e have all of us faults; we know them, our friends
know them--why the devil should not everyone know them? But then an
interesting man dies, and everyone becomes loyal and sentimental. Not a
word must be said which could pain or wound anyone. The friends and
relations, it would seem, are not pained by the dead man's faults, they are
only pained that other people should know them. The biography becomes a
mixture of disinfectants and perfumes, as if it were all meant to hide some
putrid thing. It's like what Jowett said about a testimonial, 'There's a
strong smell here of something left out!' We have hardly ever had anything
but romantic biographies hitherto, and they all smell of something left
out. There's a tribe somewhere in Africa who will commit murder if anyone
tries to sketch them. They think it brings bad luck to be sketched, a sort
of 'overlooking' as they say. Well that seems to be the sort of
superstition that many people have about biographies, as if the departed
spirit would be vexed by anything which isn't a compliment. I suppose it is
partly this--that many people are ill-bred, glum, and suspicious, and can't
bear the idea of their faults being recorded. They hate all frankness: and
so when anything frank gets written, they talk about violating sacred
confidences, and about shameless exposures. It is really that we are all
horribly uncivilised, and can't bear to give ourselves away, or to be given
away. Of course we don't want biographies of merely selfish, stupid,
brutal, ill-bred men--but everyone ought to be thankful when a life can be
told frankly, and when there's enough that is good and beautiful to make it
worth telling.

"But, as I said, the thing can't be done, unless it is written to a great
extent in a man's lifetime. Conversation is a very difficult thing to
remember--it can't be remembered afterwards--it needs notes at the time:
and few people's talk is worth recording; and even if it is, people are a
little ashamed of doing it--there seems something treacherous about it: but
it ought to be done, for all that! You don't want so very much of it--I
don't suppose that Boswell has got down a millionth part of all Johnson
said--you just want specimens--enough to give the feeling of it and the
quality of it. One doesn't want immensely long biographies--just enough to
make you feel that you have seen a man and sat with him and heard him
talk--and the kind of way in which he dealt with things and people