Acute, keen, and observant, he pierced the masks of the courtiers, and detected their secrets. The ardour with which he prosecuted his favourite study of character seemed insatiable, and even cruel. "The eager anatomist," says Sainte-Beuve, "was not more ready to plunge the scalpel into the still-palpitating bosom in search of the disease that had baffled him."La Bruyere possessed the same gift of accurate and penetrating observation of character. He watched and studied everybody about him. He sought to read their secrets; and, retiring to his chamber, he deliberately painted their portraits, returning to them from time to time to correct some prominent feature--hanging over them as fondly as an artist over some favourite study--adding trait to trait, and touch to touch, until at length the picture was complete and the likeness perfect.
It may be said that much of the interest of biography, especially of the more familiar sort, is of the nature of gossip; as that of the MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR is of the nature of scandal, which is no doubt true. But both gossip and scandal illustrate the strength of the interest which men and women take in each other's personality; and which, exhibited in the form of biography, is capable of communicating the highest pleasure, and yielding the best instruction. Indeed biography, because it is instinct of humanity, is the branch of literature which--whether in the form of fiction, of anecdotal recollection, or of personal narrative--is the one that invariably commends itself to by far the largest class of readers.
There is no room for doubt that the surpassing interest which fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds, arises mainly from the biographic element which it contains.
Homer's 'Iliad' owes its marvellous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develope themselves by their actions. "There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have not produced any but what are to be found there."The genius of Shakspeare also was displayed in the powerful delineation of character, and the dramatic evolution of human passions. His personages seem to be real--living and breathing before us. So too with Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though homely and vulgar, is intensely human. The characters in Le Sage's 'Gil Blas,' in Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,' and in Scott's marvellous muster-roll, seem to us almost as real as persons whom we have actually known; and De Foe's greatest works are but so many biographies, painted in minute detail, with reality so apparently stamped upon every page, that it is difficult to believe his Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack to have been fictitious instead of real persons.
Though the richest romance lies enclosed in actual human life, and though biography, because it describes beings who have actually felt the joys and sorrows, and experienced the difficulties and triumphs, of real life, is capable of being made more attractive, than the most perfect fictions ever woven, it is remarkable that so few men of genius have been attracted to the composition of works of this kind. Great works of fiction abound, but great biographies may be counted on the fingers. It may be for the same reason that a great painter of portraits, the late John Philip, R.A., explained his preference for subject-painting, because, said he, "Portrait-painting does not pay." Biographic portraiture involves laborious investigation and careful collection of facts, judicious rejection and skilful condensation, as well as the art of presenting the character portrayed in the most attractive and lifelike form; whereas, in the work of fiction, the writer's imagination is free to create and to portray character, without being trammelled by references, or held down by the actual details of real life.
There is, indeed, no want among us of ponderous but lifeless memoirs, many of them little better than inventories, put together with the help of the scissors as much as of the pen. What Constable said of the portraits of an inferior artist--"He takes all the bones and brains out of his heads"--applies to a large class of portraiture, written as well as painted. They have no more life in them than a piece of waxwork, or a clothes-dummy at a tailor's door. What we want is a picture of a man as he lived, and lo! we have an exhibition of the biographer himself. We expect an embalmed heart, and we find only clothes.
