Page images
PDF
EPUB

He fortifies his health with exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but, if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends."-Id. p. 146.

And so farewell, poor, flourishing, disappointed, reconciled, wise, foolish, enchanting Lady Mary! Fair English vision in Turk-land; Turkish vision in ours; the female wit of the days of Pope; benefactress of the species; irritating satirist of the circles. Thou didst err for want of a little more heart,perhaps for want of finding enough in others, or for loss of thy mother in infancy,-but thy loss was our gain, for it gained us thy books, and thy inoculation. Thy poems are little, being but a little wit in rhyme, vers de société; but thy prose is much,-admirable, better than acute, idiomatical, off-hand, conversational without inelegance, fresh as the laugh on the young cheek, and full of brain. The conventional shows of things could not deceive thee: pity was it that thou didst not see a little farther into the sweets of things unconventional,-of faith in the heart, as well as in the blood and good sense! Loveable, indeed, thou wert not, whatever thou mightst have been rendered; but admirable thou wert, and ever wilt thou be thought so, as long as pen writeth straightforward, and sense or Sultana hath a charm.

LIFE AND AFRICAN VISIT OF PEPYS.*

Characteristics of Autobiography. Account of Pepys's "Diary," and summary of his life.-His voyage to Tangier, and business in that place.-Character and behaviour of its Governor, the "Infamous Colonel Kirke.”—Pepys's return to England.-Gibbon's ancestor, the herald.-Pepys and Lord Sandwich, &c.

It is a good thing for the world, and a relief from those conventional hypocrisies of which most people are ashamed, even when they would be far more ashamed to break through them, that now and then there comes up some autobiographical gentleman who makes the universe his confidant, and carries the nil humani alienum down to a confession about his love of preferment, or a veal-pie, or his delight

*From the Edinburgh Review for 1841.-Occasioned by "The Life, Journal, and Correspondence of SAMUEL PEPYS, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. Including a Narrative of his Voyage to Tangier, deciphered from the short-hand MSS. in the Bodleian Library." Now first published from the originals. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1841.

in setting up his coach. We do not mean such only as have written "lives," but men of autobiographical propensities, in whatever shape indulged. Montaigne was such a man; Boswell was another; and we have a remarkable one in the Diarist before us, who, if he does not give us a whole life, puts into the memorandums of some ten or a dozen years more about himself than whole lives have communicated. The regular autobiographers are apt to be of loftier pretensions, and less fondly communicative; but still they make curious and sometimes extraordinary disclosures. At one time, the writer is a philosopher (Rousseau), who shakes the thrones of Europe, and has stolen a bit of riband; at another, a knight-errant out of season (Lord Herbert), who breaks the peace in order to preserve it, and thinks he has had a revelation against revelation. A still more summary Italian (Cellini), settles his differences with people by stabbing them; and as the contemporaries of such writers are sometimes almost as strange people as themselves, though not aware of it, this assassin, who made admirable goblets and wine-coolers, is pardoned by the Pope, because he is too great a genius to be hung.

All autobiographers indeed, the very frankest, have more or less their concealments; for it would require the utmost extreme of impudence or simplicity to tell everything. We never met with one of whom it was to be expected, unless it was that

great, but mad genius, Cardan, or the Quaker physician who favours us with his indigestions. One French lady (the heroical and unfortunate Madame Roland) may treat us as her tenderest friend, and startle us with a communication for which we cannot account; and another (Madame de Stahl-not de Stael) exhibit a charming truth and self-knowledge beyond all other autobiographers; and yet from neither do we expect to hear all that gave them surprise or mortification. Still, nevertheless, the beauty of all such writing is, that concealment itself becomes a species of disclosure. The moment a man begins speaking of himself, however prudently he thinks he is going to do it (and the remark of course does not apply the less to tongues more bewitching), a discerning reader may be pretty sure of seeing into the real nature of his character and proceedings. Who doubts the bad temper and impracticableness of Rousseau, for all his attempts to disguise it? or the mere self-seeking of Alfieri? or the pious frauds, and more excusable weaknesses, of Madame de Genlis? (to whom, nevertheless, we believe the world and the present generation to be greatly indebted). If the autobiography tells the truth, there is no mistaking it; and if it falsifies, even in a truth-like manner, we may detect the falsehood in the particularity of its recitals, or in its affectation of ease and simplicity, or in the general impression. The writer betrays himself when he least suspects it, and for that very reason; and he always exhibits his

greatest weakness when he flatters himself he is at the top of his strength, or even when he is so; for he is then not only least on his guard, but has reached the limits of his understanding; and by his scorn and his final judgments, he discloses to us the whole field of his ignorance beyond it.

As the perusal of autobiography, however, puts the reader in the state of a companion, it is far pleasantest, upon the whole, when it saves him the unsocial and hostile trouble of such detections; and, like our old friend before us, is as truly candid about himself as others-thoroughly open, unsuspecting, and familiar-" pouring out all as plain" as "old Montaigne" aforesaid, or "downright Shippen."

Let such a man tell us what he will-supposing he is not a dolt, or out of his wits-we cannot help having, not only a portion of regard, but something of a respect for him, seeing his total freedom from the most injurious and alienating of vices, insin-、 cerity; and, accordingly-though we laugh at Pepys with his cockney revels, and his beatitudes of lace and velvet, and his delight at having his head patted by Lord Clarendon, and his honest uproariousness, and his not knowing "what to think,' between his transport with the court beauties, and the harm he is afraid they will do the state—we feel that he ends in being a thoroughly honest man, and even a very clever one, and that we could have grown serious in his behalf, had his comfort or good name been put in jeopardy.

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »