I
assured him that I had no talents for research, and insufficient
knowledge for a historical biography. He replied that research was a
matter of patience, and that as for knowledge, I could acquire it.
I thanked him sincerely for his thoughtful kindness, and said that I
would hear it in mind.
The result of my reflections is that the only kind of literature worth
writing is literature with some original intention. Solid works have a
melancholy tendency to be monumental, in the sense that they cover the
graves of literary reputations. Historical works are superseded with
shocking rapidity. One remembers the description which FitzGerald gave
of the labours of his friend Spedding upon Bacon. Spedding gave up the
whole of his life, said FitzGerald, to editing works which did not need
editing, and to whitewashing a character which could not be
whitewashed. It is awful to reflect how many years Walter Scott gave to
editing Dryden and Swift and to writing a Life of Napoleon--years
which might have given us more novels and poems. Did Scott, did anyone,
gain by the sacrifice? Of course one would like to write a great
biography, but the biographies that live are the lives of men written
by friends and contemporaries, living portraits, like Boswell's
_Johnson_ or Stanley's _Arnold_. To write such a book, one needs to
have been in constant intercourse with a great personality, to have
seen him in success and failure, in happiness and depression, in health
and sickness, in strength and weakness.
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