Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 011.djvu/93

If it be true that "history, written as it may, is sure to please," biography has still higher claims on the human heart. To a greater dramatic unity, there is added, in this species of composition, the charm of a closer display of individuality and idiosyncrasy—of feelings to participate, and of affections to share. In history, the events are the chief causes of attraction; in biography it is the man which attaches; and, as we pursue the tale, from the cradle to the grave, we so identify ourselves with the hero, that, unless he be among the most worthless and corrupt of his species, we enter into all his views, delight in his successes, are mortified at his disappointments, and part with him at the last page, as with one to whom we had actually been bound through life by the ties of friendship. Contemporary biography has even a still stronger hold upon our sensibilities. It is impossible to have lived long in the world without having known something of the man who is eminent enough to have become the subject of a memoir, or of the persons and things with which he has been in relation. Such reading, therefore, is always, in some degree, reminiscence; the associations of "auld lang syne" revive as we proceed, deceased friendships are renewed, forgotten adventures are recalled, old habits and feelings are renovated, and a melancholy and tender interest steals over the mind, quite unconnected with the intrinsic merits of the narration, or the qualities of its hero. During the perusal of the volume now under consideration, we have been, in some measure, the willing victims of this species of enchantment, but we trust that we are under no undue influence, when we pronounce the work in question to be in no common degree amusing and instructive. Through the whole course of our own academical career, the name of Clarke was "familiar to us as houseold words;" and two coincidences of time, connecting our academical honours with his, supply the place of immediate acquaintance in giving a personal interest to his history: still, however, we repeat it, Cambridge men, and Cambridge anecdotes, and the still greater tie of some congeiality of pursuits in subsequent life, have but a small share in the pleasure we have received from the perusal of these memoirs.

The history of a literary man is soon told; and even if that literary man has been a traveller, the "personal narrative" of his voyage through life will not occupy many sheets. Of the 670 pages which constitute the volume before us, by far the greater portion is occupied with extracts from Dr. Clarke's manuscript journals and from his letters to his friends, written during his several absences on the continent. These extracts, exhibiting the first impressions of the author, and being stamped with the impress of that freshness and that sincerity which so often evaporate in the process of more studied composition, are marked by a vivacity of thought, and a rapidity of narrative, which leave no pause for ennui; and the ideas, being forcibly conceived, are presented to the reader with all the reality and distinctness of sensitive impres-