e Johnson for a long time, and stuck in a few stories
collected from other friends. They are awfully flat and flabby--they have
all been rolled about in some one's mind, till they are as smooth as
pebbles--some bits of the crudest rudeness, not worked up to--some
knock-down schoolboy retorts which most civilised men would have had the
decency to repress--and then we get back to the real Boswell again, and how
fresh and lively it is!"

"But what are the difficulties you spoke of?" I said.

"Why, in the first place," said Father Payne, "a biography ought to be
written _during_ a man's life and not _after_ it--and very few
people will take the trouble to write things down day after day about
anyone else, as Boswell did. If it waits till after a man's death, a hush
falls on the scene--everyone is pious and sentimental. Of course, Boswell's
life is inartistic enough--it wanders along, here a letter, there a lot of
criticism, here a talk, there a reminiscence. It isn't arranged--it has no
scheme: but how full of _zest_ it is! And then you have to be pretty
shameless in pursuing your hero, and elbowing other people away, and
drawing him out; and you have to be prepared to be kicked and trampled
upon, when the hero is cross: and then you have to be a considerable snob,
and say what you really value and admire, however vulgar it is. And then
you must expect to be called hard names when the book appears. I was
reading a review the other day of what seemed to me to be a harmless
biography enough--a little frank and enthusiastic affair, I gathered: and
the reviewer wrote in the style of Pecksniff, caddish and priggish at the
same time: he called the man to task for botanising on his friend's
grave--that unfortunate verse of Wordsworth's, you know--and he left the
impression that the writer had done something indelicate and impious, and
all with a consciousness of how high-minded he himself was.

"You ought to write a biography as though you were telling your tale in a
friendly and gentle ear--you ought not to lose your sense of humour, or be
afraid of showing your subject in a trivial or ridiculous light. Look at
Boswell again--I don't suppose a more deadly case could be made out against
any man, with perfect truth, than could be made out against Johnson. You
could show him as brutal, rough, greedy, superstitious, prejudiced, unjust,
and back it all up by indisputable evidence--but it's the balance, the net
result, that matters! W