fancied himself on horseback, charging, and cutting throats in
the way of professional duty, as often as he found himself summoned to
pursue and 'cut up' some literary delinquent. Fire and fury, 'bubble and
squeak,' is the prevailing character of his critical composition. 'Come,
and let me give thee to the fowls of the air,' is the cry with which the
martial critic salutes the affrighted author. Yet, meantime, it is
impossible that he can entertain any personal malice, for he does not
know the features of the individual enemy whom he is pursuing. But thus
far he agrees with the Procopian order of biographers--that both are
governed, in whatever evil they may utter, by a spirit of animosity: one
by a belligerent spirit which would humble its enemy as an enemy in a
fair pitched battle, the other by a subtle spirit of malice, which would
exterminate its enemy not in that character merely, but as an individual
by poison or by strangling.

Libels, however, may be accredited and published where there is no
particle of enmity or of sudden irritation. Such were the libels of
Plutarch and Dr. Johnson. They are libels prompted by no hostile
feelings at all, but adopted by mere blind spirit of credulity. In this
world of ours, so far as we are acquainted with its doings, there are
precisely four series--four aggregate bodies--of _Lives_, and no more,
which you can call celebrated; which _have_ had, and are likely to have,
an extensive influence--each after its own kind. Which be they? To
arrange them in point of time, first stand Plutarch's lives of eminent
Greeks and Romans; next, the long succession of the French Memoirs,
beginning with Philippe de Commines, in the time of Louis XI. or our
Edward IV., and ending, let us say, with the slight record of himself
(but not without interest) of Louis XVIII.; thirdly, the _Acta
Sanctorum_ of the Bollandists; fourthly, Dr. Johnson's 'Lives of the
Poets.' The third is a biographical record of the Romish saints,
following the order of the martyrology as it is digested through the
Roman calendar of the year; and, as our own 'Biographia Britannica' has
only moved forwards in seventy years to the letter 'H,' or thereabouts
(which may be owing to the dissenting blight of Dr. Kippis), _pari
passu_, the _Acta Sanctorum_ will be found not much farther advanced
than the month of May--a pleasant month certainly, but (as the
_Spectator_ often insinuates) perilous to saintship. Laying this work
out