Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-10-16
WILLIAM ROSCOE TY1A YER'S d
,"5 "THE ART OF BIOGRAPHY
Some Reflections Wha, e Art Is and Should Be Suggested
by the Discussion of Expert
BY FELIX e. SCHELLING
nxiish Literature In the University Of Pennsyivania

y
TT MIGHT be difficult to find a more
L attractive subject than this, the art
OF biography, not a mere enumeration
OF that enormous category of books,
those written about other people, but
talk on the manner, the nature, the art
of the thing. Delivered originally in the
shape OF lectures on the Barbour Page
Foundation at the University of Vir-
ginia, Mr.. William Roscoe Thayer has
contrived to give to his little book the
charm that belongs to the familiar essay
while losing none OF the meat Of
topic not to be mooted except on the
basis of scholarship both broad and
sound.
BIOGRAPHY is In sense an out
Dgrowth of history and without cavil
be 1t said that biography Is always close
in its allegiance to fiction. Historians
are still much agog over the momentous
question how to write history. Is the
narrative of a series Of events, or the
narrative Of a mans life. to be regarded
In the nature of a map or in the nature
of q picture? Do we read the past as
we lay out journey, the chief object
being that we may find our path and
not 60 astray at the wrong turning?
Or should we read, somewhat at least.
as many would prefer to walk or to
ride abroad. for beauty and significance
of scene and the Ahiaration of motion
In map you can identify this village
and that hillside and determine with
accuracy the relations of the topography
of the country at large. In picture you
lose most of these particularities. but
in place you have light and shadow and
atmosphere out of which comes the rec
ognition of reality. Mr.. Thayer has
some valuable pages on what might
be called the three volume modern
statesmen series of biographies, in which
variety of '1ife' the map is meticul-
ously drawn in every petty and trivial
detail and the subject Is seen as in a
glass darkly. The case of Mrs. Charles
Kingsley's life of her eminent husband
should be kept in mind by those who,
under the stress of example and for hire.
write long lives. She reduced her two
volume book to one and it is surprising
how much was gained in the reduction.
TT HAS been suggested above that BIZ
L ography is close in it's nature to
| fiction. This last is one of those
troublesome words which can hardly be
employed without double or three
fold meaning. To tell a thing which
never happened as IL it had actually
occurred may be either art or false
hood 1t may be both. DeFoe is credited
with an unexcellcd power in grave
and imperturbable' lying" But DeFoe
was likewise an artist: and many an
occurrence of the novelists', the dra =
matists' or the poets fiction, though
never an actual fact. is truer in the
large than are often the recurring falsi
ties of life. The old fashioned histor
| Tow, rrhy,rJ;Ioc nI ;,..- al, ,,,,t
q fine rhetorical speech into the mouths
of leaders before the sounding of q
charge. This is sometimes very absurd
but when. as often in the former of thes,
great writer's, these speeches and theiI
like in other situations are nicely cal
culated to reveal the personality of tn,
speaker. his point of view on the oc
casion and the like, we have art, no
lying. Such outworn methods biograph
ical are scarcely as reprehensible al
our weary marshaling of ''all thu
facts" with the result of wooder
image instead Of the portraiture of ,
man.
MIR. THAYER'S long experience as
4HA historian and his distinguished
success as we'll in the writing Of biog
raphy give to his words in appraisc
| ment ana on the practice OF his art
peculiar authority. 1t is good. there
fore, to have our faith in the pre- .em
inence of Plutarch's "Lives'' for an
tiquity and Boswells johnson" fo
our own day so Enthusiastically reaf
firmed. 1t is better still to have oui
own somewhat nebulous arguments OF
these subjects so ably and authorita
lively re enforced. We hear from tn,
Shakespeareans that Plutarch alone o
all his sources was the one which
Shakespeare could not better at al
times; and that despite the fact tha,
the old dramatist read his life of Caesar
and of Marc Antony only in an Eng
lsh translation Of French transla
tion of Latin translation of a Greek
original. When we add to this that
Plutarch himself wrote long after the
waning of "the glory that was Greece
and "the grandeur that was Rome,
the freshness of his material. its vitality
and power become the greater marvel
Mr.. Thayer finds, among much else,
that Plutarch's power lies largely in
his defining each of his personages with
daylight clarity, in the circumstance
| that he was great and wholesome
moralist and in his coming into his art