MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE AND WRITINGS IN N the fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of an arduous and successful work, I now propose to employ some moments of my leisure in reviewing the simple transactions of a private and literary life. Truth, naked unblushing truth, the first virtue of more serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative. The style shall be simple and familiar; but style is the image of character,1 and the habits of correct writing may produce, without labour or design, the appearance of art and study.2 My own amusement is my motive, and will be my reward: and if these sheets are communicated to some discreet and indulgent friends, they will be secreted from the public eye till the author shall be removed beyond the reach of criticism or ridicule.3 1[See post, p. 190, where he says that "the style of an author should be the image of his mind". Buffon had said before him: "Le style est l'homme même". If style is the image of character, the general absence of style is explained by Pope, who says: "Most women have no characters at all" (Moral Essays, ii., 2); and by Johnson, who goes still further, maintaining that "the greater part of mankind have no character at all" (Johnson's Works, viii., 355). Wordsworth, criticising Johnson's assertion, says that "every man has a character of his own to the eye that has skill to perceive it" (Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1857, vi., 316).] 2["He that has once studiously formed a style rarely writes afterwards with complete ease" (Johnson's Works, viii., 284).] 3 This passage is found in one only of the six sketches, and in that which seems to have been the first written, and which was laid aside among loose papers. Mr. Gibbon, in his communications with me on the subject of his Memoirs, a subject which he had never mentioned to any other person, expressed a determination of publishing them in his lifetime; and never appears to have departed from that resolution, excepting in one of his letters annexed, in which he intimates a doubt, though rather carelessly, whether in his time, or at any time, they would meet the eye of the public. In a conversation, however, not long before his death, I suggested to him that, if he should make them a full image of his mind, he would not have nerves to publish them, and therefore that they should be posthumous. He answered, rather eagerly, that he was determined to publish them in his lifetime.-SHEFFIELD. [For the A lively desire of knowing and of recording our ancestors so generally prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common principle in the minds of men. We seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers; it is the labour and reward of vanity to extend the term of this ideal longevity. Our imagination is always active to enlarge the narrow circle in which Nature has confined us. Fifty or an hundred years may be allotted to an individual, but we step1 forwards beyond death with such hopes as religion and philosophy will suggest ; and we fill up the silent vacancy that precedes our birth, by associating ourselves to the authors of our existence. Our calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate, than to suppress, the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The satirist may laugh,2 the philosopher may preach; but Reason herself " 'letter annexed," dated January 6, 1793, see Corres., ii., 357. He writes: 2["Stemmata quid faciunt? Quid prodest, Pontice, longo Savage writes in the opening lines of The Bastard : (Juvenal, Sat. viii., 1.) "He lives to build, not boast, a generous race; Young says of the nobleman : 'He stands for fame on his forefathers' feet, (The Universal Passion, Sat. i., l. 131.)] 3["The sophists of every age, despising, or affecting to despise, the accidental distinctions of birth and fortune, reserve their esteem for the superior qualities of the mind, with which they themselves are so plentifully endowed' (The Decline, ii., 486).] will respect the prejudices and habits, which have been consecrated by the experience of mankind.1 Few there are who can sincerely despise in others an advantage of which they are secretly ambitious to partake. The knowledge of our own family from a remote period will be always esteemed as an abstract pre-eminence, since it can never be promiscuously enjoyed; but the longest series of peasants and mechanics would not afford much gratification to the pride of their descendant. We wish to discover our ancestors, but we wish to discover them possessed of ample fortunes, adorned with honourable titles, and holding an eminent rank in the class of hereditary nobles, which has been maintained for the wisest and most beneficial purposes in almost every climate of the globe, and in almost every modification of political society.2 Wherever the distinction of birth is allowed to form a superior order in the state, education and example should always, and will often, produce among them a dignity of sentiment and propriety of conduct, which is guarded from dishonour by their own and the public esteem. If we read of some illustrious line so ancient that it has no beginning, so worthy that it ought to have no end, we sympathize in its various fortunes; nor can we blame the generous enthusiasm, or even the harmless vanity, of those who are allied to the honours of its name. For my own part, could I draw my pedigree from a general, a statesman, or a celebrated author, I should study their lives with the diligence of filial love. In the investigation of past events, our curiosity is stimulated by 1[The rest of the paragraph to "political society" first appears in the second edition. In its arrangement it differs in some places from the original, which in Auto., p. 417, is marked as hitherto unpublished.] ["But, sir (said Johnson), as subordination is very necessary for society, and contentions for superiority very dangerous, mankind, that is to say, all civilised nations, have settled it upon a plain, invariable principle. A man is born to hereditary rank; or his being appointed to certain offices gives him a certain rank. Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure" (Boswell's Johnson, i., 442). Satan maintained in Hell that "Orders and degrees (Paradise Lost, v., 792.)] the immediate or indirect reference to ourselves; but in the estimate of honour we should learn to value the gifts of Nature above those of Fortune; to esteem in our ancestors the qualities that best promote the interests of society; and to pronounce the descendant of a king less-truly noble than the offspring of a man of genius, whose writings will instruct or delight the latest posterity. The family of Confucius is, in my opinion, the most illustrious in the world. After a painful ascent of eight or ten centuries, our barons and princes of Europe are lost in the darkness of the middle ages; but, in the vast equality of the empire of China, the posterity of Confucius have maintained, above two thousand two hundred years, their peaceful honours and perpetual succession. The chief of the family is still revered, by the sovereign and the people, as the lively image of the wisest of mankind. The nobility of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the Fairy Queen 2 as the most precious jewel of their coronet. Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who draw their origin from the Counts of Habsburgh, the lineal descendants of Ethico, in the seventh century, Duke of Alsace.3 Far different have been the fortunes of the English and German divisions of the family of Habsburgh; the former, the knights and sheriffs of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity 1 ["Few there are who dare trust the memorials of their family to the public annals of their country" (The Decline, vi., 460).] 2" Nor less praiseworthy are the ladies [sisters] three, Of which I meanest boast myself to be." (Spenser, Colin Clout, etc., v., 538.)-GIBBON. [The second daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough married Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, whose eldest son succeeded his aunt, Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, in the Dukedom. From the Earl's youngest son, Gibbon's friend, the second Earl Spencer, was descended.] 3 [Gibbon gives a brief account of Ethico in his "Antiquities of the House of Brunswick," Misc. Works, iii., 504. "The origin of this family [the Habsburg] has been a constant puzzle to the fertile imaginations of genealogists. Some among them trace it back to the Merovingians, others to the Carolingians; others, again, to that Duke Ethico, of Alamania, who is supposed to have been the common stock from which sprang the houses of Habsburg, Lorraine and Baden " (Leger's Austro-Hungary, English trans., p. 141).] of a peerage;1 the latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened the liberty of the old, and invaded the treasures of the new world. The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial, and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.2 That these sentiments are just, or at least natural, I am inclined to believe, since I do not feel myself interested in the cause; for I can derive from my ancestors neither glory nor shame. Yet a sincere and simple narrative of my own life may amuse some of my leisure hours; but it will subject me, and perhaps with justice, to the imputation of vanity. I may judge, however, from the experience both of past and of 1["Geffery, Earl of Hapsburgh, by the oppression of Rodolph, Emperor of Germany, being reduced to extreme poverty, one of his sons, named Geffery, served King Henry III. in his wars in England, and because his father had pretensions to the dominions of Laufenburgh and Rinfilding, he took the name of Fielding" (Collins's Peerage, ed. 1756, ii., 247). The peerage was conferred by James I. (ib., p. 251). The novelist being in company with the Earl of Denbigh, his kinsman, the Earl asked him how it was that he spelled his name 'Fielding' and not 'Feilding,' like the head of the house. I cannot tell, my Lord,' said he, 'except it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to spell '(Thackeray's English Humourists, ed. 1858, p. 282).] 2 ["There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have your name mentioned by Gibbon is like having it written on the dome of St. Peter's. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it" (ib., p. 275). Gibbon again praises Tom Jones, post, p. 243, n. In The Decline, iii., 363, he speaks of it as "the romance of a great master, which may be considered as the history of human nature". Mr. J. H. Round, in The Genealogist, New Series, x., 193, has demonstrated that the Habsburg descent of the Fieldings is an absurd fiction". It first appeared in print, he believes, in 1656, in Dugdale's Warwickshire. The splendour of Gibbon's language is but a "baseless fabric "; happily the pageant, insubstantial though it may be, shall never fade away. The Earls of Denbigh may be consoled. If they have lost the Habsburghs, of Henry Fielding they cannot be deprived.] 3[Gibbon, writing to John Nichols about his ancestry, says: 'Modesty, or the affectation of modesty, may repeat the Vix ea nostra voco; but experience has proved that there is scarcely any man of a tolerable family who does not wish to know as much as he can about it; nor is such an ambition either foolish in itself, or hurtful to society" (Nichols, Lit. Anec., viii., 557). Gibbon's quotation is from Ovid's Metamorphoses, xiii., 140: "Genus, et proavos, et quae non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco". Thus Englished by Johnson (Rambler, No. 46):-- Nought from my birth or ancestors I claim; |