Memoir

“ Nor does the Memoir, as a revelation of the poet's intellectual and personal life, fall away, on any page of it, from the high plane on which it has been prepared and written. There is no undue invasion, which a son's pride might be apt to make, of domestic privacy, and no dealing with irrelevant topics or elaboration of those set forth with becoming modesty and restraint; far less is there the discussion of any subject, for a trivial or vain purpose. Throughout the work we meet with no unnecessary lifting of veils or treatment of themes merely to satisfy morbid curiosity. ”

“ It is difficult to know what to admire most—the clearness of perception, the precision of the statement, the strictness of the logic, the aptness of the illustration, or the argumentative skill with which the whole is marshalled and presented. As a piece of induction, the memoir is a model of its kind, and as an exercise in “the scientific use of the imagination” it has few equals. ”

“ To those who know the Memoir by his son, Hallam Tennyson,--a memoir that while paying honor to filial reverence and devotion is at the same time and in all respects most worthy of its high theme,--the events in the poet's life will hardly need dwelling upon, though they throw much light on, and impart the distinction of a high dignity to, the Laureate's work. ”

“ So deeply will they sink, so long will they live, that he who writes a memoir of this man trembles for thinking that when future ages ask who and what was the man who wrote these things, the pages which contain his life may seem unequal to the subject—too low, pedestrian, and creeping for the greatness of the author he commemorates. ”

“ It is this instructive as well as skilled and dignified treatment, with the vast literary and deep personal interest in the life, that will commend the Memoir to all who are proud of the Laureate's fame, and wished to have nothing written that was unworthy of either the poet or the man, or that would in the least detract from his laurels. Nor does the restraint which the biographer imposes upon himself conceal from us the man in his human aspects, or lead him to set before the reader an imaginary, rather than a veritable and real, portraiture. ”

“ The learned writer of the Memoir has taken much pains to bring together much of the writings of his favorite subject, whereby he has rendered the work in a great degree autobiographical, and made his readers acquainted with the strength of mind, temper, spirit and taste, of our departed brother. ”

“ Thus if any writer attempts to do what I have done myself—namely, to examine or depict in books of widely different kinds such aspects and problems of life—social, philosophical, religious, and economic—as have in turn engrossed his special attention, he may venture to hope that a memoir of his own activities will be taken as representing an age, rather than a personal story, his personal story being little more than a variant of one which many readers will recognize as common to themselves and him. ”

“ With the same certainty I can declare that everything which this memoir contains relating to the motives and inducements of my actions, and the occurrences in which I took part, has been most conscientiously recorded by me, as well as my memory enabled me to [Pg 365] recall it. ”

“ In a more original vein, though also principally Scottish, are those papers which may be described as memoirs and character-sketches in a more express sense than the three or four already referred to as combining memoir with criticism. By far the most important of these is his Memoir of his own Father, in supplement to the Life of his Father by the Rev. Dr. ”

“ I state the simple truth when I record that the testimonies, received in this way from the two extremes of highest knowledge and most diverse social and national conditions, remain the most grateful and enduring memorials of a life's work to those who must ever cherish the memory of what this memoir is precluded from touching on, namely, the more sacred domestic endearments of the life-long devotion to family ties of a son and a brother. ”

“ A very forlorn-looking person, dressed in black, with a white neckcloth, sent her a memoir of a child who died at the age of two years and eleven months, after having fully indorsed all the doctrines of the particular persuasion to which he not only belonged himself, but thought it very shameful that everybody else did not belong. ”

“ To attempt an analysis of the Memoirs now laid before the public would be utterly impossible, so romantic are the narratives, so thrilling the horrors, so powerful the descriptions, so continuous the thread of its history. As a piece of Autobiography, it has many and singular characteristics, which stamp it at once as one of the most interesting and peculiar narratives ever penned, replete with astonishing incident and instructive moral. ”

“ The subject of the present memoir affords an almost solitary example, at this period, of a scholar, in the enlarged application of the term, who cultivated letters as a distinct and exclusive profession, resting his means of support, as well as his fame, on his success; and who, as a writer of fiction, is still farther entitled to credit for having quitted the beaten grounds of the Old Country, and sought his subjects in the untried wilderness of his own. ”

“ Remember, reader, I offer you no more than the memoirs of men who had many faults, written by a man who had many himself; and who writes to inform you, not to engross your admiration. Had he given you a perfect history, and a flattering picture of himself, his work would have been a romance, and he an impostor. ”

“ I show you the wrong side of events which history does not display: history exhibits only the right side. Memoirs have the advantage of presenting both surfaces of the texture: in this respect they depict the whole complexion of humanity better, by exposing, as in the tragedies of Shakespeare, low and exalted scenes. ”

“ Without a stage, in a national point of view at least, with scarcely such a thing as a book of memoirs that relates to a life passed within our own limits, and totally without light literature, to give us simulated pictures of our manners, and the opinions of the day, I see scarcely a mode by which the next generation can preserve any memorials of the distinctive usages and thoughts of this. ”

“ The writer of these remarkable memoirs, whose anonymity will not veil his identity from his friends, is a man well known, not only in England, but also abroad, and the pages are full of the writer’s charm, and gaiety of spirit, and “courage of a day that knows not death.” ”

“ Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life. I have lived without dreaming that I should ever take a fancy to write the history of my life, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may claim from the reader an interest and a sympathy which they would not have obtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in my old age, and, still more, to publish them. ”

“ Their pictures and engravings enable us to take part in their domestic life, see how they dress, observe their attitudes and follow their movements. Through their literature, philosophy, scientific pursuits, gazettes, and correspondence, we can reproduce their feeling and thought, and even enjoy their familiar conversation. The multitude of memoirs, issuing during the past thirty years from public and private archives, lead us from one drawing room to another, as if we bore with us so many letters of introduction. ”

“ For beyond writing materials and a tireless forearm there are in the manufacture of memoirs only two essentials: one must live during an interesting period of the world’s history and one must from time to time meet, or at the very least see, a variety of well-known persons. ”

“ How far these Memoirs are genuine in the sense which makes them so attractive—that is to say, as literally authentic pictures of a great man's interior life, of his actual words and behaviour as witnessed by his intimates—must always remain doubtful to the sceptical mind. True reminiscences are naturally somewhat cloudy in outline, hanging loose together with gaps and interruptions; whereas these are all coherent, clear-cut, and written in a style that gives superior polish and setting to every scene and anecdote. That they are compiled upon a solid substratum of truth need not be questioned ”

“ From the very start that assembly of poets trembled with excitement; they felt they had a poet before them, and the volume opened with these lines, which I may be permitted to quote, although they are known by all the world. We have said, and we cannot repeat it too often, that these memoirs are not only Memoirs but recollections of the art, poetry, literature and politics of the first fifty years of the century. When we have attacked, severely, perhaps, but honestly and loyally, things that were base and low and shameful ”

“ It is now many years since I began these memoirs. I wrote fully a third of them, and then put them aside, having found increasing difficulties as I went on with my task. These arose out of the constant need to use the first person in a narrative of adventure and incidents which chiefly concern the writer, even though it involve also the fortunes of many in all ranks of life. ”

“ POEMS.
By EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY. With a Memoir by W. A. GILL, and a Reprint of Mr. J. A. SYMONDS’ Critical Essay on “Echoes from Theocritus.” Photogravure Portrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
The Times.—“ ... the leading features of the sonnets are the writer’s intense sympathy with human life in general and with young life in particular; his humour, his music, and, in a word, the quality which ‘leaves a melody afloat upon the brain, a savour on the mental palate.’”
Bookman.—“The Memoir, by Mr. W. A. Gill, is a sympathetic sketch of an earnest and lovable character ”

“ People generally think those memoirs only worthy to be read or remembered which abound in great or striking events, those, in short, which in a high degree excite either admiration or pity: all others they consign to contempt and oblivion. ”

“ Memoirs generally record the lives of individuals or facts pertaining to individual lives. A biography is distinctively a written account of one person's life and actions; an autobiography is a biography written by the person whose life it records. ”

“ If I have any readers, I ask their pardon for these digressions. They must remember that these Memoirs were written in my old age, and the old are always garrulous. The time will come to them also, and then they will understand that if the aged repeat themselves, it is because they live in a world of memories, without a present and without a future. ”

“ Everybody, of every degree of rank or talent, who has read the Memoirs, speaks of them in the most gratifying and delightful manner. Those who have fixed on individual circumstances have always fixed on those which we should have considered as most curious. ”

“ And upon no spot in the review of the past does one's memory dwell with so much intense emotion, as upon that thorny and tangled labyrinth through which the spirit wandered, 'bewildered, but not lost,' at the period when the necessity and duty of proving its own character first roused it to a sense of its responsibilities. You say most truly, that it is good to look at things at a distance, from new and various points of view. ”

“ That the characters lightly sketched in these Memoirs have been taken from life—i.e., that the ideas of them have been furnished by real personages—I in some measure candidly allow, though I have avoided making the portraits invidiously exact; as in a dream, busy fancy weaves a tissue of events out of the stored impressions of the brain, so, of course, the writer of a story must in like manner, though with more congruity, arrange and embody his scattered recollections, though not necessarily in the exact shape and order in which the objects, &c., originally presented themselves. ”

“ The [575] diction of memoirs is somewhat determined by circumstances and subject; but if you write an autobiography, you should see to it that your words and constructions are unmistakably simple. Be as modest as is consistent with your great deeds, and as cheerful as the fates will allow. If you make yourself out a good fellow, do so by the general impression of your narrative, not by assertion. ”

“ In person, the subject of our Memoir is short and slight, with an elegant and dignified, though unpretending bearing. He has black hair, dark brilliant eyes, small delicate features, and a firmly set jaw ”

“ The reader, after a perusal of the succeeding narratives, will not hesitate, I hope, to corroborate my assertion that each of these eight memoirs contains many incidents of general interest and that all of these neglected persons lived lives which are worthy of description in detail. ”

“ Those who write memoirs of remarkable men from personal knowledge, should remember that details of their habits and conversation will be much more valuable to posterity, than disquisitions upon their scientific labours and discussions, which, coming from the pens of friends or relations, will always be looked upon as ex parte statements. ”

“ What an interesting and varied picture do these dates present to my mind's eye, and how many remembrances are associated with them of joy and sorrow, of trial and happiness! I could willingly spend hours in recalling all in detail, and I feel as if it would do us both good, should I do so; for I find that, in the full occupation of the present, the lessons of the past are losing their power over me. Their voice cannot be heard in the busy bustle of life ”

“ Those memoirs, therefore, are properly a relation of a general treaty of peace, wherein the author had the principal as well as the most honourable part in quality of mediator; so that the frequent mention of himself seems not only excusable but necessary. ”

“ To help us to get a fairer estimate, her own "Memoirs," written by herself, and now first given to readers in an English dress, should surely serve. Avowedly compiled in a vague, desultory way, with no particular regard to chronological sequence, these random recollections should interest us, in the first place, as a piece of unconscious self-portraiture. ”