and never by themselves; and herein is very strikingly illustrated the homage which vice pays to virtue. It is rare that a bad man confesses to the world in his letters how bad he is, unless he does it with repentance and shame. It is rarer even that a man writes down in his diary, as an eminent scholar was once in the habit of doing, "This day read the Antigone of Sophocles, after which I was desperately drunk." Or if a man occasionally forgets decency in his letters, and self-respect in his diary, it is rare that his biographer will spread out such revolting details for the perusal of the public. If he is forced to allude to the sins or the foibles of his hero, he usually endeavors to palliate and excuse them. No libertine or drunkard, no unbeliever in duty or denier of God, ever shines attractively in an honestly written life, or inspires his readers with a desire to be like him. But while the lives of bad or imperfect men do not attract, they very often warn. In the realm of biography the saying is emphatically fulfilled, "The name of the wicked shall rot." The memory of the wicked does rot, either in the withering neglect of succeeding generations, to which it is so often doomed, or in the putrescent phosphorescence at whose lurid light posterity stares and shudders.

In view of these considerations, we advise for all those who have leisure and opportunity a large and liberal reading of biography. We advise that the taste for this description of reading should be fostered. If fostered, it certainly will grow more active and intense. The study of biography is the study of man. A generous familiarity with the lives of men of all sorts of opinions tends to liberalize the feelings and to enlarge the understanding. Its influence in this regard is like that of a very extended and varied acquaintanceship with living men. Nor need we fear to study the lives or to converse with the characters of men from whom we differ very widely in opinions, or

diverge very materially in our sympathies. If our own principles are fixed, we shall find sufficient strength and inspiration from the lives of the men with whom we agree in opinions and character to enable us to withstand, as far as we ought to desire, any counter-influence from the lives. of those with whose opinions we do not entirely sympathize. No man of liberal culture can afford to be without -no such person ought to desire to be wholly without— the liberalizing influence which comes from a study of the lives of men of the greatest variety of opinions and characOn the other hand, no man whose opinions are fixed or whose principles are earnest can fail to have his favorite biographies, his lives of men most loved and honored, to which he continually resorts-it may be to enjoy with them a few moments' converse in their most elevated moods, or perhaps to rise by their aid to those noble positions which the soul is more competent to gain for an hour than to keep for a day.

ters.

Of biographical reading we may say, that the man who has no heroes among the truly noble of the earth, must have either a sordid or a conceited spirit. He must be too ignoble to admire that which is really above himself, or must be too satisfied with himself to care to concern himself with the characters or the claims of others. He who reverences and admires no one of the great and good of other times, is likely to reverence and admire the man who is least worthy of honor and admiration, and that is himself,—and to bring to his altar an unshared and solitary worship.

Two rules may serve in the selection and judgment of biographies. The first is, "see that the man whose life you would read had a marked and distinctive character." The second is, "see that this character be set forth with truthfulness and skill." A man with small individuality, either of gifts or of goodness, is not entitled to have his

life written, and certainly has no claim that his life should be read. The circumstance that he held a high position in life, or attracted honor or attention from his wealth or rank or office, is of the slightest possible significance to those who come after him, provided there was nothing in his genius, his industry, or his goodness which entitles him to the consideration of others. Mere goodness which is commonplace, however useful and honorable in the living, cannot shine as an example through a written life, unless there was something distinctive enough to attract the attention and to impress the feelings of lookers-on. The number of stupid biographies which encumber our libraries, of lords and generals and bishops, and of clergymen and physicians and lawyers who were simply significant from their position, is something frightful to contemplate. Now and then they fill several bulky volumes. They are glanced at by a limited circle, and stand upon the shelves of our libraries, to be consulted by an antiquarian or a genealogist, and this is all the service which they render.

It is not enough, however, that the subject of the life should have had something in his character that was so distinctive as to be worth recording. The life should be skilfully set forth by his biographer. The power of seizing the individual characteristics by nice analysis, or of interpreting them by sagacious generalizations, does not

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come by nature" to all biographers. The gift of selecting from conversations and correspondence what is worth preserving is not possessed-certainly it is not exercised, by all. To narrate with method and clearness, and also with spirit and life, is not so easy to a writer as it is pleasant to the reader.

The following protest, directed against the indiscriminate publication of an author's remains, is equally appropriate to those lumbering biographies in which little wise selection rules:

"The imperfect thing or thought,
The fervid yeastiness of youth,

The dubious doubt, the twilight truth,

The work that for the passing day was wrought,
The schemes that came to naught,

"The sketch half-way 'twixt verse and prose,
That mocks the finished picture true,

The splinters whence the statue grew,

The scaffolding 'neath which the palace rose,
The vague, abortive throes,

"And crudities of joy or gloom :

In kind oblivion let them be!

Nor has the dead worse foe than he

Who rakes these sweepings of the artist's room,
And piles them on his tomb."

Whether a particular biography will meet the conditions prescribed must be left, in most cases, to the judgment of the reader himself. To attempt to make a selection from the very rich and copious library of works of this class with which English literature abounds, would be difficult, if not impracticable, within our limits. We must ask the reader to accept in its place the classification which we have made, and the illustrative examples which we have cited under its several heads.

CHAPTER XV.

NOVELS AND NOVEL-READING.

FROM History and Biography to Fiction and Poetry the transition is natural and easy. It is none other than from true to what Lord Bacon calls "feigned history" -the one being the narration of events which have actually occurred, the other the narration of events which are only supposed to have taken place. The form of the two is the same; the matter is different. The story which the novelist and poet narrate would be history if what is narrated had actually taken place. But the end in both cases always is or always should be the same-i. e., the communication of truth; not always what we call real truth in the sense of actual or literal occurrences, but always real truth in the sense of those relations and impressions which are real in that import which is most comprehensive and profound. Whenever the imagination, by its creations of incidents and drapery, can assert or impress truth of this kind more effectually than the memory by its transcripts from reality, then is it at liberty to do so, provided it does not disturb the relations of truth to veracity. There are other ends for which the truth is conveyed than the ends of instruction and science. It may often be largely for ends of amusement; but it is truth nevertheless. The mirror of the imagination must always reflect nature, though with enlarged and altered proportions. The criterion of every good work of imagination is well expressed by the description of the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney as a work of which “the invention is wholly spun out of the phansie, but conformable to the possibilitie of truth in all particulars.”