ANALECTIC MAGAZINE, AND NAVAL CHRONICLE. SEPTEMBER, 1816. ORIGINAL. A Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans. Vol. 1. Part I. 4to. pp. 106. Joseph Delaplaine, Philadelphia. 1816. THE Repository labours under the common disadvantage of all works that have been too often and too ostentatiously announced Performance, in such cases, is almost always a promise-breaker: and although we are not inclined to think disparagingly of the book now before us, we must yet be permitted to say that it is not exactly the production we had been led to expect. There is a great deal of labour about it, we admit; and the typography, as well as most of the engravings, are highly creditable to their respective authors: but we are afraid that too much has been done here to the neglect of another department,-that more regard has been paid to the qualifications of the engraver than to those of the biographer. The poor Greeks, it is true, (Pref. p. 2.) were not capable of subjoining a portraiture of the body to a delineation of the mind:' yet we question whether Mr. Delaplaine and his biographer, and his engraver together, have composed so valuable a Work as might have been produced by a Plutarch alone. Nevertheless there is merit enough of one kind and another about the Repository to claim the patronage, not only of those persons, and he relations of those persons, who are either assured, or are very sanguine in hoping, that their own biographies will occupy a place in its apartments; but of those also, who, although too humble for expectations of such exalted fortune, yet feel sufficiently interested in the promotion of American literature to incur the necessary expense of so voluminous a work. The elegant engravings which Mr. Delaplaine has been at the expense of procuring, indepen. dently of all biographical merit, would almost insure the survival of his book beyond the present times; nor ought we perhaps to be too hasty in disputing the assertions of the confident author of his 'Lives,' who tells us positively, that the text shall commemorate to posterity what, at a former period, the leading men of America thought and performed.' We shall not enter here into any discussion concerning the general abstract utility of biographical composition: but with particular reference to the work before us, we may be permitted perhaps to say a few words upon what we conceive to be the legitimate distinction between the life of a single individual and the history of a whole nation. Every people is considered as a moral being, in which all the attributes of the human species are associated according to the ordinary rule of proportion; and in which the peculiarity of individual features is lost in the general outline of national physiognomy. Every people, at the same time, possesses marks of character which distinguish it from all its neighbours; in just the same manner that one individual differs from all the rest of his species. Again, in the subordinate divisions of the subject, each single person of a whole people, while he has the general features of the nation, is yet characteristically different from any other of his compeers; in like manner as all the crystals of the same mineral are contained in an equal number of geometrical planes; though each single crystal possesses an individuality of configuration which distinguishes it from every one of its fellows. Now the only distinction which is marked and palpable between history and biography, consists, we apprehend, in this, that the former is conversant with individuals merely in their public capacities; in their dealings with their fellow citizens, or with foreigners; where nothing is requisite or expected, but a common proportion of human qualities, tinctured perhaps with a little admixture of national character: while the latter, on the other hand, pursues the same individuals from the public office to the private station-watches them in their dealings with themselves, and can tell you whether they play with pebbles on the beach, or whether they are subject to intermittent fits of tardy and rapid perambulation. Mineralogical history would tell us that every crystal of the same species possessed an equal number of sides: mineralogical biography, if we may use the expression, would take up a single crystal and show us how the peculiar relative position of those sides was calculated to reflect the light with the minutest shades of difference from the reflections of all the others. It is the common office of history and biography to detail the transactions of a person's public life: it is the peculiar function of the latter to tell how a person comports himself with his friends in the private circle, and with his family by the fire-side. The same observation extends also to professional life. An account of one man's success in the practice of physic, and of another in pleading at the bar, will by no means answer the chief end of biographical narrative. To say that this or that navigator was bolder and more adventurous than another-that this or that physician, this or that lawyer, this or that statesman, was more skilful, more active, more learned, more experienced than another, is merely equivalent to saying, in other departments of knowledge, that this or that crystal, this or that triangle, is greater than another. We have merely the character of the person in relation to that of his fellow-beings: whereas we want to see the individual at one time compared with the same individual at another,—to see whether he is always identical, or is not occasionally-impar sibi-unequal to himself. Nor do these remarks relate to a mere speculative distinction between the two departments of historical literature. We are not interested to know, for instance, that a particular individual is regulated in his deportment by views of private interest; for this is a characteristic of which every man has the exemplar in his own bosom: nor do we much care to be told how desperately brave an individual may be; for he can, at the most, only possess an extraordinary share of an attribute which is found, to a certain extent, not only in all human beings, but in beings of every other description. Yet these are more properly the subjects of historical remark; while it is the signal charm of biography, not only to enumerate those qualities which are common to the species, and which we can always observe without going from home; but to exhibit them in new lights and under new combinations, as they exist in different individuals; whose characters it is her particular office to dissect and expose. Even in historical composition, properly so called, we are always more delighted with delineations of individual character, than with the details of international transactions: and the body of biographical notes which brings up the rear of Hume, as well as the train of marginal anecdote and criticism which accompanies the march of Gibbon, are much the most amusing, and, in proportion to their volume, by no means the least instructive, parts of their respective histories. Now this great object is not accomplished by attempting the transcription of an individual's character in the phraseology of the biographer himself:-above all, in the ordinary phraseology of biographers, where we are so often told that the person under consideration was this thing without being that thing-had one quality without another quality;* all of which brings us to about as instructive a result as to put a one pound weight into one scale of a balance, and a one pound weight into the other. To produce an equiponderance, the writer is obliged to chip off a great many little prominences of individuality; and we have nothing, at last, but a shapeless, mutilated remnant of the character which he is endeavouring to exhibit: or what is quite as frequently the case, he finds himself necessitated to interject a great many circumstances which are altogether extraneous to the person whom he is describing, and which are merely intended as a kind of biographical make-weight. For all the purposes of mere history, the summary descriptions here alluded to, are abundantly sufficient; for since this department of narrative composition is only concerned with individuals as instruments of public service, where the little parts and peculiarities of character have no opportunity of exhibition-it is enough The following is by no means the most vicious specimen of the affected concinnity to which we are here alluding: Washington had religion without austerity, dignity without pride, modesty without diffidence, courage without Pashness, politeness without affectation, affability without familiarity,' &c. p. 81. |