Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Personal Reminiscences
Literature of Personal Reminiscence is more i extensive than its casual readers might suppose, and is of a more entertaining character, it seems to me, than any other kind of Literature. The historian, the novelist, the dramatist, depict men and women, but generally at the expense of some truth which escapes them, or which they conceal. They are like portrait painters who place their sitters in the most striking atti tudes, and under the most favorable light. They profess to paint likenesses, and the most skillful do, perhaps, but they paint something more, and something less. There is a restraint in art which is not in nature the inner life that lurks in the curve of a lip, that ?ashes out suddenly from the eye, that is perceived in the carriage of the body, these elude the artist. Could he come upon his sitter un awares, they might be caught and transferred to his can vas. This is the reason why so many portraits are disap pointing, and the reason why so many biographies are disappointing for what is true of Art is true of Litera ture. There is that in men and women which eludes the literary artists who essay to paint them elaborately, but which is sometimes caught by others, who are mere sketchers, as these artists would have us believe, but who.
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