UBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORIWA Digitized by the Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.archive.org/details/englishbiograpliyOOdunniala The Channels of English Literature 4- ENGLISH BIOGRAPHY The Channels of English Literature Edited by Oliphant Smsatok, M.A. ENGLISH EPIC AND HEROIC POETRY. By Professor W. Macneilb Dixon, M.A., University of Glasgow. ENGLISH LYRIC POETRY. By Ernest Rhys. THE ENGLISH DRAMA. By Professor F. E. Schblunq, Litt.D., University of Pennsylvania. ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS and SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY. By Professor James Sbth, M.A., University of Edinburgh. THE ENGLISH ESSAY AND ESSAYISTS. By Professor Hugh Walker, LL.D., St. David's College, Lampeter. THE ENGLISH NOVEL. By Professor George Saintsbury, D.Litt., University of Edinburgh. ENGLISH BIOGRAPHY. By Professor Waldo H. Dunn, Litt.D., The College of Wooster, U.S.A. ENGLISH ELEGIAC, DIDACTIC, AND RELIGIOUS POETRY. By the Very Rev. H. C. Beeching, D.D., D.Litt., Dean of Norwich, and the Rev. Ronald Bayne, M.A. ENGLISH HISTORIANS AND SCHOOLS OF HISTORY. By Professor Richard Lodge, University of Edinburgh. zt^tt.xii/g' ENGLISH BIOGRAPHY A vs WALDO H: DUNN, M.A., Litt.D. PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER, U.S.A. LONDON, PARIS, AND TORONTO J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1916 cr2i D8S All rights reserved \ F. G. D. PATIENT, STEADFAST, LOYAL COMRADE IN THE QUEST PREFACE In harmony with the common purpose of the other volumes which belong to this series, I have made an attempt to trace the genesis and evolution of English biography, and to furnish those who may care to devote themselves to a further study of the subject with sufficient materials in the way of references to sources to enable them to make at least a beginning toward the accomplishment of their desire. I beHeve I am right in saying that this is the first book in the English language devoted to a careful and somewhat exhaustive study of the subject. So far as I know, it is the first of its kind in any language. Beyond brief articles in encyclopaedias and magazines, reviews of biographies in periodicals, and a few short treatises, the great subject of biography has remained untouched. No one can be more conscious than myself of the limita- tions of the discussion herewith presented. I feel that I have made only a beginning in a work that is sure to be continued. Biography as an Art; Biography as Litera- ture; Biography in its Relations to History, Fiction, Psychology, and Medical Science; The Use of Letters in Biography—all these subjects, and more besides, will some day be adequately treated. They can be only hinted at, or touched upon briefly, in a book of this kind. Yet, again, the whole question of a bibHography of biography remains. The lists herewith given in the appendix are not meant to be complete; they but illustrate certain portions of the main text, and are intended to be only suggestive. There is great need of an approximately complete biblio- vii b viu ENGLISH BIOGRAPHY graphy of the subject which will enumerate and evaluate, for the student and the general reader, the really worth- while works. Some one may perform a real service to students by preparing a complete Ust and a critical dis- cussion of the short lives and memoirs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The preparation of such bibho- graphies will be the work of years, but I have no doubt that it will some day be accompUshed. I have met with much encouragement in the prosecution of this work, and owe a large debt of gratitude to many. The Rev. Thomas Davidson, Nevill Forbes, M.A., Reader in Russian at Oxford University, M. Jules Jusserand, French Ambassador to the United States of America, and Robert S. Rait, M.A., Professor of Scottish History and Literature in the University of Glasgow, have kindly furnished information, and helped me by way of suggestion in forming critical and comparative estimates. Sir Sidney Lee has likewise kindly directed me to useful information, has allowed me to quote from his writings on biography, and has otherwise personally encouraged me. Hugh Walker, LL.D., Professor of English in St. David's College, Lampeter, was good enough to read a portion of the work in manuscript. My friend and colleague, Walter Edwin Peck, M.A., Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Enghsh Composition in The College of Wooster, has followed the whole work with great interest, and has gone over it all in proof. Mrs. Anna Robeson Burr, of Philadelphia, whose valuable studies in autobiography have rendered my task much easier, has not only allowed me to draw freely upon her work, but has also furnished specific aid and suggestions. Upon none of these, however, should the blame for any of the shortcomings of this book be charged. As it stands, I alone am responsible for the matter which it contains and for the manner in which all has been presented. PREFACE ix It was my great privilege to be associated during the entire period in which I was engaged upon this work with W. Macneile Dixon, Litt.D., Professor of English Litera- ture in the University of Glasgow. The example of his high scholarship " lightly borne," together with the self- effacing kindness of true culture, has been an inspiration to me. He has never failed to have " a heart at leisure from itself " sufficiently to permit him to sympathise with the most trivial interests of my every-day life. To the Court and the Senate of the University of Glasgow I owe thanks for privileges accorded me during the two years which I spent as a Research Student in that institu- tion. Within the hospitable gates of that ancient seat of learning, and in connexion with the department of English Literature, the most of this work was prosecuted. For many courtesies, I wish to thank the officials of the Library of the University of Glasgow, the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, and the Advo- cates' Library, Edinburgh. To The College of Wooster I am deeply indebted for the gift of the time during which this study was carried on. WALDO H. DUNN. Dunoon, Scotland. * June Tgi6. INTRODUCTION Doubtless, few people have ever taken the trouble to put the definite query, What is biography? Fewer still, perhaps, have ever attempted to formulate an answer to what seems so easy a question. When we do seek for enlightenment, no host of critics can be summoned to our aid as in the case of such other forms of literature as poetry and prose fiction; for, as yet, biography has not been made to any great extent the subject of critical analysis and discussion. Such criticism as exists is scattered chiefly throughout reviews—often hastily and perfunctorily written—or is contained in a few remarks now and then made by biographers in the course of their narratives. Evidently, it has been generally taken for granted that every one knows what biography is. It is true that definitions are usually unsatisfactory, and that most of us get along very well in using words which we should be puzzled to define logically. Yet not for this reason should the process of defining be set aside as useless, or unnecessary: attempts at definition are help- ful in clarifying thought-processes, and the results are, at least, suggestive, affording points of departure for further discussion. We may see how needful is the attempt in the present instance by the briefest glance at what have usually passed for definitions of biography. Plutarch set before himself the task of " zvriting the lives offamous persons,^ of " comparing the lives of the greatest men with one another" No further thought of expressing more definitely what is meant by lives seems to have occurred to any one until John Dryden, in 1683, introduced the word biography into xi xii ENGLISH BIOGRAPHY the English language and declared it to be " the history of particular merCs lives?'' To say that biography is the history of one man's life is, at least, to be clear and succinct, but the definition is no more than a beginning of the expository process. It is easy enough to say that the history of a man's life constitutes his biography; it is not so easy to declare what should go to make up the history; still less easy to say just what is meant by the life of which the history is to treat. What do we mean when we speak of the life of a man? The expression is common, and every one knows, or thinks that he knows, what the term means. It is clear that notions have differed widely in the past, just as they differ widely in the present. Xenophon believed that he was giving to the world the story of Socrates' life no less truly than Adamnan thought he was presenting " before the eyes of his readers " an image of the holy life of Columba. How different was the ideal of Samuel Parr from that of James Boswell as to what should present the history of the life of Samuel Johnson. Different notions in the minds of the writers were certainly responsible for the different methods employed by Thomas Carlyle in his Life of Sterlings by J. W. Cross in his Life of George Eliot, and by Horace Traubel in his With Walt Whitman in Camden. Thomas Jefferson Hogg and Edward J. Trelawny had the opportunity to do for Shelley what Carlyle did for John Sterling: one has simply to taste of their work to see how far removed it is from that of Carlyle, to recognise that it is scarcely comparable to the Life of Sterling.