De Quincey, Richter, Roland,
Rousseau, Ruskin, Smiles, Sorelli, Symonds, Tusser, Whiston.

APPENDIX D
1. FIRST MEMORIES
One year. Gait, Gosse, Richter.
Two years. Augustin, Bernis, Delaunay, Herbert, Hutton,
Martineau, Platter, Quinet, Reresby, Roland, Sand, Spohr,
Southey. Three years. Bagot, Bain, Bewick, Brougham, Brydges,
Carlyle, Dumas, Edgeworth, D'Ewes, Grant, Gibbon, Guyon,
Hare, Holcroft, Huxley, Layard, Maimon, Marbot, Marmont,
Mill, D'Oberkirch, Robinson, Spencer.
Four years. D' Azeglio, Cardan, Cellini, Darwin, Flynt, Goethe,
Goldoni, Priestley, Ruskin, Schimmelpenninck, Taylor.
Five years and after. Alfieri, Babbage, Blair, Clarke, Cobbe,
Dupr6, Kovalevsky, Renan, Rousseau, Scott, Wallace.
At eight years. Casanova, Hamerton.

APPENDIX 425
2. STRONG MEMORIES
D'Acosta, Alfieri, D'Aubign6, D' Azeglio, Bareith, Bellarmin,
B^ranger, Brougham, Brydges, Capel-Lofft, Cardan, Catherine II,
ChWeaubriand, Cobbe, Coleridge, Delaunay, Descartes, Dumas,
Erasmus, Flamsteed, Fletcher, FrtoiUy, Ghazzali, Gilbert, Goethe,
Goldoni, Hazin, Herbert, Holberg, Holcroft, Huet, Khaldoun,
Kovalevsky, Lackington, Leonora-Christina, Lutfullah, Maimon,
MUl, Moore, D'Oberkirch, Petrarch, Platter, Priestley, Psalma
nazar, Quinet, Roland, Sand, Sophia, Southey, Spencer, StiUing,
Trenck, Vamb^ry, Vico.
3. WEAK MEMORIES
Bunyan, Darwin, Gait, Gosse, Livingstone, Locker-Lampson,
Marmontel, North, Pasquier, Pattison, Rousseau, Ruskin, De
Thou, TroUope, WaUace.

APPENDIX E
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS
Religious Studies are indicated by italics. Where possible,
dates are of birth and death. In a few cases, they are of birth, and
termination of the autobiography. In one or two cases, there is
but a single date, used merely as a guide to the epoch of the
autobiographer. Sudanese Abderrahman Sadi el Timbucti 1690-1626
Tarik 6 Sudan
French Aboard, Pierre 1079-1142
Letter II
Portuguese Acosta, Uriel d' ab. 1623
Exemplar vitae humanae [Eng. trans.]
French Agrippa d'Aubignfi, Theodore 1560-1630
Mimoires de
Italian Al^andri, Jerome, Cardinal 1480-1542
Journal Autobiographique [Imp. Nat.
H. Omar]
Italian Alfieri, Vittorio, da Asti 1749-1808
Vita, Bcritta da esso

426

APPENDIX

American

AUine, Rev. Henry
Life and Journal of

1748-1784

Danish

Andersen, Hans Christian
Das Marchen meines Lebens

1805-1875
French
d'Andilly, Arnauld
Memoires de
1589-1674
English
Anspach, Margravine of
Memoirs, written by Herself
1750-1814
French
Arago, Frangois
History of my Youth
1786-
French
d'Argenson, Marquis de
Mtooires, et Journal
1694-1767
French
Arnauld, I'abb^
Memoires de
1616-1698
English
Ashbridge, Elizabeth
Some Account of the Life of
1713-1755
English
Ashe, Capt. Thomas [probably spuri
Memoirs of
ous]
Roman
Aurelius Antoninus, Marcus
Meditations of
121-180
Roman-
Numidian
Aurelius Augustinus
Confessions of [Patristic ed.]
364-430
Arabic
Avicenna [Ib'n Sina]
980-1037
Autobiography [fragment]. Ed. Carra de
Vaux
Italian
d' Azeglio, Massimo
I Miei Ricordi
1798-1866
English
Babbage, Charles
1796-1864
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
Hindu
Baber, Muhammed, Emperor of Hindu
i-
stan
1483-1630
Journal of [fragmentary]. Ed. H.
Eliot
English
Bain, Alexander
Autobiography
1818-1903
Italian
Balbo, Cesare
La Vita di [unfinished]
1789-1844
German
Bareith, Margravine of
Memoires de [in French]
1709-1748
French
Bashkirtsev, Marie
Journal d'une jeune artiste
1860-1884
APPENDIX

427

French

Bassompierre, Marshal de
Journal de ma Vie

1579-1646

German

Bauer, Karoline
Memoirs of [Eng. trans.]

1809-

English

Baxter, Richard
Life and Times of [Dr. Calamy's ed.]

1696

American

Beers, Clifford W.
A Mind that found itself

1908

Italian

Bellarmino, Roberto, Cardinal

1542-1621

. Vita [German trans, by DoUinger and

Reusoh]

French
BSranger, P. J.
Ma Biographie
1780-1857
French
Bernhardt, Sarah
Memoires de ma Vie
1836-
French
Berlioz, Hector
Memoire de
1803-1869
French
Bernis, de. Cardinal
Memoires de
1715-1794
English
Besant, Annie
An Autobiography
1847
English
Besant, Walter
An Autobiography
1836-1901
English
Bewick, Thomas
A Memoir of, by Himself
1763-1823
Scots
Blair, Robert
Autobiography of
1693-1666
French
Blowitz, Henri de
Memoire de
1825-1902
English
Bodley, Sir Thomas
Autobiographical Sketch
1644-1609
French
Bonneval, Count [Osman Bashaw]
Memoirs of a French Adventurer, Eng.
1648
Borulaski, Joseph
1752
Life of
French
Bouillon, Due de
Memoires, addressees ft, son Fils
1555-1623
English
Bownas, Samuel
An Account of
1676-1763
English
Bramston, Sir John
1611-1699
Autobiography of [Camden Society Pub .]
428Danish EnglishEnglish
Italian EnglishEnglish Scots
FrenchRomanEnglishAmerican EnglishItalian Scots
American ItalianRussianItalianEnglish Scots

APPENDIX
BrandSs, Georg 1908
Reminiscences of my Childhood and
Youth
Bray, Charles 1811-1884
Phases of Opinion and Experience
Brougham, Henry, Lord 1778-1868
Life and Times of
Bruno, Giordano, da Nola 1548-1600
Constituto di [Domenico Berti]
Brydges, Sir Egerton 1762-1834
Autobiography, Times, Opinions of, etc.
Bunyan, John 162S-1688
Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners

Burns, Robert
Autobiography (in a letter)
Bussy-Rabutin, Comte de
Memoires de Messire
Caesar, Caius-Julius
Commentary
Calamy, Dr. Edmund
Historical Account of my own Life
CaldweU, Charles, M. D.
Autobiography
Cappe, Mrs. Catherine
Memoirs of the Life of
Cardano, Girolamo
De vita propria Liber [ed. Spons]
Carlyle, Alexander, of Inveresk
Autobiography of
Cartwright, Peter
Autobiography
Casanova, Jacques de
Memoires
Catherine II
Mtooires de
Cellini, Benvenuto
Vita di, scritta da lui medesimo [Eng.
by Symonds]
Chalkley, Thomas
Journal of
Chambers, Robert and WUliam
Memoirs of

1759-1796

1618-1693

B.C. 100-44

1671-1732

1772-1863

1744-1821

1501-1576

1722-1805

1785-1856

1751

1729-1796

1500-1571

1675-1739

180011806 J

1871

APPENDIX

429

English

Charke, Charlotte
Narrative of the Life of

1769

French

Chastenay, Victorine de
Memoires

1771-1855

French

Ch&teaubriand Vicomte de
Memoires d'Outre-Tombe

1768-1847

French

Cheverny, Phihppe Hurault de
Mtooire de

1528-1699

Itahan

Chiabrera, GabrieUa
Vita, scritta da lui medesimo

1552-1637

French

Choisy, Tabbg de
Memoires de

1644r-1724

English

Cibber, Colley
Apology for the Life of

1671-1767

French

Clairon, MUe. Sophie
Memoire [fragment]

1723-1802

English

Clarendon, Lord, Edward Hyde
An Account of the Life of

1608-1668

American

Clarke, James Freeman
Autobiography

1810-1888

French

Claude, Monsieur
Mtooires

ab. 1830

English

Cobbe, Frances Power
The Life of, by Herself

1822-1904

English

Colburn, Zerah
Life of, by Himself

1804-1840

English

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Biographical Sketch of

1773-1834

French

CoU6, Charles
Journal

1782

French

Comines, Philippe de
Mtooir s de

1446-1509

Italian

Cornaro, Lodovico
Discorsi deUa vita sobria

1467-1566

English

Crisp, Stephen
A Journal of the Life of

1692

English

Crook, John
A short History of the Life of

ab. 1654

English

Crozier, John Beattie
My Inner Life

ab. 1849

Scots

Cruden, Alexander
Adventures of Alexander the Correctoi

1701-1766

430

APPENDIX

English

Cumberland, Richard
Memoirs of, written by Himself

1732-1811

French

Dangeau, Journal de

1721

English

Darwin, Charles
Autobiography [Sketch, in Life]

1809-1882

Russian

Daschkaw, Catherine Romanova, Prin

cess

1744-1810

Memoirs of [English trans.]
English
Davies, Richard
An account of the Convincements,
Services, etc., of
1635-1707
French
Descartes, Rin6
Discours de la Mithode
1596-1660
English
d'Ewes, Sir Symonds
Autobiography of
1602-1650
English
Digby, Sir Kenehn
Private Memoirs of
1603-1665
French
Dumas, Alexandre
Mes Memoires
1802-1870
English
Dunton, John
1659-1735
Life and Errors of
Italian
Dupr6, Giovanni
Autobiographical Memoirs of [Eng.
trans.]
1817-1884
German
Ebers, Georg
Life of, by Himself
ab. 1896
English
Edmundson, William
Journal of the Life of
1627-1712
Dutch
Electress of Hanover, Sophia,
Memoirs of [edited by Leibnitz]
1630-1680
English
EUwood, Thomas
, The Life of
1639-1713
French
Epinay, Mme. d'
Memoires de
1725-1783
Dutch
Erasmus, Desiderius
Compendium Vitae [in a letter]
1466-1536
English
Fanshawe, Lady
Memoirs of, by Herself
1625-1680
Spanish
Fervel, C.
ab. 1683
Carmen de Vita sua
American
Finney, C. Q.
Life of
ab. 1792
APPENDIX

431

English Flamsteed, John 1646-1719
Account of the Life and Labours of
Scots Fletcher, Mrs. Eliza 1770-1858
Autobiography of
French Fleurange, Seigneur de, Robert de la 1492-1536
Mark (Le Jeune Aventureux)
American Flynt, Josiah [Willard] 1908
My Life
French Forbin, Comte de 1677-1734
Memoire de
English Fox, George 1624-1690
A Journal, or Historical Account of
American Franklin, Benjamin 1706-1790
Autobiography of
Scots Fraser, James, of Brae 1639
Memoirs of the Reverend [Woodrow
Soc]
French Fr&iUy, Baron de 1768-1848
Souvenirs de
English Frith, W. R. ab. 1819
My Autobiography, and Reminiscences
Scots Gait, John 1779-1834
The Autobiography of
French Genlis, Madame de 1746-1825
Memoires
French Georges, MUe. [Weymer] 1787-1867
Memoires in^dits de
Arabic al-Ghazzali 1056-1111
Le Preservatif de L'Erreur [Barbier
de Meynard] (Eng. trans.)
English Gibbon, Edward 1737-1794
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
English Gifford, WUliam 1756-1826
Memoir of
English Gilbert, Mrs. [Ann Taylor] 1782
Autobiography of
Italian Giusti, Giuseppe 1809-1850
Vita di
German Goethe, W. v. 1749-1832
Wahrheit ii. Dichtung
Italian Goldoni, Cario 1707-1793
Vita di

432

APPENDIX

English

Gosse, Edmund
Father and Son

1908

English

Gough, James
Memoirs of

1712

French

Goumay, de, Marie le Jars
Sa Vie par EUe-m6me ; Apologie de

1566-1645

French

Gourville, J. H. de
Memoires

1626-1703

Italian

Gozzi, Carlo
Memorie inutUe . . . publicata per
umUt4

1720-1806

Scots

Grant, Elizabeth, of Rothiemurchus
Memoirs of a Highland Lady

1797-1825

French

Guibert de Nogent
Vie de par lui-meme

1063-1124

French

Guyon, Jeanne de la Mothe
Vie de, par eUe-mgme

1648-1717

English

Halkett, Lady Anne
Autobiography of [Camden Soc. Pub.]

1622-1699

English

Hamerton, Philip Gilbert
Autobiography of

1834^1894

English

Hare, A. J. C.
The Story of my Life

1834-1903

English

Harris, George
Autobiography and Diary

1809-1884

English

Haydon, Benjamin Robert
"The Autobiography of

1786-1846

English

Hayes, Alice
A Short Account of

1657-1720

English

Hayley, Wm.
Memoirs of

1745-1820

Persian

Hazin, Muhammed Ali [Sheikh]
The Life of, by Himself [trans.]

1692-1779

German

Heine, Heinrich
Memoirs of

1799-1866

EngHsh

Herbert of Cherbury, Lord Edward
The Autobiography of

1583-1648

Scots

Hogg, James
Memoir of, by Himself

1772-1835

Norwegian

Holberg, Louis, Baron
The Life of [trans.]

1684-1754

APPENDIX

433

English

Holcroft, Thomas
Memoirs of the Late

1745-1809

French

Huet, Pierre Daniel
Commentariis de rebus ad ilium per-
tinentibus

1630-1721

English

Hull, Henry
Life and Journal

1834

English

Hume, David
My own Life

1711-1776

English

Hunt, Leigh
Autobiography of

1784-1859

English

Hunt, W. Hohnan
Pre-RaphaeUtism and the Pre-
Raphaehtes

ab. 1900

English

Hutchinson, Luxy
Life, by Herself [fragment]

ab. 1620

English

Hutton, WiUiam
The Life of

1723-1815

English

Huxley, Thomas Henry
Autobiography [fragment]

1825-1896

English

Ireland, WUliam Henry
Confessions of

1796

Hindu

Jahanghir Jahanghir-Nama [Memoirs of]

French

du Jon, Frangois [Junius]
Vita Francisci Junii, ab ipsomet Junio
scripta

1545-1602

Jewish

Josephus, Flavius
Life of, by Himself

38-100

Moorish

Khaldoun, Ib'n
Autobiography, prefaced to the Prole
gomena. French trans.

1332-1406

German

Kotzebue, Augustus von

1761-1819

Sketch of the Life and Literary Career of

Russian

Kovalevsky, Sonya
Recollections of Childhood

1850-1891

Russian

Kropotkin, Peter
Autobiography of a Revolutionist

1842-1900

English

Lackington, James

1746-1815

Memoirs of the first Forty-five Years
of the Life of

434

APPENDIX

French

Lamartine, Alphonse de
Les Confidences

1789

French

La Rochefoucauld, Due de
Mtooires

1613-1680

French

Latude, Henri Masers de
Memoires

1724-1805

German

Lavater [trans.]
Secret History of a Self-Observer

ab. 1759

English

Layard, Sir Henry
Memoirs

1817-1894

French

Lejeune, Baron
Memoires

1775-1831

English

Lilly, WiUiam
History of his Life and Times, wrote
by Himself

1602-1681

Scots

Livingstone, Dr. John [WoodrowSoc. Pub.] 1603-1672

A Brief Historical Account of the Life of

English

Locker-Lampson, Frederick
My Confidences: an Autobiographical
Sketch

ab. 1821

English

Lofft, Sir Capel
Self-Formation ; or the History of, etc.

1812-1837

French

Lomenie de Brienne {pbre)
Memoires

1594-1666

French

Lomhnie de Brienne {fils)
Memoires in^dits de

1636-1688

Italian

Lorenzino de' Medici
L'Apologia di

1514-1548

Hindu

Lutfullah Autobiography [ed. by Eastwick]

1802-1857

English

Macready, William C.
Reminiscences

1793-1873

French

Madame (mSre du Regent)
Memoires

1652-1722

Polish

Maimon, Solomon
Autobiography [trans, by J. C. Murray]

1754r-1800

French

Mancini, Hortense, Duchesse de Mazarin
Mtooires (see ffiuvres de St. RM)

1647-1699

French

Mancini, Marie, Princesse Colonna
La Verity dans son Jour : oil L' Apologie

1640-1678

French

Marbot, Baron de
Mtooires

1782-1854

APPENDIX

435

French

Marmontel

Memoires d'un Pfere

English

Martineau, Harriet

Autobiography of

English

Mill, John Stuart

Autobiography

French

Monluc, Blaise de

Les Commentaires
Itahan
Montelupo, Raffaello da
La Vita di (fragments)
French
Montpensier, Anne Marie-Louise d'Or
leans, duchesse de
Memoires
English
Moore, Thomas
Memoirs of Myself, and Diary
French
Morellet, I'abbe
Memoires sur le 18^ Sificle
French
MottevUle, Madame de
Memoires
French
Musset, Alfred de
Confession d'un Enfant de Siecle
English
Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of
A true relation of my birth, breeding
and life
English
Newman, Francis 180
Phases of Faith
English
Newman, John Henry (Cardinal)
Apologia pro Vita sua
English
Newton, John
Autobiography
English
Newton, Thomas (Bishop)
Some Account of the Author's Life
English
North, Roger
Autobiography (unfinished)
Alsacian
d'Oberkirch, Mme.
Memoires
English
Oliphant, Mrs. M. 0. W.
Autobiography
Syrian
Ousama Ib'n Mounkidh
1723-1799
1802-1876
1806-1873
1500-1577
1503-1570
1627-1693
1779-1852
1727-1819
1621-1689
1810-1857
1645
1805-ab. 1850
1801-1890
1726-1807
1705-1782
1653-1734
1754-1803
1827-1897
"Instruction par les Exemples"
French trans, by H. Derenbourg
French Paradin, Guillaume
Histoire de Nostre Temps
1095-1188
1558
436

APPENDIX

French

Pasquier (Chancelier)
Histoire de mon Temps

1767-1862

Roman-

Patricius, Saint

398-469
Briton
Confession of
English
Pattison, Mark
Memoirs of
1814-1884
Franco-
Paulinus Pellceus
376-460
Roman
Eucharisticon de Vita sua
English
Pearson, Jane
Sketches of the Life of
1734-1816
German
Pellican, Dr. Conrad
1478-1556
Chronicon Vitae ipsius, ab
ipso con-
scriptum
Italian
Petrarca, Francesco
1304^1374
La Vita di [in A. d'Ancona's
Raccolta]
German
Platter, Thomas
Autobiography
1499-1573
American
Priestley, Dr. Joseph
Memoirs
1733-1805
Scots
Pringle, Walter, of Greenknow
Memoirs [Woodrow Soc. Pub.]
1666
Roman-
Prudentius, Aurelius Clemens
348-405
Spanish
Prefatio
Psalmanazar, George
1679-1763
Memoirs of xxx
English
de Quincey, Thomas
-1859
Autobiographic Sketches,
and Con-
fessions, etc.
French
Quinet, Edgar
Histoire de Mes Idfies
1803-1875
French
Raguse, due de (Marfichal Marmont)
1774-1857
Memoires
French
Renan, Ernest
1823-1892
Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse
English
Reresby, Sir John
The Memoirs of
1634-1689
French
de Retz, Cardinal
Memoires
1614-1679
German
Richter, Jean Paul
Truth from my own Life
1763-1823
Italian
Ristori, Adelaide
1824-1906
Autobiography [Eng. trans.]
APPENDIX

437

English

Roberts, Samuel
Autobiography

1763-1848

Enghsh

Robinson, Mary "Perdita"
Memoirs of the late, by Herself

1758-1800

French

Roland, J. M. Phlipon, Comtesse de
Vie Privfe, Scrite par EUe-m^me

1754-1793

English

Romilly, Sir Samuel
Memoirs of the Life of

1767-1818

English

Rossetti, William Michael
Some Reminiscences of

1829

French

Rousseau, Jean Jacques
Les Confessions

1712-1778

English

Ruskin, John
Praeterita : Outlines of my Past Life

1819-1892

English

Rutty, Dr. John
Spiritual Diary of

1775

French

Saint-Simon, Due de
Memoires

1675-1755

Italian

Salimbene, Fra, di Adamo

1221-1288

Chronicle of [In G. G. Coulton's " From

St. Francis to Dante"]

Italian
Salvini, Tommaso
Autobiografia
1829
French
Sand, George
Histoire de ma Vie
1804-1876
English
Sansom, Oliver
The Life of
1636-1710
French
Savoie, Louise de
Journal (fragment)
1476-1532
English
Schimmelpenninck, Mary-Anne
Autobiography
1778-1866
American
Scott, Job
Life, Travels and Gospel Labours of
1761-1793
Scots
Scott, Sir Walter
Autobiography, and General Prefaces
[Lockhart]
1770-1832
English
Scott, William Bell
Autobiographical Notes of
1811-1890
English
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper,
Eari of
1621-1683
Autobiographical Fragment
English
Smiles, Samuel
Autobiography
1812-1904
438

APPENDIX

Italian

Sorelli, Guido
My Confessions [Eng. trans.]

1821

English

Southey, Robert
Autobiographical Recollections

1784-1843

EngHsh

Spencer, Herbert
An Autobiography

1820-1904

German

Spohr, Ludwig
Autobiography

1784-1869

French

Staal-Delaunay, Madame de
Memoires

1695-1750

German

StUling, J. Heinrich
Autobiography of

1740-1817

English

Stirredge, Elizabeth
Life of

1634-1706

French

SuUy, Due de

1659-1641

Les Economies Royales et les Servitudes

Loyales

German
Suso, Heinrich [von Berg]
Life of the Blessed . . . (Eng. Knox]
1300-1365
I
English
Symonds, John Addington
Autobiography
1840-1893
French
Talleyrand, Prince de
Memoires
1764-1838
English
Taswell, William D. D.
Autobiography (Camden Soc. Pub.)
1662
English
Taylor, Col. Meadows
Story of my Life
1808-1876
Spanish
Teresa, Santa [French trans.]
Vie de
1516-1682
French
Thou, J. A. de
Mtooires de la Vie
1653-1617
French
Tilly, Alexandre
Memoires
1764-1815
Hindu
TimUr (Eliot : Eng. trans.)
1336-1407
Mulfusat-Timtlry : Autobiographical
Memoirs of
Russian
Tolstoi, Leon
1828
Ma Confession [Fr. and Eng.] and Mes
Memoires
English
Tone, Theobald Wolfe
Life, by Himself
1763-1798
APPENDIX

439

German Trenck, Frederic de 1726-1789
L'Histoire de Mes Malheurs (in French)
English TroUope, Anthony 1815-1882
An Autobiography
English Tusser, Thomas 1616-1580
The Author's Life
Danish Ulfeldt, Leonora Christina, of Denmark 1621-1698
Autobiography and Memoir [Eng. trans.]
French Valois, Marguerite de 1663-1615
Memoire
Hungarian Vambery, Arminius 1832
Autobiography
Italian Vasari, Giorgio 1512-1574
Vita di (nelle Vite di Pittori)
English Vennar, Richard ab. 1571-1617
An Apology
French Vidocq, Eugene Franjois 1775-1829
Memoires
Itahan Vied, Gianbattista 1678-1743
Vita, scritta da Lui medesimo
French VUleroy,NicolasdeNeufville,Seigneurde 1643-1617
Memoires d'Estat.
Italian Viterbi, Luc-Antonio 1769-1821
Diary of [Eng. in Waldie Library , vol. iv]
English Wallace, Alfred Russel 1823-1905
My Life
English Whiston, William 1667-1749
Memoirs
English White, Joseph Blanco 1775-1841
Autobiography, in two parts
English Whitefield, George 1714-1770
A Short Account of God's Dealings with
English Wolseley, Viscount 1833-1904
The Story of a Soldier's Life
American Woolman, John 1720-1772
Journal
English Wordsworth, William 1770-1850
The Prelude
English Young, Arthur 1741-1820
Autobiography, Diary, etc.

INDEX

Abderrahman Sadi el Timbucti, 356.
Abeba, 33.
Aboard, P., 305, 332, 333, 365.
Ability, people of, 52, 53.
d'Acosta, Uriel, 260, 277, 278, 332, 333.
Actors' Autobiographies, 195, 368.
Agnosticism in nineteenth century
group, 364.
Agnostics, women as, 360.
" Agricola " of Tacitus, 40.
Agrippa d'Aubign^, T., 49, 123, 219,
263, 271, 297, 343, 372, 389.
Aims, definite, chapter xviii, 369.
Albany, Louise of, 295, 296.
AWandri, Jerome. See Bibliography.
Alfieri, V., 4, 24, 48, 49, 54, 81, 162, 185,
194, 198, 200, 204, 214, 217, 219, 257,
284, 286, 290, 294-297, 343, 344, 352,
363, 370, 371, 376, 386, 392, 395, 402.
Algebraists, 105.
AUine, Henry, 219, 251, 275, 367.
Ambitions, 114.
Ameni, 33.
American autobiography, 208-211.
Ammianus Marcellinus, 12.
Ancient literature, wholly objective,
31.
Ancona, A. d', 90, 198, 342.
Andersen, H. C, 49, 68, 69, 207, 208,
340.
d'Andilly, A. See Bibliography.
Anspaeh, Margravine of, 28, 334, 344.
Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, 39, 40,
72, 75, 76, 91, 351.
Apologetic tone iu autobiography,
331 «E.
Apologies, the great, 331, 334.
Arabic autobiographies, 354-363.
Arago, F. See Bibliography.
Archetypes, the three, 742.
d'Argenson, Duo, 22, 23, 136.
Aristotle, 83, 338, 355.
Arnauld, Abb6. See Bibliography.
Arnold, Matthew, 38, 325.
d'Artagnan, forged memoir, 20.
Artists as autobiographers, 171.

Ashbridge, Elizabeth, 235, 275.
Ashe, Thomas, 20.
Ashmole, £., 75.
Attitudes toward nature, 202, 204, 205,
313.
Audience, the world as an, 378.
Audience of posterity, 60, 115.
Auditory phenomena in conversion,
274, 275.
Augustinus, Aurelius, 4, 11, 14, 30, 36,
74, 76, 80, 81, 106, 107, 120, 138-140,
143, 150, 212, 213, 228, 232, 233, 237,
240, 241, 243, 250, 264, 276, 305, 313,
336, 367, 373, 401.
Augustus, 34, 35, 91.
Aurolian, 35.
Ausonius, 41.
Autobiographers, classic, 197.
Autobiographical groups, chapter x.
Autobiographical intention, chapter
11, 61, 130, 145, 170, 197, 253, 406.
Autobiography and fiction, chapter
ix ; in form of fiction, 17.
Avicenna, 338, 355, 365, 372.
d'AzegHo, M., 217, 395.
Babbage, Charles, 150, 366, 373, 399.
Baber, 22, 355, 366, 386.
Bacon, Francis, 165.
Bain, Alexander, 364, 373; study of
character, 217.
Balbo, Cesare, 388.
Balzac, Honors de, 149, 156, 166, 169.
Bareith, Margravine of, 208, 226, 256,
292, 318, 388.
Barnum, P. T., 14.
Barras, 136.
Barri, Madame du, 15.
Bartoli, Italian literature, 90.
Bashkirtsev, Marie, 29, 219, 293, 340.
Bassompierre, 134, 138, 140, 146, 169,
161, 162, 171, 204, 205, 280, 305, 318,
368.
Baudelaire, 379.
Bauer, K., 68, 195, 203.
Baxter, Richard, 18, 141.

442

INDEX

Bayle, Pierre, " Dictlonnalre Cri
tique," 84, 93, 111, 115, 142.
Beaumarchais, P. A. C. de, 21.
Beers, C. W., 276.
Bellarmin, 142, 219, 248, 249, 336, 366,
372.
Bellay, M. du, 133.
Btoanger, B. J., 339, 363, 385, 392.
Berlioz, H., 279, 326, 393.
Bernhardt, Sarah, 195, 293, 368.
Bernis, Cardinal de, 215, 306.
Besant, Annie, 49, 264, 261, 363.
Besant, Walter. See Bibliography.
Bewick, T., 298.
Bible, the, 32.
Bidder, 120.
Biography of autobiographers, 64.
Birrell, Augustin, 45.
Birs-Nimrud inscription, 34, 37.
Bizarreries, 10, 352, 363, 371.
Blair, Eobert, 77, 216, 219, 260, 251,
267, 269, 299, 367, 406.
Blavatsky, Madame, 261, 363.
Blitz, Signer, 14.
Blowitz, Henri, 342.
Bodley, T., 365, 389.
Boer, T. J. de, " Philosophy in Is
lam,"
Bois, du, Cardinal, 15.
Boissier, Gaston, 38, 61, 78, 135, 400.
Bonneval, Count. See Bibliography.
Borulaski, J. See Bibliography.
Bossuet, 378 ; sermon on death of
Madame, 266.
Boswell's " Johnson," 54, 75.
Bouillon, Due de, 318.
Bourrienne, 22.
Bownas, S., 236, 262.
Bramston, Sir J. See Bibliography.
Brandfes, G., 219, 221, 263, 312, 368.
Bray, Billy, 232.
Bray, Charles, 386.
Brienne, Comte L. de, 261.
Brougham, Lord, 67, 73, 216, 219, 270,
271, 365, 383.
Browne, Sir Thomas, 82.
Browning, Robert, " Cleon," 408.
Bruno, Giordano, 331, 332, 334, 367,
378.
Bruytee, La, 311.
Brydges, Sir Egerton, 48, 50, 206, 255,
279, 324, 325, 344, 386, 393, 402, 403.
Buddha, 33.

Bunyan, J., 123, 237, 252, 284, 287, 367.
Burnet, Bishop, 22.
Burney, Fanny, 58, 319, 320.
Burns, Eobert, 28, 210, 364.
Burton, Eichard, 82, 230.
Bussy-Eabutln, 50, 166, 160, 162, 270,
305, 318, 343.
Byron, Lord, 17, 162, 378, 382.
Caesar, Calus Julius, 35, 74-76, 81, 91,
130, 136, 138, 139, 140.
CagUostro, 72.
Calamy, Dr. E., 18, 141, 158, 160, 263,
274, 300.
Caldwell, Charles, 70.
Campbell, John, 270, 388.
Candolle, A. de, 9, 95.
Canler, 149.
Canta, Cesare, on Italian Literature,
90.
Capel-Lofft, 221, 254, 263.
Cappe, Mrs. C. See Bibliography.
Cardan, Fazio, 94 fl.
Cardan, J., 19, 24, 30, 48, 65, 66, 74, 79,
80, 85, 140-143, 146, 174, 177, 181, 185,
198, 200, 206, 206, 214^216, 218, 224,
254, 268, 273-275, 282-284, 286, 313,
317, 334, 335, 337, 338, 343, 353, 355,
361, 369, 370, 373, 376, 378, 380, 383,
387, 390, 394, 396, 399, 402, 406.
Carlyle, Alexander, 217.
Carrer, L., 198.
CartWTiglit, Peter, 233, 252, 367.
Casanova, J., 16, 155, 162, 214.
Casaubon, 177.
Cassanate, M., 116.
Catalogue ralsonn^, need of a, 6.
Catherine II, 22, 65, 66, 208, 256, 285,
290, 291, 311, 343, 348, 365, 370, 372,
383, 396.
Catulus, Q. L., 41, 130.
Cavour, 379.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 5, 25, 64, 65, 66, 72,
79, 121, 142, 171, 174, 177, 181, 194, 198,
200, 206, 214, 216, 250, 257, 267, 272, 277,
294, 316, 317, 336, 343, 364, 376, 383, 399,
406.
Chalkley, Thomas, 235, 252.
Chambers, Eobert and ¦William, 219,
395.
Chandler, F. W., " Literature of
Roguery," 71, 149.
Changes in faith, 259-261.

INDEX

443

Character, genius and, 394.
Characteristics of Eastern Auto
biography, 354-363 ; of English, 205,
207.
Characteristics ot French, 200-206; of
German, 68, 207-208; of Italian, 198,
205.
Charke, Charlotte, 28, 195.
Chastenay, Victorine de, 324, 348, 389.
Chateaubriand, Vicomte de, 11, 216,
255, 260, 285, 286, 303, 304, 315, 326,
340.
Cheverny, P. H. de, 22.
Chiabrera, G., 198.
Child-Study, examples to aid, 219.
Choisy, I 'abb6 de, 15, 28, 72.
Chopin, F., 53, 68.
Christianity and autobiography, 31,
38, 405.
Chroniclers, mediaeval, 14, 206.
Cibber, Colley, 49, 309, 319, 344, 368,
403.
Cicero, 69, 349.
City, the, in autobiography, 203, 205.
Clairon, Mile., 195, 279, 324, 368.
Clarendon, Lord, 384, 403.
Clarke, J. F., 263.
Classification of autobiographies, 28,
75 235.
Claude, M., 149, 151.
Claudius, 35.
Cleveland, Grover, 240.
Cobbe, F. P., 293, 315, 343, 348.
Colbum, Zerah, 120, 219.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 365, 368.
Coll^, C, 178.
Collier, J. Payne, 206.
Comines, Philippe de, 22.
Commentaries, 36.
Commodion, 41, 374.
Commonplace autobiographies, 14,
206.
Comparison of autobiographies, 16,
205, 253, 264.
Comte, A., 350, 398.
Confession, the religious, 144, 193,
234, 265, 366, 407.
Confucius, 33.
Consciousness of self, flrst, 220-222.
Conversation, love of, 178.
Conversion, 233, 238, 250, 263, 366 ; non-
rellgiouB, 264.
CorbineUi, 158, 159, 204.

Cornaro, Lodovico, 142, 177, 181.
Correctives to mood in autobiogra
phy, 63, 64.
Correspondence and autobiogra
phies, chapter v.
Corvinus, V. M., 41.
Country, the, in autobiography, 203.
Courage, 131.
Courteault, B., on Monluc, 132, 133.
Cousin, Victor, 9.
Crisp, Stephen, 235, 253, 299.
Crook, John, 236, 237, 252, 284, 286.
Crozier, J. B., 71.
Cruden, Alexander. See Bibliogra
phy.
Cumberland, Eichard, 340, 343.
Cuvier, 382.
Daemon, tutelary, 93, 120, 126, 273,
373.
" Dangeau, Journal de," 135.
Dante, 87,92, 233.
Darwin, Charles, 48, 50, 257, 336, 364,
371, 379, 380, 383, 390.
Darwin, Erasmus, 233.
Daschkaw, Princess, 266, 285, 365.
Dates by autobiographers, 45, 67,
227.
Davies, Richard, 235, 237, 252.
Du Deffand, Madame, 59.
Defoe, 148.
De Quincey, T., 48, 402.
Descartes, R^n^, 48, 120, 360, 361, 363,
365, 373, 388, 393.
Diaries, chapter v, 58-59.
Dickens, C, 149, 164.
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 48, 198, 308, 384.
DiU, S., 38.
" Doing, apart from feeling," 33, 198.
Doyle, Conan, 149.
Dreams, Cardan's, 94.
Dumas, Alexandre, 154, 155, 161, 216,
218, 323, 340, 344, 353, 372.
Dumouriez, 22.
Dunton, John, 262.
Dupr^, G., 171, 297, 309, 364.
Eastern autobiographies, 33, 269, 354-
363.
Ebers, G., 66, 208.
Eccentricities in autobiographers,
352, 353, 397.
Ecclesiastes, 382.

444

INDEX

Edgeworth, Dr. R., 298, 326, 327, 353.
Editors of autobiographies, 18.
Edmundson, "William, 235.
Education, various kinds of, 369;
theories of, 378.
"Ego sum," 73.
" Egotists, four classes of," 81.
Egyptian autobiographies, 33.
Eighteenth century autobiographies,
26 ; group in Italy, 184, 268.
Electress of Hanover, Sophia, 177,
203, 208, 292, 313, 321.
Eliot, George, 44, 281, 282 ; influenced
by Rousseau, 143.
Elizabeth, Empress of Eussla, 291.
EUwood, Thomas, 236, 252.
Emotion In autobiography, 143, 144,
199, 231, 234, 309, 310, 402.
Emperors, Mogul, 22, 273, 365, 356;
Eoman, 35.
Enclos, Ninon de 1', 15.
English autobiographies, 181, 184,
205, 207.
d'Epinay, Madame, 17, 61 fl., 179, 180,
301.
Era, Christian, 31.
Erasmus, 48, 168, 208, 367, 372.
Esdras, Book of, 36.
Espinasse, MUe. de 1', 162.
Estolle, Pierre de 1', 22.
Ethical deficiencies in certain auto
biographers, 65, 71, 77, 78, 106, 149,
210, 262.
Ette, MUe. d', 180.
" Eucharisticos de Vita Sua," 41.
Evangelists, the street, 232.
Evelyn, John, 68, 206.
d'Ewes, Sir Symons, 142, 206, 217,
301-303, 384.
Excitement, religious, 229.
Explanations, far-fetched, 379; sim
ple, 267, 380..
Facts, necessity of giving all ths,
397.
Fanshawe, Lady, 269, 309.
Farabi, El, 338.
Faublas, 15.
Fear in autobiography, 270, 271.
" Feeling apart from doing," 33, 198.
Ferrari, Lodovico, 105.
Fervel, C, 374.
FeuUlade, la, 20.

Fichte, J. G., 27.
Fiction, autobiography and, chapter
ix.
Field of autobiography, the whole,
12, 377.
Finney, C. G. See BlbUography.
Fior, Antonio Maria, 105.
Flamsteed, John, 142, 367, 370, 373,
387.
Flaubert, 155.
Fletcher, E., 353.
Fleurange, Seigneur de, 17.
Flynt, Josiah, 217.
Fontaine, J. B. Ia, 20.
Forbin, Comte de. See Bibliography.
" Force of personal reUglous excite
ment," 137, 138.
Ford, John, 282.
Forgery, of memoires, 19, 20, 201.
Fosco, Count, 192,
Fouch^, 22.
FouilWe, A., 202, 346, 388, 395, 398,
399.
Fouquet, 149.
Fox, G., 49, 54, 66, 138, 207, 219, 221,
235, 236, 240, 275, 299, 367.
Francanzano, Messer, 317.
FrancoeuU, Dupin de, 179, 180, 301.
Franklin, Benjamin^ 30, 48. 65, 66,
149, 194, 200, 209;2U, 266, 267, 306,
337,376,392. "
Fraser, James, of Brae, 252.
Freethinker, serenity of the, 360.
Freethought, conversion to, 254.
Frederick the great, 152.
French autobiographies, 178 ff., 182,
183, 200 fl., 205.
Fr^nilly, Baron de, 353, 384.
Fresne, la marquise de, 20.
FriendUness of the autobiography,
4, 6, 16.
Frith, "W. E. See Bibliography.
Fronde, the, 322.
Fufidius, L., 41.
Funck-Brentano, la mort de Ma
dame, 266.
Furius, A., 41.
Gaboriau, E., 149, 150.
Galen, 88, 119.
GalUeo, 85, 185, 378.
G.alt, John, 49, 214, 364.
Galton, Francis, 9, 231, 234, 371.

INDEX

445

Gamett, Richard, on Italian liter
ature, 90.
General survey of the field of auto
biography, 15
Generalizers, hasty, 381.
Genius and character, treatment of,
378 ; eccentricities of, 397 ; normal
ity of, 377, 398.
GenUs, Madame de, 348, 339.
Georges, MademoiseUe, 293, 368.
German autobiography, 68, 207, 208.
al-Ghazzali, 194, 259, 277, 332, 333,356,
359, 360, 363, 365, 373, 374, 393.
Ghosts seen by autobiographers, 269.
Gibbon's autobiography, 48, 49, 54,
65, 66, 81, 135, 146, 207, 216, 261, 304,
337, 388.
Gibbon, " Decline and Fall of the Eo
man Empire," 31, 38, 135, 363.
Gifford, ¦VYlUiam. See Bibliography.
Gilbert, Ann T., 219, 272, 316.
GUman, Mrs. Bradley, on Teresa, 242.
Giusti, Giuseppe, 198, 200, 219, 263,
282, 370, 387, 396.
Goethe, 48, 59, 163, 214, 216, 219, 265,
288, 305, 363, 373, 378, 382, 391, 392,
395, 398, 401; " "Wahrheit und Dich
tung," 68, 69, 124, 199, 207, 289, 348,
397.
Goldoni, C, 54, 79, 162-167, 108, 214,
217, 258, 294, 301, 318, 339, 364, 372,
376.
Gosse, Edmund, 219-221, 258, 272, 367.
Gough, J., 235.
Goumay, Mademoiselle le Jars de.
See Bibliography.
GourviUe, J. H. de, 319, 322, 323, 342.
Gozzi, C., 5, 60, 162, 165-167, 258, 314,
318, 343, 376, 384.
Grant, Elizabeth, 216.
Grasset, Joseph, " Le Demi-fou," 88,
230, 253, 392, 397.
Greek literature, no autobiography
in, 32.
Greville's Diary, 58.
Grignan, Madame de, 204.
Grouchy, 22.
Grouping of autobiographies, 129,
236, 364.
Groups, characteristics of, signifi
cance of, 173, 406, 407.
Guibert de Nogent, 53, 77, 81, 123, 138,
219, 241, 244, 246, 248, 249, 271, 367.

Guizot, collection of memoirs, 67,136.
Gummere, F. B., 32, 316.
Guyon, J. de la Mothe, 77, 138, 139,
177, 219, 239, 243, 249, 256, 275, 367.
Hadrian, 36.
Haggard, E., 156.
Halkett, Lady Anne, 308.
HaU, G. Stanley, 100, 223, 283.
Hallam, *' Literature in Europe," 84.
HaUucinations, 229, 230, 242; audi
tory, 243, 274, 275; visual, 243, 271,
272, 275, 276.
Hamerton, P. G., 123, 219,309,363,381,
382.
Hamilton, Archbishop, 118, 126.
Happiness in study, 383, 391.
Hare, A. J. C, 216, 271, 353.
Harris, George. See Bibliography.
Haydon, B. E., 51, 63, 64, 171, 254, 258,
276, 277, 286, 364, 383.
Hayes, Alice, 235, 252.
Hayley, "William, 219, 327.
Hazin, Ali, 259, 264, 309, 317, 366-369,
363, 366, 383.
Health of autobiographers, 262, 267.
Hebrew literature, memoirs, 36.
Heine, Heinrich, 219, 272, 343, 368,
387, 396.
Helvetius, 365.
Henri IV group, 182.
Herbert of Cherbury, 18, 142, 207, 214-
216, 218, 274, 275, 303, 365, 370, 372,
384, 393.
Herodotus, 32.
Hindu autobiographies, 22.
Hippocrates, 88.
Historians as autobiographers, 193.
Historical memoirs, 22, 35, 135, '194.
History of autobiography, chapter
iii.
Hodgkin, "Italy, and Her Invad
ers," 40.
Hogg, James, 28.
Holberg, Louis, 68, 207, 324, 340, 353,
387.
Holcroft, T., 216.
HoweUs, W. D., 18.
Huet, P. D., 75, 77, 82, 138, 141, 263,
365, 370, 372, 383, 387.
Hugo, Victor, 149, 157.
Hull, Henry, 235.
Humboldt, Alexander, 381, 382.

446

INDEX

Hume, David, 81, 289, 336, 363.
Humor, varieties of, chapter xvi,
166.
Hunt, Leigh, 272, 277, 368, 370, 388.
Hunt, "W. H. See Bibliography.
Hutchinson, Lucy. See Bibliography.
Hutton, "WUliam, 214, 219, 809.
Huxley, T. H., 315, 326, 364.
Hysteria, epidemics of, 267.
Ideal autobiography, the, 197.
Illness of autobiographers, 99, 249,
251, 276, 280.
Imitation in autobiography, 140, 238.
Impostors, 71, 72.
Impotency, dread of, by Cardan, 100,
396.
Individualism in literature, 9, 177.
Inductions, psychological, 361.
Infiuence of autobiographers on one
another, 74, 77, 79, 140
Influence of autobiography, 76.
Influence of Christianity on subjec
tivity, 38.
Insanity and genius, 393, 394; insan
ity in autobiography, 84, 276.
Inscriptions, ancient, 34 fl.
Insincerity, 45.
InteUectual life, 381-391, 407.
Intention, the autobiographical, 61,
130, 145, 170, 197, 253, 406.
Introspection, 26, 27, 30, 404, 408.
Ireland, "WUliam H., 49, 344.
Italian autobiography, 181, 183, 184,
198, 200, 205.
Italy, 167.
" Italy and Her Invaders," 40.
Jahanghir, 22, 356.
James, Henry, 62.
James, William, 46, 92, 93, 126, 147,
222, 230, 232, 234, 244, 254, 255.
Jesus Christ, autobiography of, 21.
Johnson, Samuel, 100, 128, 378, 395,
403.
Joinville, de, 22.
Jokes, practical, 314, 316, 323.
Jon, du (Junius, F.).
Jonson, Ben, 403.
Josephus, 30 fl., 81, 274, 301.
Journalists, 60, 61.
Journals, 58, 59.
Joy, 340.

Kar^nine, "Wladimir, on George
Sand, 55
Kempis, Thomas i, 39, 79.
Kepler, 119.
Khaldoun, Ib'n, 356, 384.
Kings, autobiographies of, 34.
Kotzebue, A. von, 68, 207, 208, 298.
Kovalevsky, Sonia, 216, 218, 222, 270,
348, 364, 390.
Kropotkin, P., 152.
Lacenaire, 151.
Lackington, J., 260, 344.
Lamartine, A. de, 216, 266, 326.
Lamotte-Valois, Madame, 15.
Lang, Andrew, " The Making of Ee
ligion," 44.
La Eochefoucauld, 133, 322.
Latude, H. M. de, 49, 151, 152, 153-
156.
Lauzun, A. N. de, 16, 307, 308.
Lavalette, 22.
Lavater, 60, 68, 207.
Law of the subjective tendency, 186,
406.
Lawyers as autobiographers, 301.
Layard, Sir H. See Bibliography.
Le Bon, Gustave, 288; Psych, des
Foules, 174, 176, 181, Psych, des
Penples, 236.
Lecoq, Gaboriau's, 149, 160.
Lee, Vemon, 163, 1G5, 166, 185, 296.
Lejeune, Baron, 368.
Lelut, A., 87, 93, 396.
Leopard!, 198.
Leroux, -Italian literature, 90.
Lesage, 379.
Letters and autobiography, chap
ter v.
" Letting himself go," 60.
Lewes, George, 381.
LiUy, WOliam, 76, 272.
Livingstone, J., 252, 299.
Locker-Lampson, F., 272.
Lombroso, Cesare, 8, 4S, 87, 90, 93,
379, 394, 390.
Lomtole de Brienne, pfere, 261 ; fils,
261.
London, the, of early autobiogra
phers, 205.
Lorenzino de' Medici, 198, 332, 333.
Louis XIV group, 22, 182,
Louis XV group, 179, 180, 182, 183.

INDEX

447

Love affairs, 296, 309.
Lucretius on Human Life, 33.
Lutfullah, 359.
"Lymphatics," 388.
Macready, William, 195, 263, 339, 368.
Madame Henriette d'Angleterre,
266.
Madame, mfere du Regent, 204, 256,
291, 319.
Maimon, Solomon, 194, 216, 218, 277,
286, 286, 301, 326, 365, 371, 372, 383.
Mancini, Hortense, 177, 204, 266, 291,
292, 316.
Mancini, Marie, 156, 177, 204, 256, 279,
291, 292, 308, 321, 334.
Manners in autobiography, 105.
Mantovani, Professor, 127.
Marbot, Baron de, 22, 217, 323, 324,
340, 368.
Margot, la reine, 204.
Marmont, 22, 136, 332, 333, 368.
Marmontel, 48, 146, 147, 162, 204, 309,
323, 339, 401.
Marriage, ideals In, 297, 306, 310.
Martineau, Harriet, 143, 171, 206, 215,
216, 218, 225, 266, 260, 270, 282, 285,
286, 348, 349-351, 368, 376, 386, 392,
395.
Mathematical faculty in autobio
graphy, 120, 195.
McCabe, Rev. Joseph, 78, 149.
Mediaeval pietists, 240-249.
Melancholia, 278, 280.
Memoire, the term, 21 ; varieties of,
21 fl.
Memory in relation to genius, 226;
in sexes, 223; flrst, 213-222, 259.
Methodist movement, 240.
Metternich, 136.
Meynard, Barbier de, 407.
Military autobiography, 131, 133, 195.
MIU, John Stuart, 30, 48, 54, 79, 146,
147, 171, 206, 219, 224, 257, 277, 286,
296, 297, 312, 336, 372, 373, 374, 376,
380, 390.
Milton, John, 221, 233.
Misch, Georg, 23, 31 n., 374.
Misinterpreted observation, 5, 120,
260, 267, 380, 396.
Modesty in genius, 336-339.
Mommsen, Theodor, 34, 128.
Monluc, B. de,24,74, 130-133, 138, 140,

194, 204, 206, 274, 290, 323, 343, 368,
383, 402.
Montbrun, le marquis de,20.
Montelupo, R. da, 399.
Montesquieu, 349, 365.
Montpensier, MUe. de, 48, 61, 54, 154,
156, 171, 177, 194, 204, 225, 256, 306,
308, 318, 342, 376.
" Monumentum Ancyranum," 34, 37,
39.
Moods, 61, 382.
Moore, Thomas, Diary, 58 ; "Life of
Byron," 17.
Morellet, I'Abbe, 178, 258, 319, 323, 387.
Morley, Henry, on Cardan, 84, 89, 93,
108, 119, 123, 127, 283.
Morrison, James, on Gibbon, 64, 304.
Morselli, Enrico, " Suicide," 282, 286.
" Mot d'inigme," le, 249.
Motteville, Madame de, 22, 156, 204.
Movements, religious, 234, 235.
Miinsterberg, Hugo, 93.
Murisier, on " Les Maladies du Sen
timent Religieux," 265.
Musset, Alfred de, 17.
Mysticism, 245, 253, 265.
Mystics, 208.
Napoleon, 273, 293, 323, 324.
Napoleonic group, 22, 183; character
istics, 22.
Nationality of autobiographers,
chapter xi.
Nature, attitude towards, 202-206.
Naud^, G., 84, 89, 92, 93, 116.
Nazianzen, Gregory, 374.
Nebuchadnezzar, 34.
Nehemiah, Book of, 36.
Nervous systems of autobiographers,
99, 100, 115.
Neurologists, 264,
Neuropaths, 122.
Neurosis, genius and, 382, 391, 393,
397.
Neurotic temperament, 29, 377.
Newcastle, Duchess of, 308, 309, 313,
395.
Newman, Francis, 333.
Newman, John Henry, 49, 259, 332,
334, 360.
Newton, John. See Bibliography.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 119, 120.
Newton, Thomas, 300.

448

INDEX

Ney, Marfichale, 22.
Niceron, B., 115.
Nightmares, recurrent. In autobio
graphers, 216.
Night-terrors in children, 216, 219.
Non-religious conversion pheno
mena, 254.
Nordau, Max, 8.
Norm, The, 231.
Normal line, the elusive, 377.
North, Roger, 205, 220, 221, 301, 369.
Novelists, as autobiographers, 193,
Novelists, value to, of autobiogra
phy, 170-172.
Novels and the autobiography, chap
ter ix.
Oberkirch, Madame d', 383.
Objective cast of mind, 32, 67.
Objective first memories, 217, 219.
Objective memoirs, 22, 23, 35.
Objectivity of ancient literature, 31,
32.
Observation, cases of misinter
preted, 5, 120, 250, 267, 380, 396.
Occidental attitudes contrasted, 362.
Oliphant, Mrs., 14, 225, 280-282, 321,
376, 40;
Omens, 9 122, 125, 127, 174, 353.
Oributai attitude, 361-363,
Oriental wisdom, what is meant by,
302, 363.
Origins of autobiography, 31.
Ousama ib'n Mounkidh, 162, 359, 402.
Ovid, " The Art of Love," 374.
Pain, borne by autobiographers, 395.
Paradin, G., 133.
Paris, of autobiographers, 203.
Pascal, Blaise, 119, 120.
Pasquier, 136, 226.
Passion, rare in autobiography, 306.
Pathological view of genius, 10, 379;
ofthevisionary, 263, 336,366; of re
ligion, 229, 253,254.
Patricius, 243, 244, 249, 272, 273.
Pattison, Mark, 146, 221, 263, 368, 386.
PauUnus, P., 14, 41, 81, 241, 243, 303,
374.
Pearson, J., 235, 300.
PeUican, Dr. C, 177.
Pepys, Samuel, 58, 66, 178, 206.
" Perdita," 67, 328-331.

Person, the flrst, narratives In, 148.
Personal records, 40,
Personality in autobiography, 144;
interest in by French autobiogra
phers, 202.
Peters, F. P., on Nippur, 34.
Petitot and Mommerqu^, Collection,
Appendix B.
Petrarca, F., 69, 198, 342, 389, 392, 393.
Petronius, 270.
Phenomena, conversion, chapter
xiii.
Philosophers as autobiographers,
193.
Philosophy, autobiographers' atti
tude toward, 28.
Physicians, 118, 121.
Pietists, mediaeval, 240 ; 17th cen
tury, 236.
Plato, 33.
Platter, T., 171, 177, 194, 208, 298, 372,
387, 396.
Plutarch, 349.
Poe, E. A., 149.
Poetical autobiographies, 374, 375,
Poets as autobiographers, 193.
Police novel, 149.
Police memoir, 149.
Political memoirs, 36, 136, 154,
Pompadour, La Marquise de, 147, 153,
323.
Pope, Alexander, 408.
Porrb, Branda, 104, 317.
Poverty in autobiography, 171.
Precocious piety, 367.
Precocity in intellectual develop
ment, 271.
Priestley, Dr. J., 216.
Pringle, W., 262.
Prisoners, 151 ff.
Profession of autobiographers, chap
ter xi ; effects of, slight, 195.
Proportion, increased sense of, in
autobiography, 59.
Prudentius, A. C, 41, 374.
Psalmanazar, G., 49, 66, 71, 72, 343.
Psychical Eesearch Society. 119.
Psychological data in autobiogra
phy, 4, 5; Eibot on, 10, 11, 12, 176.
Psychologists, their methods d pri
ori, 164, 407.
Psychology of autobiography, 26 fl.;
individual, 93, 380.

INDEX

449

Quacks, 71, 72.
Quakers, characteristics in autobio
graphy, 138, 181, 184, 235 fl., 241.
Quality of the witness, 13, 232.
Quantity, counts In statistics, 195.
" Questionnaire," the, 234.
Quetelet, " Sur I'Homme," 9, 84, 176,
196.
Quietism in France, 239.
Quinault, MUe., 179.
Quinet, E., 216, 263, 264, 286, 367,
387.
" Quintessential " people, 377.
" Quintessential " types, 171, 256.
Rapp, 22.
Eawlinson, Sir H., 34.
Reaction after conversion, 260, 261.
Reade, Charles, "The Cloister and
the Hearth," 168.
Reasons for writing autobiography,
27, 47, 145, 193.
Religion, chapter xiii.
Religious cases, normal, 255 ; abnor
mal, 252.
Renan, Ernest, 36, 214,264, 256, 263,
264, 280, 338, 351, 354, 367, 373, 376, 380,
388, 393, 401.
Reresby, J. See Bibliography.
Retz, de, 65, 66, 256, 305, 322.
Reviewers, The Critical, 76.
Eevolutlonary group, French, 183 ;
Italian, 186, 276, 278.
Eibot, T., 83, 122, 145, 230, 287, 304, 392,
393, 397 ; " Psychologie des Senti
ments," 10, 88, 175 ; " Essai sur
I'Imagination Cr^atrice," 10.
Eichardson, Samuel, 171, 178, 327, 330.
Eichelieu, Cardinal, 22, 379.
Eichet, Charles, 112.
Elchter, J. P., 68, 207, 214, 220-222,
366.
Rimini, 22.
Ristori, A., 195, 219, 339, 368.
Roberts, Lord, 385.
Eoberts, S., 123, 263, 272, 368.
Eoblnson, M., " Perdita," 67, 195, 327-
331.
Eocheblave, Samuel, " George Sand
et sa Fille," 55.
Rochefort, le comte de, 20.
Rodin, 117.
Rohan, le chevalier de, 20.

Roland, Madame, 48, 180-181, 298, 343,
348, 372, 389, 395.
Roman memoirs, 41.
Romilly, Samuel, 270, 309, 385.
Romney, George, 103.
Rossetti, W. M. See Bibliography.
Rousseau, J.J., 17, 25 ff., 30,45, 48,61 ff. ,
74, 77, 79, 81, 83, 86, 106, 129, 137, 141-
143, 180, 183, 186, 200, 204, 206, 207,
214, 219, 227, 289, 301, 312, 327, 328,
337, 340-342, 364, 376, 380, 390, 394,
403.
Rovigo, 22.
Rufus, RutUius, 41.
Ruskin, John, 214, 216, 219, 309, 378,
403.
Russell, Lord, 59.
Russian affairs as affecting Tolstoi,
262.
Rutty, Dr. John. See Bibliography.
Saint-Lambert, 179.
Saint-Simon, Due de, 12, 22, 23, 68,
67, 134^136, 138, 140, 146, 204, 264.
Sainte-Beuve, C. A., as critic of the
memoir, 6, 7.
Salimbene, Fra, 171, 248, 252, 367, 402.
Salvini, T., 195, 219, 339, 368.
Sand, George, 48, 51, 63, 68, 81, 180,
199, 216, 217, 219, 224, 225, 258, 285,
288, 290, 335, 336, 353, 354, 372, 403 ;
" Histoire de ma Vie," 51, 64, 69,
199, 224, 289, 345-348.
Sandraz, Courtilz de, 20, 157, 201.
Sansom, Oliver, 235.
Sar, Peladan, 72.
Savoie, Louise de.
Scallgers, the, 84, 111, 177.
Scandalous memoirs, 15, 16.
Scaurus, Emilius, 41, 130.
Schimmelpenninck, M. A., 219.
Scientific method in autobiography,
80, 345.
Scientists as autobiographers, 81,
184, 193, 364.
Scott, Job, 216, 218, 219, 235, 252.
Scott, Sir Walter, 58, 169, 162, 217,
334, 372, 392.
Scott, W. B., 215, 220-222, 254, 283.
Self-esteem, chapter xvii, 335, 346.
Self-studies, 24 fl., 30, 79, 81.
Semi-spurious autobiography, 19, 20.
Sentimental cast of mind, 200.

450

INDEX

Sentimentality in German autobio
graphy, 68, 207-208.
Serenity of the free-thinker, 264,
269, 260.
Seriousness of autobiography, 11, 44,
257.
Settembrini, Italian literature, 90.
Severus, 35.
S<5vign6, Madame de, 69, 168, 204, 313,
322.
Sex relations, chapter xv.
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 395.
Shelley, P. B., 326, 382.
Sincerity, 28, chapter iv, 78, 85, 232.
Singularity, affectation of, 72.
Sixteenth century in autobiography,
184.
Smiles, S., 363.
Sociological data in autobiography,
172.
Socrates, 126, 331, 334, 378.
Soldier autobiography, 194, 195, 368.
Sorelli, G., 219.
Southey, Eobert, 219.
Spencer, Herbert, 14, 48, 81, 97, 145,
1"99, 215, 216, 218, 219, 221, 257, 270,
309, 315, 335, 337, 345, 364, 370, 373,
383.
Spohr, L., 208, 216.
Spurious autobiography, 19, 20.
Staal-Delaunay, Madame de, 79, 205.
226, 282, 298, 814, 319-321, 348, 376,
386.
Standard for autobiography ideal,
197.
Stapleton, Thomas, 374.
Starbuck, B. S., 230, 232, 233, 253, 255.
Statesman autobiography, 136, 193.
Statisticians, early psychological, 9.
Statistics, 172-173, 195.
Stein, Frau von, 297, 382.
Stephen, Leslie, 129.
Stevenson, R. L., on Pepys, 66.
StiUing, Jung, 207, 208, 264, 298, 339,
364.
Stirredge, Elizabeth, 236, 252.
Subjective flrst memories, 215, 213.
Subjective memoirs, 23, 182 fl., 194,
241.
Subjectivity in literature, 26, 404, 405.
Sue, E., 151.
Suicide, child, 283 fl. ; impulse
toward, 283-287.

Sulla, Lost Commentaries of, 35, 44,
74, 91, 130.
Sully, Due de, 21, 22, 133, 205, 368.
Suneha, 33.
Supernatural, the, 93, 112, 174, 266.
Superstitions, 118, 177, 258, 271, 274,
353.
Suso, Heinrich, 81, 208, 241, 244, 246-
249, 276.
Swift, J., 148, 319.
Symonds, J. A., 5, 90, 120, 123, 165,
219, 250, 263, 272, 284, 286.
Tacitus, 256, 349; " Agricola," 40.
Taine, H., 79, 80, 176, 207.
Talleyrand, 22, 136, 256, 326.
Tartaglia, Nicol6, 106, 142, 181.
Taswell, "WUliam. See Bibliography.
Taylor, Colonel M., 217, 353, 368.
Temperament, the lymphatic, 388.
Temperaments, diflerent, 117.
Teresa, 49, 66, 77, 129, 138, 219, 228, 232,
237, 241, 243, 244, 246, 249, 254, 256,
264, 275, 311, 367, 401.
Terrors, night-terrors in children,
216, 219.
Terry, EUen, 292, 293, 368.
" Testimony, bearing," 138.
Thackeray, 319.
" Theophrastus Such," 44.
Theosophy, 261.
Thou, J. A. de, 17, 35, 89, 91, 127, 221,
313, 368, 370, 372.
Thrales, the, 378.
Tilly, A. du, 15.
Timur, 22, 273, 274, 355, 368, 383.
Tiraboschi, on Cardan, 84, 86, 87.
Tobias, Book of, 36.
Tolstoi, 49, 262, 263, 284, 386, 300, 368.
Tone, T. W., 309.
Trajan, 35.
Treat's Lists, 379.
Trenck, F. de, 49, 161, 155, 340, 368.
TroUope, Anthony, 171, 336, 385.
Troppman, 151.
Truth, feeling for, in autobiography,
49, 337.
Tupper, 233.
Turgenev, Ivan, 179, 223.
Tusser, T., 374.
Tycho Brahe, 119.
Types, search for, 294; three great,
86, 140.

INDEX

451

Ulfeldt, L. C, 155, 256, 308, 316, 388,
395.
Una, 33.
Unconscious self-revelation, 57.
Unhappiness, 252, 276, 277, 287.
Valois, M. de, 26, 171, 225, 266, 268,
291, 292, 402.
Valoi-y, Chevalier de, 180.
Vambfiry, A., 340, 365, 372.
Vanity, 28, 150, 339, 340, 343, 344.
Van Laun, Henri, 160.
Vaux, Henry, 20.
Vennar, E., 206.
Vesalius, Andrea, 111, 142, 181.
Vespasian, 35.
Vice, attitude toward, 16, 337.
Vico, 81, 198, 219, 389.
Vidocq, E. F., 149, 151, 342, 383, 399.
VUlehardouin, Geoflrey de, 22.
Villeroy, Seigneur de, 23.
Visions, 122, 123, 174, 242, 245-248, 251,
267, 270, 272, 273, 275, 396.
Visualizing faculty, 120-122.
Viterbi, Luc-Antonio. See Biblio
graphy.
Voltaire, 59, 353, 365, 378.
Vordan, le comte de, 20.
Wallace, A. R., 216, 218, 220, 221.
Walters, W. G., on Cardan, 84, 88,
91.

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, "Lady Rose's
Daughter," 162.
Watson, " Life of Fox," 64.
Weiniger, Otto, 26, 233.
Werther, the conception of Goethe's,
265.
Wesley, John, 75.
Wesleyanism, 240.
"Wharton, Edith, " The Valley of De
cision," 167.
Whistler, J. McN., 103.
Whiston, W. See BlbUography.
White, J. Blanco, 252, 254, 280.
"Whitefield, G., 76, 237, 262.
Wilde, Oscar, 72.
Witness, quality of, considered, 13,
232.
Wolseley, Viscount, 133, 196, 368.
Women as autobiographers, 226 ;
memory in, 223-225; position of,
310-312.
Woolman, J., 235, 252.
Wordsworth, WUUam, 370, 373-375,
382, 387.
Work, methods of, chapter xviii.
Xenophon, Anabasis, 32.
Yovmg, Arthur. See Bibliography.
Youth not always joyous, 383.
Zuanne da Coi, Messer, 105.

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