Weekly national intelligencer., 1848-07-15
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

HISTORY or C0NGR Biographical and Political, COM
prisng Memoirs Of Members Of the Congress OF the United
States, drawn from authentic embracing the pro-
inent events Of their lives and their connexon with the
political history of the times; BY HEERY @. WHEELER.
illustrated by steel portraits and fac-simile auto
graphs. New York Harper g. Brothers ls4s.o Vol.
Ist syo.. 56s PIP. M
There are few literary tasks that can be more
ungratefn more difficult, or in general more unsuc-
cesstul than that of the Biography of the living.
Thorny as is the undertaking of contemporary his
tory, when one has shared in the events and pas
sons which are to give it interest in another age
hard as it is to write the impersonal biography las
we may call t) of our country and our times, TO de-
lineate with historic impartality individual public
men whom we have been accustomed to look upon
through the dstorting lens Of party or of personal
prejudice, is yet far less easy. If distinguished,
we admire or we dislike them too much; if little
distinguish ed, they naturally desire that those who
write of them should assist them to celebrity; and,
whether really eminent or inconsderabe, they have
each his body of adherents or friends, who sure
to take the sound of the day. the written impress
sion (even if it be truly such) of but moment in
the public mans unfinished career, for the decisive
and the eternal award of History itself. For it is
still with all who have won, falsely or not, that
which can seldom be sure--the instant's ascend
CuCy ~ was Will HlHi Oh Olu VINO, III the
OF a prosperity that was but too soon TO fail him,
wished the Athenian sage to salute him as the hap
piest OF men, and was told in reply I" that no man
could be pronounced upon before he was dead. !"
That wise sentence is still as little as ever regarded
by those whom the hand of Death has not yet mea-
sured, and by those who think to write them great
or small famous or obscure, while yet Fate has not
finished with them.
J To him, then, who seeks rather to make repu-
tation for himself than others, few enterprises are
less inviting than that of writing the lives OF the lv-
ing. The thing is, indeed, as have just now in
tmated, sort of literary solecism for how. should
life be written which is not yet ended? Contem-
porary biography is, then, OH one side, hardly less
than paradox; and, on the other it is almost
TO degenerate into either satire or a panegyric.
Ia this country, where every body has need Of
every body, it is the latter of these two tendencies
(which usually takes effect. We have paused, after
the assertion, to consider whether we could recol-
lect IN all past American attempts this branch of
History, any exception 10 the fact and we call
70 mind none. Our Lives Of the Living have con-
Stanty been almost as exaggerated and encomiastic
as Dedicalons were wont to be, or as Epitaphs
still are.
= The truth being, then, that biographies of men
who are written about because they still -four
shing must usually be eulogistic how comes it that
both the magnifer and the magnifed so seldom re-
fleet how vain is all that panegyrc can heap up;
how mere tnsel is that which it can spread over
name how soon little wind and weather strips
il of, and how idle it is to hope to fost upon the
future, for any man, false renoSn Power and
notorlety are the nearly universal passions of our
Hand and yet surely there is no country where the
moralists old lesson of their emptiness is half so
strong or so easy to read nowhere so much
did ever
/" Unnumbercd suppiants crowd pfeferments gaze,
For wealth sthirst and burning to be great
Delusve Fortune hears tn incessant call
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.
On every stage, the foes of peace attend
Hate dogs their rise and insult marks their end.
Love ends with hope; the sinking satesmans door
POurs in the morning worshippers no more;
His pen for growing names the author plies,
To growing power the offce-hunier flies
From every descends the painted face
That hung the bright palladium Of the place,
And, smoked in kitchens or in asctions soId
To better features leaves the frame Of gold
For now traced, in every line,
Heroic worth, benevoence divine
The form distorted justifes the fall
And deeststion rids III indignant wall.
Is, then, 1--WE shall be asked) contemporary bio
Taphy no legitimate branch OF historical compost
hos 40 O iucShoH WHICH mus Dc dfisWtftu
,ut OF fact, better guide Of Criticism than is any
'ody's dictum Of literary law. Let us see, then,
whether there is any production, in the line OF
which we are speaking, that does rank among books
)f History Scarcely and, singularly enough the
Pny things which approach to becoming exceptions
re certain Lives which not others have writ, but
which great men have left of their own actions
fuch as Julius Cesar's and Napoleon Bonapartes
.hccount OF their own campaigns, or Sully's or DE
*tetzs memoirs Of themselves. This kind Of book,
INDEED, falls rather into the rank Of memoirs pour
|Reruir, OF materials for History than Of History
tselt. Their almost inevitable want Of imparliali-
Y, OF the possibility of exact and full truth. Of the
s&anon and criticism of every source of informa-
bon, OF that due estimate Of men and things which
the immediate times can hardly ever reach. do not
permit them to rise to the sober and solid character
Pf that wise and greatly comprehensive thing.
History.
N We must conclude, then. that works of the sort
(which we are examining almost necessarily incur
Ihe fault Of Partially, and will nearly always be
banegyrical. SO even biographies written at dis
lance must usually be; for. involuntarily. when we
Igrte mans life he becomes our hero, and we
Inagnify his acts, to ennobe our own performance
is our business, then, in estimating works Of
Contemporary Biography, to accept this partaIiiy as
|1pne of the conditions under which they must be
ITrtkp we must only see that they do not ex-
iced the permitted measure and become mere pane
Tho a.