what he had to say truly and intelligibly. Of all men Macaulay had
nothing to fear from any rational biography that should ever be written
of him, yet has not Mr Trevelyan assured his readers that the reviewers
had told him, that he would much better have consulted his uncle's
reputation by the omission of passages in his letters and diaries? Such
criticism, as he justly says, is to seriously misconceive the province
and the duty of the biographer, and his justification is that the
reading world has long extended to the man the just approbation which it
so heartily extended to his books. The Latin critics assigned
history,--and accordingly history in miniature, biography,--to the
department of oratory. The feeling, in consequence, has long prevailed
of regarding biography as the field for the display of every other
feeling then veracity. It has been emotional, or it has been decorously
dull. To all such writers the style adopted by Boswell would appear, and
justly appear, revolutionary. The cry is raised of there being nothing
sacred, of the violation of domestic privacy, of the sanctities of life
being endangered, of indiscretions, and violations of confidences, by
the biographer. Accordingly, just as Macaulay decided that, in general,
tragedy was corrupted by eloquence, and comedy by wit, so biography and
history have suffered from the dignity of Clio. Boswell was perfectly
aware what he was doing, nor did he awake to find himself famous for a
method into which the sciolists pretend he only unconsciously blundered.
In the preface to the third edition of the _Journal_ he
writes:--'Remarks have been industriously circulated in the publick
prints by shallow or envious cavillers, who have endeavoured to persuade
the world that Dr Johnson's character has been _lessened_ by recording
such various instances of his lively wit and acute judgment, on every
topick that was presented to his mind. In the opinion of every person of
taste and knowledge that I have conversed with, it has been greatly
_heightened_; and I will venture to predict, that this specimen of his
colloquial talents will become still more valuable, when, by the lapse
of time, he shall have become an _ancient_; and no other memorial of
this great and good man shall remain but the following Journal.' This is
not the writing of one who has been without a clear idea of what he was
undertaking, and of his own qualifications for the task. 'You, my dear
sir,' he tells