Thomas Carlyle, quoted in Hansard.
"First of all, then, I have to tell you as a fact of personal experience, that in all my poor historical investigations it has been, and always is, one of the most primary wants to procure a bodily likeness of the personage inquired after—a good portrait if such exists; failing that, even an indifferent, if sincere one. In short, any representation made by a faithful human creature of that face and figure which he saw with his eyes, and which I can never see with mine, is now valuable to me, and much better than none at all. This, which is my own deep experience, I believe to be in a deeper or less deep degree the universal one, and that every student and reader of history who strives earnestly to conceive for himself what manner of fact and man this or the other vague historical name can have been, will, as the first and directest indication of all, search eagerly for a portrait—for all the reasonable portraits there are; and will never rest till he have made out, if possible, what the man's natural face was like. Often have I found a portrait superior in real instruction to half-a-dozen written biographies, as biographies are written; or, rather let me say, I have found that the portrait was as a small lighted candle, by which the biographies could for the first time be read, and some human interpretation be made of them."
"First of all, then, I have to tell you as a fact of personal experience, that in all my poor historical investigations it has been, and always is, one of the most primary wants to procure a bodily likeness of the personage inquired after—a good portrait if such exists; failing that, even an indifferent, if sincere one. In short, any representation made by a faithful human creature of that face and figure which he saw with his eyes, and which I can never see with mine, is now valuable to me, and much better than none at all. This, which is my own deep experience, I believe to be in a deeper or less deep degree the universal one, and that every student and reader of history who strives earnestly to conceive for himself what manner of fact and man this or the other vague historical name can have been, will, as the first and directest indication of all, search eagerly for a portrait—for all the reasonable portraits there are; and will never rest till he have made out, if possible, what the man's natural face was like. Often have I found a portrait superior in real instruction to half-a-dozen written biographies, as biographies are written; or, rather let me say, I have found that the portrait was as a small lighted candle, by which the biographies could for the first time be read, and some human interpretation be made of them."
RSS Feed