se or Fall of Stocks, wonders how the
Attention can be seized, or the Affections agitated by a Tale of Love.

Those parallel Circumstances, and kindred Images to which we readily
conform our Minds, are, above all other Writings, to be found in
Narratives of the Lives of particular Persons; and there seems therefore
no Species of Writing more worthy of Cultivation than Biography, since
none can be more delightful, or more useful, none can more certainly
enchain the Heart by irresistible Interest, or more widely diffuse
Instruction to every Diversity of Condition.

The general and rapid Narratives of History, which involve a thousand
Fortunes in the Business of a Day, and complicate innumerable Incidents in
one great Transaction, afford few Lessons applicable to private Life,
which derives its Comforts and its Wretchedness from the right or wrong
Management of Things that nothing but their Frequency makes considerable,
_Parva si non fiunt quotidie_, says _Pliny_, and which can have no Place
in those Relations which never descend below the Consultation of Senates,
the Motions of Armies, and the Schemes of Conspirators.

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a Life of which a
judicious and faithful Narrative would not be useful. For, not only every
Man has in the mighty Mass of the World great Numbers in the same
Condition with himself, to whom his Mistakes and Miscarriages, Escapes and
Expedients would be of immediate and apparent Use; but there is such an
Uniformity in the Life of Man, if it be considered apart from adventitious
and separable Decorations and Disguises, that there is scarce any
Possibility of Good or Ill, but is common to Humankind. A great Part of
the Time of those who are placed at the greatest Distance by Fortune, or
by Temper, must unavoidably pass in the same Manner; and though, when the
Claims of Nature are satisfied, Caprice, and Vanity, and Accident, begin
to produce Discriminations, and Peculiarities, yet the Eye is not very
heedful, or quick, which cannot discover the same Causes still terminating
their Influence in the same Effects, though sometimes accelerated,
sometimes retarded, or perplexed by multiplied Combinations. We are all
prompted by the same Motives, all deceived by the same Fallacies, all
animated by Hope, obstructed by Danger, entangled by Desire, and seduced
by Pleasure.

It is frequently objected to Relations of particular Lives, that they are
not distinguished by