time goes on we get the biography | and, with obvious limitations, investiwhich serves as a preface to collective gating it with remarkable insight. Of works. The author is haunted by the the immortal Boswell, it is happily modest conviction that his readers are needless to speak. Since his book, no anxious to get at the author's own writ- writer has been at a loss for a model; ings, and is content with pronouncing and many most delightful books are its a graceful éloge, without defiling his descendants, though none has eclipsed elegant phrases by the earthly material its ancestor. Boswell founded biogof facts. Toland wrote a life of Mil- raphy in England as much as Gibbon ton, when a dozen people were extant founded history and Adam Smith politwho could have described for him the ical economy. He produces that effect domestic life of his hero. He felt, of which Carlyle often made such however, that to go into such details powerful use, the sudden thrill which would compromise his dignity, and comes to us when we find ourselves leave no room for his judicious obser- in direct communication with human vations upon epic poetry. Of Toland feeling in the arid wastes of convenhimself we are told by a biographer tional history; when we perceive that that he was forced to leave the court at a real voice is speaking out of "the Berlin" by an incident too ludicrous to dark backward and abysm" of the past, mention." We vainly feel that we and a little island of light, with moving would give more for that incident than and feeling figures, still standing out for all the other facts mentioned. This amidst the gathering shades of oblivdignified style survived till the end of ion. Perhaps there are no books in the last century, and we have a grudge which the imagination is so often stimagainst Dugald Stewart, otherwise an ulated in that way as in Carlyle's own excellent person, for writing a life of "Cromwell" and Spedding's "Bacon." Adam Smith in the spirit of a continu- The "Bacon" is to me a singularly ous rebuff to impertinent curiosity. attractive book, to which, indeed, the The main purpose of such biographies only objection is that it is not properly seems to be to prevent posterity from a book, but a collection of documents. knowing anything about a man which It is therefore the mass of raw material they could not discover from other from which I hope that a book may sources. There is a biography famous some day be constructed. Such a book for not giving a single date, and an might be a masterpiece of applied psyautobiography in which the hero apol- chology. It would give the portrait of ogizes for once using the word "I." a man of marvellous and most versatile The biographer of modern times may intellect, full of the noblest ambitions be often indiscreet in his revelations; and the most extensive sympathies, but so far as the interest of the book combined with all the weaknesses goes the opposite pole is certainly the which we are accustomed to class as most repulsive. We want the man in "human nature." Spedding's herohis ordinary dress, if not stripped worship led him to apologize for all naked; and these dignified persons Bacon's errors; and, though the very will only show him in a full-bottomed ingenuity of the pretexts is characterwig and a professor's robes. Johnson changed all this as author and subject of biography.

In the "Lives of the Poets," we have at least a terse record of the essential facts seen through a medium of shrewd masculine observation. The writer is really interested in life, not simply recording dates or taking a text for exhibiting his own skill in perorating. He is investigating character,

istic both of the hero and his biographer, we are sensible that a more disengaged attitude would have enabled Spedding to produce a more genuine portrait. He has provoked later writers to air their virtuous indignation a little too freely. We want the writer capable of developing the character in the Shakespearian spirit; showing the facts with absolute impartiality, not displaying his moral sense, if that be

really the way to display a moral sense, | belief that the art of letter-writing has by blackening the devil and whitening been killed by the penny post. Your the angel. We should then have a correspondent, you know, will pick up pendant to Hamlet with the advantage all the gossip from the papers, and a of reality; the true state of a man of Horace Walpole is therefore an anachthe highest genius, but without enough ronism. Cowper's delightful letters, moral ballast for his vast spread of in- again, pre-suppose an amount of leitellectual sail. sure, a power of sitting down quietly to compose playful nothings for a friend, which has now almost vanished. Your author can put his good things, if he has any, to better account. But the general statement is, I think, disputable. The letters of the day must always appear to be bad, simply because few are yet published. Our grandsons will first be in a position to judge of us. Many of the best letters of the last generation were written by busy men, already exposed to many of our difficulties, and yet were, I think, equal to any of the past. I do not know a much pleasanter course of reading than is to be found in the letters of Scott, Southey, Byron, Macaulay, and Carlyle, to mention no others. The very fact that we have not to act as news writers often gives us a better opportunity of expressing our feelings about the events of the day. We may take for granted that our correspondent has read the debates, and may confine ourselves to blessing or cursing Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Balfour. One can hardly bless or curse without display

This case represents the great crux of the biographer. Is he to give a pure narrative of his own, or to let his hero talk to us face to face? In some cases the raw material is better than any comment. No biographer could supersede the necessity of reading Pepys's own diary. The effect is only producible by following Pepys to his own closet and overhearing all his most intimate confessions to himself. Indeed, if we had time, we should generally get a far more perfect picture by studying all a man's papers than by reading his life. But that means that we are to cook our own dinners and write the life for ourselves. I say nothing of the vast rubbish heaps which would have to be sifted. Many such collections, again, Walpole's letters, for example, are really interesting for the side lights thrown upon other persons or the general illustrations of the period; and a life which only showed us Walpole himself would miss the interest of all that Walpole saw. Everything must, of course, depend on the particular circumstances, the na-ing one's own nature. While letters ture of the hero's career, and of the materials which he has left. The life proper, however, is that in which the main interest is the development of the man's own character and fortunes. Now, as a fairly working principle, I should say that the main purpose of the writer should be the construction of an autobiography. Boswell's felicity in being able to make Johnson talk to us is, of course, almost unique. Only the rarest combination of circumstances can produce anything approaching to such material. But the next best thing is the autobiography contained in letters. The question of whether a really satisfactory life can be written is essentially the question of whether letters have been preserved. It is a general

become less important as records of events, they preserve their full significance as revelations of character; and that is what the biographer chiefly requires. It should therefore be regarded as a duty (it is one which I systematically transgress) to keep all letters written by a possible biographee; and I think that we shall be surprised, not that they have so little merit, but rather that the amount of passion and feeling with which they are throbbing has allowed them to lie quiet in their dusty receptacles.

Be this as it may, letters in the main are the one essential to a thoroughly satisfactory life. From them, in nine cases out of ten, is to be drawn all that gives it real vividness of coloring.

Everybody knows the strange sensa- | himself; not tell us simply where he tion of turning over an old bundle of was or what he was seen to do, but put

letters, written in the distant days him at one end of a literary telephone when you were at college, or falling in and the reader at the other. The aulove. Your memory has ever since thor should, as often as possible, be been letting facts drop, and remould- merely the conducting wire. Some ing others, and coloring the whole with biographies are partly intended to show a strangely delusive mist. You have the merits of the biographer; but even unconsciously given yourself credit for the most undeniable hero-worship is deliberately intending what came about often self-defeating. The writer shows by mere accident; and, in giving up his zeal for a friend's memory by treatyouthful opinions, have come to forget ing him as the antiquaries treat Shakethat you ever held them. I found out speare. It is pardonable, in our dearth once from an old letter that I had of information about Shakespeare, that, taken a decision, of great importance no real biography being possible, we for me, upon grounds which I had ut- should hunt up all the trivial details terly forgotten, and of which I had which are still accessible. We cannot unconsciously devised a totally differ- know what he thought of his wife or ent (and very creditable) account. I his tragedies, or what realities, if any burnt the letter and forgot its contents, realities, are indicated by the sonnets; and I now only know that my own and we may therefore be thankful for story of my own life is somehow alto- a beggarly account of facts from a few gether wrong. A writer of an inter- legal documents and registers. But esting autobiography tells us how he when a man's memory is still fresh and refused a certain office from a chival- vivid, when the really essential docurous motive; and then adds, with ments are at hand, biographers display charming candor, that, though he has their zeal too often by preserving what always told the story in this way, he would be useful only in the absence has found from a contemporary letter of the genuine article. There is some that one of his motives was certain interest now in reading Goldsmith's natural but not chivalrous fears as to tailors' bills and noting the famous his own health. His memory had kept bloom-colored garment; but a biograonly the agreeable recollection. Such pher need not infer that the tailors' incidents represent the ease with which bills of his own hero should also be the common legend of a life grows up; published at length. We have to learn and the sole corrective for good or for the art of forgetting-of suppressing bad is the contemporary document. all the multitudinous details which To know what a man said at the mo- threaten to overburthen the human ment is of primary importance, even if memory. Our aim should be to prehe was lying or acting a part. The letter which shows what a man wished to appear generally tells a good deal as to what he was. Even if we take a hero in active life, one of Nelson's letters or phrases shows more of the man than the clearest narrative of the battle of Trafalgar. His signals enlighten us as much as they appealed to his crews, and show what lay behind the skilful tactics and the heroic daring. A biographer has, of course, to lay down his framework, to settle all the dates and the skeleton of facts; but to breathe real life into it he must put us into direct communication with the man

sent the human soul, not all its irrelevant bodily trappings. The last new terror of life is the habit of "reminiscing." A gentleman will write a page to tell us that he once saw Carlyle get into an omnibus; and the conscientious biographer of the future will think it a duty to add this fact to his exhaustive museum.

The ideal biographer should in the first place write of some one who is thoroughly sympathetic to him. Excessive admiration, though a fault, is a fault on the right side. As Arbuthnot observes in the recipe for an epic poem, the fire is apt to cool down won

derfully when it is spread on paper. | be such a portrait as reveals the esReaders will make deductions enough sence of character, and the writer who in any case; and nothing can compen- gives anything that does not tell upon sate for a want of enthusiasm about the general effect is like the portraityour subject. He should then consider painter who allows the chairs and tables, how much space his hero undeniably or even the coat and cravat to distract deserves, divide that by two (to make a attention from the face. The really modest denominator), and let nothing significant anecdote is often all that in the world tempt him to exceed the survives of a life; and such anecnarrower limits. Sam Weller's defi- dotes must be made to tell properly, nition of good letter-writing applies instead of being hidden away in a equally to biography. The reader wilderness of the commonplace; they should ask for more and should not get should be a focus of interest, instead it. The scrapings and remnants of a of a fallible extract for a book of misman's life should be charitably left to cellanies. How much would be lost of the harmless race of bookmakers, as Johnson if we suppress the incident of we give our crumbs to the sparrows the penance at Uttoxeter! It is such in winter. If there are any incidental incidents that in books, as often in life, facts with which the hero is connected, suddenly reveal to us whole regions of but which have no bearing upon his sentiment but never rise to the surface character, consign them to an appendix in the ordinary routine of our day. or put them into notes. I have myself Authors of biographies come to praise a prejudice against notes, and think Cæsar, not to bury him; but too often that a biography should be as indepen- the burial, under a mass of irrelevance, dent of such appendages as a new is all that they really achieve. It repoem. But there are people, perhaps quires, indeed, a fine tact to know what of better taste than mine, who like is in fact essential. A dexterous use such trimmings, and have a fancy for of trivialities often gives a certain trifling with them in the intervals of reality to the whole. St. Paul's cloak. reading. The book itself should, I at Troas, I fancy, has often interested hold, be a portrait in which not a single readers by a suggestion of certain hutouch should be admitted which is not man realities; though commentators relevant to the purpose of producing hesitate about its inspiration of the a speaking likeness. The biographer allusion. Mason, who deserves credit should sternly confine himself to his for being the first (or one of the first) functions as introducer; and should to see what use could be made of letgive no more discussion than is clearly ters, thought himself at liberty to necessary for making the book an inde- manipulate Gray's correspondence so pendent whole. A little analysis of motive may be necessary here and there; when, for example, your hero has put his hand in somebody's pocket and you have to demonstrate that his conduct was due to sheer absence of mind. But you must always remember that a single concrete fact, or a saying into which a man has put his whole soul, is worth pages of psychological analysis. We may argue till Doomsday about Swift's character; his single phrase about "dying like a poisoned rat in a hole" tells us more than all the commentators. The book should be the man himself speaking or acting, and nothing but the man. It should

as to make it suit his notions of literary art. The stricter canons of later times have led us to condemn the falsification of facts which was involved. But too many modern authors seem to think that Mason's fault consisted not in attributing to Gray things which he did not write, but in omitting anything that he did write. Mason would have been fully justified in making a selection, with a clear statement that it was a selection. Even so admirable a letterwriter as Gray wrote of necessity a good deal which the world could perfectly well spare. In these days many men write several volumes annually, of which nine-tenths is insignificant,

and the remainder consists in great part of repetitions. To choose what is characteristic, with just enough of the trifling matter in which it is embedded to make it natural; to avoid the impression that the writer was always at the highest point of tension, is the problem. I wish that more writers achieved the solution.

From Temple Bar.

A HARD LITTLE CUSS.
BY MRS. H. H. PENROSE.
CHAPTER VI.

DAMARIS did not awake the next morning until she was disturbed by the hungry wailings of the baby; and then, seeing that the sun was nearly an hour high, she did not feel any Every life, even the life of Dr. Parr, great surprise at missing her sister has its interest. We want to know from her side. She wondered drowsily what was under the famous wig. Many if Rhoda had gone to the kitchen to modern lives are especially charming in make a cup of coffee for herself, and spite of excesses; and in the briefest why she had not come back to feed the. and driest of dictionary lives I have child as she must have heard him cryalways found something worth reading.ing. The young tyrant's bottle was I have only ventured a mild protest close at hand, and she proceeded, heragainst a weakness which naturally self, to make the necessary arrangegrows upon us. My protest comes sim-ments for his accommodation, with her ply to suggesting that a biography eyes only half open, indeed, for yesshould again be considered as a work terday's excitement, following on her of art; the aim should be the revela-early rising, had left her most unusution, and, as much as possible, the ally sleepy. She lay for half an hour self-revelation, of a character. Every- longer, not anything like so much as thing not strictly relevant to that pur- half awake, although her hands were pose should be put aside. Some of our employed from time to time in manipancestors were so anxious to be artisticulating the feeding-bottle; and then, that they wrote mere novels and mere essays, with occasional allusions to the chief events of their hero's life. We are too apt to fall into the opposite error of simply tumbling out all the materials, valuable or worthless, upon which we can lay our hands; and making even of a life, which has a most natural and obvious principle of unity, a chaotic jumble of incoherent information. The ideal of such writers seems to be a blue-book in which all the evidence bearing upon the subject can be piled like a huge pre-historic cairn over the remains of the deceased, with no more apparent order and constructive purpose than the laws of gravitation enforce spontaneously. Let us have neither the blue-book nor the funeral oration, but something with a beginning, middle, and end, which can cheat us for the time into the belief that we are really in presence of a living contemporary.

LESLIE STEPHEN.

66

more fully aroused by her sister's continued absence, she sat up and called, Rhoda! Rhoda!" two or three times. There was no answer from Rhoda who lay cold and dead out in the woods; and Damaris, who had suddenly become painfully wide awake, waited for no more calling, but ran from the room in her nightdress, and began to search within and without, in every possible and impossible place that suggested itself to her. A sudden recollection. flashed upon her, as small things will when the mind seems full to overflowing with other matters of the most vital moment, that she had forgotten to shut the door of the fowl-house the evening before. She was quite sure of this, and yet it was shut now; it could have been done only by Rhoda; and, that being the case, Rhoda must be safe and well somewhere, for if anything bad had happened to her, Damaris argued with herself, she could not have been "going around shutting up the chickens." It occurred to her as the most probable solution of the mystery that Jeff Carter had called very