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“Historical Characters are false Representations of Nature,” The Literary Magazine, and American Register, vol. 5, no. 29 (February 1806), pp. 32–6.
“R.”
The Literary Magazine, and American Register was a monthly published from October 1803 through December 1807. Its editor was Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810), a novelist and prodigious miscellaneous writer. While the author of this piece, “R.,” centered Hume out for his “shameful partiality,” the essay as a whole may be taken to be a broader critique of the Enlightenment historiography to which Hume’s History of England belonged. As “R.” shows, by the early years of the nineteenth century, historical sensibilities were beginning to turn toward romantic understandings of the past which would also give more attention to lesser figures, their deeds and sentiments. On Brown, see Philip Bernard, Mark L. Kamrath, and Stephen Shapiro, eds. Revising Charles Brockden Brown: Culture, Politics, and Sexuality in the Early Republic (Knoxville, TN, 2004) and Philip Barnard’s entry on Brown in EAE, vol. 1, pp. 176–7.
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WE accustom ourselves to pay too liberal an admiration to the great characters recorded in modern, to say nothing of ancient, history. It seems often necessary to be reminded, that the most interesting history is generally the most elegantly written, and that whatever is adorned by elegance is the composition of art. Charmed and seduced by the variegated tints of imagination, the scene is heightened, and the objects move into life; but while we yield ourselves to the captivating talent of the artist, we forget that the whole representation is but a picture, and that painters, like poets, are indulged with a certain agreeable licentiousness. Hence we form false estimates of the human character, and, while we exhaust our sensations in artificial sympathies, amidst characters and circumstances almost fictitious, for the natural events and the natural calamities of life, we suppress those warmer emotions we otherwise should indulge. The human character appears diminutive, when compared with those we meet with in history; yet am I persuaded that domestic sorrows are not less poignant, and many of our associates are characters not inferior to the elaborate delineations which so much interest in the deceptive page of history. The historian is a sculptor, who, though he displays a correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous of displaying the miracles of his art, and therefore enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension. Let us also reflect, how often a shameful partiality dictates to the historians who possess the best information. Procopius, in his Secret Anecdotes, portrays Justinian and Theodora as the most virtuous personages. Eginhard is a perpetual flatterer of Charles the Great; Eusebius of Constantine; Paulus Jovius of Cosmode Medicis; Sandoval of Charles V; and Hume of the Stuarts.
The ancient historians compiled prodigies, to gratify the credulous curiosity of their readers; but since prodigies have ceased, while the same avidity for the marvellous exists, modern historians have transferred the miraculous to their personages. Children read fables as histories, but the philosopher reads histories as fables. Fabulous narratives may, however, convey much instruction.
It is the pleasing labour of genius to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects which occupy his meditations, with a secret artifice of disposition. Voltaire tells us, that no writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe: an observation which has great truth, but which shows that there can be but little truth in such agreeable narratives. Every historian communicates his character to his history; if he is profound and politic, his statesmen resemble political deities, whose least motion is a stratagem, and whose plot contains the seeds of many plots. If he is a writer, more elegant than profound, he delights in descriptive grandeur; in the touching narratives of suffering beauty, and persecuted virtue. If he possesses a romantic turn, his heroes are so many Arthurs, and the actions he records put a modest adventurer into despair. No writers more than the historian, and the professed romancer, so sedulously practice the artifice of awakening curiosity, and feasting that appetency of the mind, which turns from simple truth to spirited fiction. We scarce glance at the glittering of a star, but we gaze with delight on the coruscations of a meteor. We therefore suffer ourselves to become interested with those objects which should interest us least.
The historian, seizing this inclination of the mind, delights it with that imaginary force, and fantastic grandeur, of which, while pleased with the emotions, we perceive not the extravagance. Popular prejudice assists the illusion, and because we are accustomed to behold public characters occupy a situation in life that few can experience, we are induced to believe that their capacities are more enlarged, their passions more refined, and, in a word, that nature has bestowed on them faculties denied to obscurer men. But who, acquainted with human nature, hesitates to acknowledge, that most of the characters in history were persons whom accident had seated upon a throne, or placed with less favour around it? Had Alfred been a private person, like the Man of Ross, his various virtues might only accidentally have reached us; and had Richard III been a citizen of London, he had been led unnoticed to the gibbet.
The pernicious prejudice, which peoples the mind with artificial beings, and enfeebles the sympathies of domestic life, will disappear when we come to those few facts in history, which the art of the historian can no longer disguise, and which, refusing the decorations of his fancy, present the sublime personages of history in the nudity of truth. Let the monarch lose his crown, and the minister his place; let the casque fall from the hero, and the cap from the cardinal; it is then these important personages speak in the voice of distress, are actuated by passions like our own, and come to us with no other claim on our feelings than that common sensibility which we owe to humanity. Here, indeed, the lessons of history become instructive, because they teach that every other portion of history has received the romantic gilding of the pencil; that the sagacity of the statesman is not so adroit, as not to be entangled in its own nets; that the ardour of the hero is often temerity which escaped, and, sometimes, temerity chastised; and that, in general, great characters owe much more to fortune than to nature; that singular coincidences have formed singular events; but that, whenever the delusion of the historian ceases, these illustrious persons appear to have been actuated by passions similar to our own, and that their talents are not superior to those whose obscure actions languished in a confined sphere. It is observed, by Montesquieu, that “most legislators have been men of limited capacities, whom chance placed at the head of others, and who have generally consulted merely their prejudices and their fancies.”
It is, indeed, useful to pause over those passages which give the very feelings of the illustrious persons to whom they relate, and if, to some, these may seem to humble the great, they will also elevate us; or, rather, they will reinstate human nature in that just equality in which we are all placed. The phantom of history will vanish, but the human form will remain palpable and true.
Few circumstances are more curious in history than the unadorned recitals of some memoirs. Thomas Heywood, in his “England’s Elizabeth,” has noticed an instance, that one of the most celebrated characters felt the same agitation, and expressed the same language, which an inferior prisoner would have experienced. This writer gives her mediations in the garden during her imprisonment, in which the natural passions are not entirely lost in the distortion of the language. During her confinement at Woodstock, hourly dreading assassination, she used to sit at the grate of her prison window, morning and evening, listening and shedding tears at the light carolling of the passing milkmaids. Among other insults she received in travelling, the high winds having discomposed her dress, she desired to retire to some house to adjust herself; but this she was refused, and was compelled to make her toilet under a hedge! A kindred anecdote is mentioned by sir Walter Raleigh, of Charles V, who, just after his resignation, having a private interview with some ambassador, and having prolonged it to a late hour after midnight, called for a servant to light the ambassador on the stairs; but they had all retired to rest; and the emperor, yet the terror of Europe, was compelled to snatch a candle and conduct the ambassador to the door. It is thus that majesty, unrobed of factious powers, convinces even the slow apprehension of the vulgar, that the breast of grandeur only conceals passions like their own; and that Elizabeth dressing under a hedge, and Charles lighting the ambassador on the stairs, felt the same bitter indignity, which they are doomed to feel much oftener.
If it were possible to read the histories of those who are doomed to have no historian, and to glance into domestic journals as well as into national archives, we should then perceive the unjust prodigality of our sympathy to those few names, which eloquence has adorned with all the seduction of her graces. We should then acknowledge, that superior talents are not sufficient to obtain superiority, and that the full tide of opportunity, which often carries away the unworthy in triumph, leaves the worthy among the shoals. It is a curious speculation for observing men, to trace great characters in little situations, and to detect real genius passing through life incognito. How many mothers of great characters may address their sons in the words of the mother of Brasidas! he was indeed a great and virtuous commander, but she observed that Sparta had many greater Brasidas’s. Some obscure men, whom the world will never notice, had they occupied the situation of great personages, would have been perhaps even more illustrious. There are never wanting, among a polished people, men of superior talents or superior virtues; every great revolution evinces this truth; indeed, at that perilous moment, they show themselves in too great numbers, and become fatal to each other, by their rival abilities.
Robertson, who is so pleasing a historian, and, therefore, whose veracity becomes very suspicious, confesses, however, that “in judging of the conduct of princes, we are apt to ascribe too much to political motives, and too little to the passions which they feel in common with the rest of mankind. In order to account for Elizabeth’s present, as well as her subsequent conduct towards Mary, we must not always consider her as a queen, we must sometimes regard her merely as a woman.” This is precisely what the refining ingenuity of this writer does as rarely as any historian; and Robertson appears to have been more adapted for a minister of state, than the principal of a Scots college. He explains projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place. We often admire the fertile conceptions of the queen regent, of Elizabeth, and of Bothwell, when, in truth, we are defrauding Robertson of whatever praise may be due to political invention.
But we, who, however charmed with historic beauty, revere truth and humanity, must learn to reduce the aggravated magnitude of the illustrious dead, that we may perform an act of justice to the obscure living. The sympathy we give to a princess ravished by traitors to wet with tears the iron grates of her dungeon, we may with no less propriety bestow on that unfortunate female, whom unfeeling creditors have snatched from maternal duties, or social labours, to perish by the hour, in some loathsome prison. If we feel for the decapitation of a virtuous and long persecuted statesman, we are not to feel less for that more common object, a man of genius, condemned to languish in obscurity, and perish in despair. A great general dies in the embrace of victory, and his character reaches posterity in immortal language: but he probably conducted hundreds whom nature intended for generals, but whom fortune made foot soldiers. What heroes may be found in hospitals! Katharine, the queen of Henry VIII, is an object of our tenderest sympathy; but why should our sensibility be diminished, when we look on those numerous females, not less gentle, nor less cruelly misused, who, without the consolations of sovereignty, are united to despots, not less arbitrary and brutal than Henry? The sorrows of the Scottish Mary, the refined insults of a rival sister, the grin of scorn, and the implication of infamy, may penetrate our hearts; but we forget that there are families, where scenes not less terrible, and sisters not less unrelenting, are hourly discovered; and that there are beauties, who, without being confined to the melancholy magnificence of a castle, or led to the dismal honour of an axe, equally fall victims, or to fatal indiscretion, or to fatal persecution.
The fascination which thus takes possession of us in historical narratives is, therefore, the artifice of the historian, assisted by those early prejudices of that superiority which we attach to great characters. He who possesses the talent of fine writing is, indeed, in possession of a deceptive art; and I have often been tempted to think, that men of genius, who have ever appeared, by the energy of their complaints, to be endowed with a peculiar sensibility of sorrow, and who excel in the description of the passions, do not always feel more poignantly than others, who, without the power of expressing their sensations, expanding their sentiments, and perpetuating their anguish, are doomed to silent sorrow; to be crazed in love without venting effusions in verse, and to perish in despair without leaving one memorial of their exquisite torture.
But I will not close this essay without observing, that it is not to every illustrious character, recorded in history, that we can pay too prodigal a tribute of admiration. There are men, who throw a new lustre on humanity, and hold a torch of instruction which brightens through the clouds of time. It has boldly been said, by old Montaigne, that man differs more from man, than man from beast. But speculations on human nature must not be formed on such rare instances. Besides, even of character like these, their equals may be found among obscure individuals, and some of the noblest actions have been performed by unknown persons; as that miner, who, in some Italian war, animated by patriotic fervour to direct the explosion, rushed into the mine he had formed. This action is the summit of heroism.
Familiar objects of distress, and familiar characters of merit, want only, to form a spectacle as interesting as the pompous inflation of history can display, those powers of seducing eloquence, which disguise the simplicity of truth with the romantic grandeur of fiction. Nations have abounded with heroes and sages; but because they wanted historians, they are scarce known to use by name; and individuals have been heroes and sages in domestic life, whose talents and whose virtues are embellished in no historical record, but traced, in transient characters, on the feeble gratitude of the human heart.
R.