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JEFFERSON AND LEE AS WRITERS.

[CHAP. IV. accomplished men. Was there probably a single man in that body, familiar as he must have been with R. H. Lee's written productions, who would dream for a moment of comparing him, as a writer, either in polish or power, with the author of the Summary View of the Rights of British America, and of the Congressional Reply to Lord North's Conciliatory Proposition? If there was, the universal verdict of posterity has pronounced him egregiously mistaken. The tenor of John Adams's own declarations go to show that whatever else had an influence on the question, it was probably quite as much as any other cause the reputation of the "masterly pen" which induced a body of decorous men, and gentlemen, to determine to violate parliamentary etiquette in overriding Mr. Lee on this Committee.

Do we, then, assume that the illness of his wife was pretended, and that this was an excuse to leave Congress to avoid the humiliation of a defeat? By no manner of means. His family biographer declares the illness of his wife, and that is sufficient authority. But Mr. Lee lived in Westmoreland, near the mouth of the Potomac-neither a very distant nor a very inaccessible point from Philadelphia. No definite action could be taken on the Declaration, until the original resolu tion was disposed of, and its consideration was already postponed for twenty days. Who could very well know that Mrs. Lee's health would not permit her husband to return short of that time? And the printed records of the Virginia Convention, lying under our eye, show that at least as early as the 29th of June, R. H. Lee was present and acting in that body (of which we have already stated that he was a member), and that he continued so acting until the close of its session.

Our theory of explanation is probably obvious to all who have followed the facts thus far. It is, that John Adams's assertions in regard to the matter are substantially correct, and that the facts had their reasons or causes in what we have narrated. The illness of Mrs. Lee was wisely seized upon by Mr. Lee's friends, as a reason for withdrawing his name, and not exposing him to defeat on the Declaration Committee. If they declined to place him on either of the other Committees (assuming they could have done so '), they acted wisely, because consistently with their excuse in the other instance. We are inclined to be

And we cannot reasonably doubt this.

CHAP. IV.] REASONS FOR RIPPING UP THIS SUBJECT.

159

lieve such was the case, but whether this was so, or whether for the present the tide was too strong against Mr. Lee to be resisted, perhaps will never be known. But for Mr. Adams's unnecessary disclosures, no part of this transaction would have been, probably, ever ripped up.

But it having been thus reopened, we have felt it our duty to all the parties, not only in reference to this particular occasion, but more or less in reference to others which will come under our notice, and in which the same principal actors took part, to probe it to the bottom. He who shall think that we have been influenced by the shadow of a desire to "disparage" Richard Henry Lee, will do us an injustice. Truth is not "disparagement." It is no disgrace to this or that Revolutionary character to say either that there was a greater or wiser than he. It is not vilifying the other generals of the Revolution to say that General Washington excelled them. It is no more discreditable to R. H. Lee to say that he was utterly inferior to Jefferson as a writer, than it is to say (what is equally undeniable) that Jefferson was utterly inferior to him as a speaker. It seems to us that the habit of profuse and indiscriminate eulogy on all points, of every man and thing connected with our Revolution, is worn somewhat threadbare. And the most grotesque part of the affair is, that each of these national Romuluses and Theseuses, if we may trust their ardent biographers, did the whole. Each conceived, and brought forth, and carried on his shoulders, the American Revolution! Now, we suppose there was a division of talent, a division of wisdom, and a division of labor. We suppose there were a good many cogs in the mighty wheel, and if there was not an indispensable one (except the will of Heaven) there were a thousand of extreme, and (striking out three or four towering names) of not greatly disproportionate utility. The swords of Washington, Greene, and Lafayette'-the eloquence of Adams, Henry, and Lee-the pens of Franklin, Jefferson, and Jay-were equally necessary; and each list might be greatly swelled without going down much in the scale of ability. Nor was it warriors, orators,

1 We place the name of Lafayette here for what we consider the fruits of his serving our country in his military capacity. He was too young in the American Revolution to match, as a soldier merely, some older American commanders whom we have not named.

160

NO MONOPOLY IN REVOLUTIONARY DEEDS. [CHAP. IV.

and writers, who did the whole. Not a profession, nor scarcely a human occupation, could have been spared; and in each the good work was achieved, not by one individual, but by a multitude. Peyton Randolph was not the only eminent Crown officer who faced a bill of attainder; Hancock was not the only princely merchant who bade the batteries train their guns on his store-houses; Putnam was not the only farmer who left one horse in the furrow, and mounted the other, in his farmer's frock, to speed to the battle muster; King's Mountain was not the only earth that drank the blood poured forth like water, of gentlemen of family, and name and condition, fighting in the ranks as private soldiers: the mechanic who gave his all-his labor, and sat up night and day to forge the pike-heads, make the wagons, or manufacture any of the different habiliments or equipments of war (and what handicraft would this leave out?) was but one of ten thousand; the matron who sent her last tender son to the fray, and defended her hearth with gun and axe against Indian and British savages, and the maiden who stopped not to weep her slain lover, but handed up the cartridges and carried water to the dying soldiers on the skirts of the battle, were each but one among thousands. Away, then, with the trash of ascribing the whole American Revolution, its deeds and its fruits, to a few supernatural men, as fabulous in their conception as the Guys of Warwick, and Bevises of Hampton, or the Sir Rolands and Sir Otuels, of the metrical romances of the Middle Ages! Of the nine towering names in that struggle, which we have mentioned respectively as generals, orators, and writers, perhaps not one individual of them decidedly excelled in either of the departments except in that in which we have given his name.

Reducing these mythical characters to something like their natural proportions, is neither unjust disparagement nor is it unkindness. Biography should aim at the truth, or it should be silent. The warmed-up biographer may run into exaggerated eulogy on his hero, and be somewhat excusable; but if he deliberately converts biography into a "Mutual Admiration Society "-praises to draw praise for his subject, or avert criticism from himself-makes for this purpose Cæsar, Brutus, Cassius "and all," "honorable men "-he deserves, in our judg ment, quite as much contempt as he who deliberately converts

CHAP. IV.]

HERO WORSHIP.

161

biography into a vehicle of personal or political, or other individual resentments. We conceive there is one plain rule to follow in all cases; and that is to be truthful in the expression of opinions formed on fair, and what is believed to be sufficiently full investigation. In other words, the writer should be fearlessly true to himself, to his own mind and conscience.

We much mistake the calibre of the Revolutionary leaders if they would not have scorned that claim to a monopoly in their single persons of all the shades of ability, and of a good share of the great exploits which the world witnessed in that remarkable struggle. We much mistake the men if they would not say, "save us from our friends." And, in very truth, faithfully delineated, they would in most instances be equally revered, and vastly better loved than now. A few admitted faults or foibles-a few piquant individualities—a few of the lackings of common humanity-would show them to be human, to be real. Nobody puts actual faith in human impersonations of the perfect, either in intellect or character. Instinct instructs every man when he gazes on such, that they are, like the allegoric personages, the Christians and the Mr. Greathearts of Bunyan's story-the Goody-two-Shoes of the nursery tale—the Sir Guyons or Britomartises of Spenser's "faerie" song-that is to say, personifications of an idea-symbols of a virtue, or of a crowd of virtues. They are as vague in outline, as unsubstantial, and have as little individuality, as the cloudy heroes of Ossian-they are as cold, as bloodless, as little human as the marble demigods of Greece! It is easy to affect, and perhaps feel, an abstract admiration for a myth. A mind "diseased of its own beauty,' may invest a myth with such a halo of sentiment as to fancy a genuine love for it. But there are but few of these Pygmalions in the world to animate stone, few who, like Bulwer's German student, have "a system of dreams," and can fall in love and die for the princess of their dreams—that is, few who have the qualifications which the law demands on various occasions for a whole man-" that he shall be twenty-one years of age, of sound mind," etc. Animals of the class "Mammalia," do not congenerate (if we may be excused in a neologism)-do not sympathize with white-blooded and cold-blooded, and particularly no-blooded animals! The mind admires perfection in the abstract-but it does not admire claimed human perfection, for VOL. I-11

162

FOLLY OF DISGUISING FAULTS.

[CHAP. IT.

it knows it to be false; and, moreover, we are not quite certain that beings

"Not too pure and good

For human nature's daily food,"—

are not more agreeable per se-for common humanity likes to be kept in countenance by knowing that if it errs daily, all err sometimes. A perfect human being, could such an one be found, would move like a lone planet in a distant sphere-its solitary heaven not irradiated by another star!

On the score of character, we will not say we regret Mr. Jefferson's scrupulousness of demeanor down to trifles, but we regard it as a serious misfortune to the writer of his life! The relish of the most exquisite biographies in our language (we do not speak of mere histories sometimes called biographies) depends upon their freely narrating personal incidents illustrative of character, and recording little faults and foibles, absurdities, blunders, and even, on occasion, serious errors, as frankly as specimens of nun-like fastidiousness of deportment. Who would strike the perverse and unappeasable bearishness of Johnson from the pages of Boswell? Who laments the sharp, clear, dissecting exposure of every one of Sir Walter Scott's pet foibles and melancholy misjudgments, by the pen of his profound admirer and son-in-law, Lockhart? And who, let us ask, in these and parallel cases, regrets such revelations on account of the real reputation of the subject of them? Who whines about violating the grave? Do the great masters of fiction, untrammelled by the biographer's facts, free to choose both their traits and their incidents, represent their favorite characters those they mean to render most attractive to their readers either as icicles or prudes? Would any one have the gallant, sparkling Mercutio transformed into a hum-drum gentleman, too precise to take snuff and sneeze for fear of violating decorum? Would anybody mercilessly stretch or cut off Uncle Toby by the Procrustean bed of a very different class of deacons, from what we suspect to have been "my father the deacon?" Would any person make the inimitable Antiquary freër in the article of expense-less liable to be taken in by a Prætorium or more lenient to "woman-kind" and dogs? Finally (and that is going the whole length), let us ask, who