Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/201



N ALL the literature of fact—as distinguished from the literature of fiction—hardly any kind of book surpasses a good biography in its power to interest and instruct. It combines the suspense of the novel with the actuality of history. It fills in the detail without which history would be too impersonal, and it shows us how people, not at all points unlike ourselves, have ordered their lives what their guiding principles have been, and how principles have sometimes been modified to meet circumstances. Especially in the case of autobiography is all this true, for here we have the pleasure of feeling that the record is both authentic and intimate. The best of biographers, however learned, vivid, or philosophical, leaves between us and the past an interval which only a good autobiography can span. Such an autobiography may possess great historical value if its author was intimately connected with significant events and had some capacity to perceive their causes and their effects. But if the writer happens to be earnest about his career, free from self-consciousness, and blest with a good prose style, we have sufficient reasons for valuing the record of his life even though the historical importance of it may be quite secondary. Such is the basis of our permanent regard for autobiographies like those of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and John Woolman (1720–1772).

Neither Franklin nor Woolman would have been at home among the makers of the literature which is most significant of America before their time. The latter as a Quaker, the former as a person whose general attitude may be indicated by his casually uttered remark that he was usually too busy to go to church, would have been either punished or cast out (if not both) by most New England