A Mortal Antipathy | Page 8

of him who was
regarded as its prophet; of the poet whom some admired without
understanding, a few understood, or thought they did, without admiring,
and many both understood and admired,--among these there being not a
small number who went far beyond admiration, and lost themselves in
devout worship? While one exalted him as "the greatest man that ever
lived," another, a friend, famous in the world of letters, wrote expressly
to caution me against the danger of overrating a writer whom he is
content to recognize as an American Montaigne, and nothing more.
After finishing this Memoir, which has but just left my hands, I would
gladly have let my brain rest for a while. The wide range of thought
which belonged to the subject of the Memoir, the occasional mysticism
and the frequent tendency toward it, the sweep of imagination and the
sparkle of wit which kept his reader's mind on the stretch, the union of
prevailing good sense with exceptional extravagances, the modest
audacity of a nature that showed itself in its naked truthfulness and was
not ashamed, the feeling that I was in the company of a sibylline
intelligence which was discounting the promises of the remote future
long before they were due,--all this made the task a grave one. But
when I found myself amidst the vortices of uncounted, various,
bewildering judgments, Catholic and Protestant, orthodox and liberal,
scholarly from under the tree of knowledge and instinctive from over
the potato-hill; the passionate enthusiasm of young adorers and the cool,
if not cynical, estimate of hardened critics, all intersecting each other as
they whirled, each around its own centre, I felt that it was indeed very
difficult to keep the faculties clear and the judgment unbiassed.
It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of such a man.
"He nothing common" said, "or mean." He was always the same pure
and high-souled companion. After being with him virtue seemed as
natural to man as its opposite did according to the old theologies. But

how to let one's self down from the high level of such a character to
one's own poor standard? I trust that the influence of this long
intellectual and spiritual companionship never absolutely leaves one
who has lived in it. It may come to him in the form of self-reproach that
he falls so far short of the superior being who has been so long the
object of his contemplation. But it also carries him at times into the
other's personality, so that he finds himself thinking thoughts that are
not his own, using phrases which he has unconsciously borrowed,
writing, it may be, as nearly like his long-studied original as Julio
Romano's painting was like Raphael's; and all this with the
unquestioning conviction that he is talking from his own consciousness
in his own natural way. So far as tones and expressions and habits
which belonged to the idiosyncrasy of the original are borrowed by the
student of his life, it is a misfortune for the borrower. But to share the
inmost consciousness of a noble thinker, to scan one's self in the white
light of a pure and radiant soul,--this is indeed the highest form of
teaching and discipline.
I have written these few memoirs, and I am grateful for all that they
have taught me. But let me write no more. There are but two
biographers who can tell the story of a man's or a woman's life. One is
the person himself or herself; the other is the Recording Angel. The
autobiographer cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth, though he may
tell nothing but the truth, and the Recording Angel never lets his book
go out of his own hands. As for myself, I would say to my friends, in
the Oriental phrase, "Live forever!" Yes, live forever, and I, at least,
shall not have to wrong your memories by my imperfect record and
unsatisfying commentary.
In connection with these biographies, or memoirs, more properly, in
which I have written of my departed friends, I hope my readers will
indulge me in another personal reminiscence. I have just lost my dear
and honored contemporary of the last century. A hundred years ago this
day, December 13, 1784, died the admirable and ever to be
remembered Dr. Samuel Johnson. The year 1709 was made ponderous
and illustrious in English biography by his birth. My own humble
advent to the world of protoplasm was in the year 1809 of the present

century. Summer was just ending when those four letters, "son b." were
written under the date of my birth, August 29th. Autumn had just begun
when my great pre-contemporary entered this un-Christian universe
and was made a member of the Christian church on the