therefore, from those modes of biography which have
hitherto pursued any vicious extreme, let us now briefly explain our own
ideal of a happier, sounder, and more ennobling biographical art, having
the same general objects as heretofore, but with a more express view to
the benefit of the reader. Looking even at those memoirs which, like
Hayley's of Cowper, have been checked by pathetic circumstances from
fixing any slur or irreverential scandal upon their subject, we still
see a great fault in the mass of biographic records; and what _is_ it?
It is--that, even where no disposition is manifested to copy either the
_eloge_ or the libellous pasquinade, too generally the author appears
_ex officio_ as the constant 'patronus' or legal advocate for the person
recorded. And so he ought, if we understand that sort of advocacy which
in English courts the judge was formerly presumed to exercise on behalf
of the defendant in criminal trials. Before that remarkable change by
which a prisoner was invested with the privilege of employing separate
counsel, the judge was his counsel. The judge took care that no wrong
was done to him; that no false impression was left with the jury; that
the witnesses against him should not be suffered to run on without a
sufficient rigour of cross-examination. But certainly the judge thought
it no part of his duty to make 'the worse appear the better reason'; to
throw dust into the eyes of the jury; or to labour any point of
equivocation for the sake of giving the prisoner an extra chance of
escaping. And, if it is really right that the prisoner, when obviously
guilty, should be aided in evading his probable conviction, then
certainly in past times he had less than justice. For most undoubtedly
no judge would have attempted what we all saw an advocate attempting
about a year ago, that, when every person in court was satisfied of the
prisoner's guilt, from the proof suddenly brought to light of his having
clandestinely left the plate of his murdered victim in a particular
party's safe keeping, at that moment the advocate (though secretly
prostrated by this overwhelming discovery) struggled vainly to fix upon
the honourable witness a foul stigma of self-contradiction and perjury
for the single purpose of turning loose a savage murderer upon society.
If this were not more than justice, then assuredly in all times past the
prisoner had far less. Now, precisely the difference between the
advocacy of the judg