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Literary Topics
136. Biography
On biography: "It is rarely well executed. They only who live
with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and
discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know
what to remark about him. The chaplain of a late bishop, whom I
was to assist in writing some memoirs of his Lordship, could tell
me scarcely any thing."
Boswell: Life
Link
236.
Biography
I said, in writing a life, a man's peculiarities should be
mentioned, because they mark his character. Johnson:
"Sir, there is no doubt as to peculiarities: the question is,
whether a man's vices should be mentioned; for instance, whether
it should be mentioned that Addison and Parnell drank too freely:
for people will probably more easily indulge in drinking from
knowing this; so that more ill may be done by example than good
by telling the whole truth." Here was an instance of his varying
from himself in talk; for when Lord Hailes and he sat one
morning calmly conversing in my house at Edinburgh, I well
remember that Dr. Johnson maintained, that "If a man is to write
A Panegyrick, he may keep vices out of sight; but if he
professes to write A Life, he must represent it really as
it was:" and when I objected to the danger of telling that
Parnell drank to excess, he said, that "it would produce an
instructive caution to avoid drinking, when it was seen, that
even the learning and genius of Parnell could be debased by it."
And in the Hebrides he maintained, as appears from my
Journal, that a man's intimate friend should mention his
faults, if he writes his life.
Boswell: Life
Link
278. Biography
"If nothing but the bright side of characters should be shewn, we
should sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible
to imitate them in any thing."
Boswell: Life
Link
336. Biography
"I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves,
what we can turn to use."
Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
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686. Biography; Moral Instruction
"Those parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we
readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be
found in narratives of the lives of particular persons; and
therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation
than biography, since none can be more delightful or more useful,
none can more certainly enchain the heart by irresistible
interest, or more widely diffuse instruction to every diversity
of condition."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13,
1750)
Link
688. Biography; Humanity; Life
"I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of
which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful;
for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,
great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his
mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of
immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in
the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and
separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any
possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13,
1750)
Link
690. Biography; Moral Instruction
"It is frequently objected to relations of particular lives, that
they are not distinguished by any striking or wonderful
vicissitudes. The scholar who passed his life among his books,
the merchant who conducted only his own affairs, the priest whose
sphere of action was not extended beyond that of his duty, are
considered as no proper objects of public regard, however they
might have excelled in their several stations, whatever might
have been their learning, integrity, and piety. But this notion
arises from false measures of excellence and dignity, and must be
eradicated by considering that, in the esteem of uncorrupted
reason, what is of most use is of most value."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13,
1750)
Link
692. Biography
"Biography has often been allotted to writers who seem very
little acquainted with the nature of their task, or very
negligent about the performance. They rarely afford any other
account than might be collected from public papers, but imagine
themselves writing a life when they exhibit a chronological
series of actions or preferments; and so little regard the
manners or behavior of their heroes that more knowledge may be
gained of a man's real character, by a short conversation with
one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative,
begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13,
1750)
Link
693. Biography
"There are, indeed, some natural reasons why these narratives are
often written by such as were not likely to give much instruction
or delight, and why most accounts of particular persons are
barren and useless. If a life [biography] be delayed till
interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality,
but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which
give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent
kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted
by tradition."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13,
1750)
Link
694. Biography
"If the biographer writes from personal knowledge, and makes
haste to gratify the public curiosity, there is danger lest his
interest, his fear, his gratitude, or his tenderness overpower
his fidelity, and tempt him to conceal, if not to invent. There
are many who think it an act of piety to hide the faults or
failings of their friends, even when they can no longer suffer by
their detection; we therefore see whole ranks of characters
adorned with uniform panegyric, and not to be known from one
another but by extrinsic and casual circumstances."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13,
1750)
Link
695. Biography
"If we owe regard to the memory of the dead, there is yet more
respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue, and to truth."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13,
1750)
Link
735. Appearance; Biography;
Character
"It is ... at home that every man must be known by those who
would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for
smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often
for show in painted honour and fictitious benevolence."
Johnson: Rambler #68 (November 10, 1750)
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736. Appearance; Biography;
Character
"The most authentic witnesses of any man's character are those
who know him in his own family, and see him without any restraint
or rule of conduct, but such as he voluntarily prescribes to
himself. If a man carries virtue with him into his private
apartments, and takes no advantage of unlimited power or probable
secrecy; if we trace him through the round of time, and find
that his character, with those allowances which mortal frailty
must always want, is uniform and regular, we have all the
evidence of his sincerity that one man can have with regard to
another; and, indeed, as hypocrisy cannot be its own reward, we
may, without hesitation, determine that his heart is pure."
Johnson: Rambler #68 (November 10, 1750)
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758. Biography; Criticism
"To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to
his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries,
and what were his means of supplying them. That which is easy at
one time was difficult at another."
Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)
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1,021. Biography; Teachers
"They [Milton's biographers] are unwilling that Milton
should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be
denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for
nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the
propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do
not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will
consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive, his
allowance was not ample, and he supplied its deficiencies by an
honest and useful employment."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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1,289. Biography
"Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for
literature, is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame
is injuriously diminished."
Johnson: Addison (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,294. Biography
"The necessity of complying with times and of sparing persons is
the great impediment of biography. History may be formed
from permanent monuments and records; but Lives can only be
written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less,
and in a short time is lost forever. What is known can seldom be
immediately told, and when it might be told it is no longer
known. The delicate features of the mind, the nice
discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of
conduct are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that
caprice, obstinacy, frolick, and folly, however they might
delight in the description, should be silently forgotten than
that by wanton merriment and unseasonable detection a pang should
be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend."
Johnson: Addison (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,329. Biography; Influence
"It is particularly the duty of those who consign illustrious
names to posterity, to take care lest their readers be misled by
ambiguous examples. That writer may be justly condemned as an
enemy to goodness, who suffers fondness or interest to confound
right with wrong, or to shelter the faults which even the wisest
and best have committed from that ignominy which guilt ought
always to suffer, and with which it should be more deeply
stigmatized when dignified by its neighbourhood to uncommon
worth, since we shall be in danger of beholding it without
abhorrence, unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye
secured from the deception of surrounding splendour."
Johnson: Rambler #164 (October 12, 1751)
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1,759. Biography; History
"He that records transactions in which himself was engaged, has
not only an opportunity of knowing innumerable particulars which
escape spectators, but has his natural powers exalted by that
ardour which always rises at the remembrance of our own
importance, and by which every man is enabled to relate his own
actions better than another's."
Johnson: Idler #65 (July 14, 1759)
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1,793. Biography
"Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that
which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to te
purposes of life."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,797. Biography; Moral
Instruction
"The mischievous consequences of vice and folly, of irregular
desires and predominant passions, are best discovered by those
relations which are levelled with the general surface of
life, which tell not how any man became great, but how he was
made happy; not how he lost the favour of his prince, but how he
became discontented with himself."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,798. Biography
"Those relations are ... commonly of most value in which the
writer tells his own story. He that recounts the life of another,
commonly dwells most upon conspicuous events, lessens the
familiarity of his tale to increase its dignity, shews his
favourite at a distance, decorated and magnified like the ancient
actors in their tragick dress, and endeavours to hide the man
that he may produce a hero. But if it be true, which was said
by a French prince, 'that no man was a hero to the servants
of his chamber,' it is equally true, that every man is yet less
a hero to himself."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
Link
1,799. Biography
"The writer of his own life has at least the first qualification
of an historian, the knowledge of the truth; and thought it
may be plausibly objected that his temptations to disguise it are
equal to his opportunities of knowing it, yet I cannot but think
that impartiality may be expected with equal confidence from him
that relates the passage of his own life, as from him that
delivers the transactions of another."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
Link
1,800. Biography
"Love of virtue will animate panegyrick, and hatred of wickedness
embitter censure."
Johnson: Idler #84 (November 24, 1759)
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1,861. Biography; Writing
"It very seldom happens to man that his business is his pleasure.
What is done from necessity is so often to be done when against
the present inclination, and so often fills the mind with
anxiety, that an habitual dislike steals upon us, and we shrink
involuntarily from the remembrance of our task. This is the
reason why almost everyone wishes to quit his employment; he does
not like another state, but is disgusted with his own.
"From this unwillingness to perform more than is required of
that which is commonly performed with reluctance, it proceeds
that few authors write their own lives. Statesmen, courtiers,
ladies, generals, and seamen, have given to the world their own
stories, and the events with which their different stations have
made them acquainted. They retired to the closet as to a place of
quiet and amusement, and pleased themselves with writing, because
they could lay down the pen whenever they were weary. But the
author, however conspicuous, or however important, either in the
publick eye or in his own, leaves his life to be related by his
successors, for he cannot gratify his vanity but by sacrificing
his ease."
Johnson: Idler #102 (March 29, 1760)
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1,864. Biography; Humanity;
Writing
It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life
affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the
most studious life a great part passes without study. An author
partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and
married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations
and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies,
like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his
affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a
drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.
Johnson: Idler #102 (March 29, 1760)
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1,865. Biography; Reading;
Writing
Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep
involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and
these might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of
literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not
how to fulfill, and obliged to write on subjects which they do
not understand. Every publication is a new period of time, from
which some increase or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The
gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an
author's from book to book.
Johnson: Idler #102 (March 29, 1760)
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