nations of
obscurities must necessarily be offered, readers should be put into a
position to judge for themselves of their sufficiency, and to
substitute, if they will, others of their own. Commonly they want not so
much arguments, however unegotistical and dispassionate, as a narrative.
They wish to view and hear Ralegh himself; to attend him on his quick
course from one field of fruitful energy to another; to see him as his
age saw him, in his exuberant vitality; not among the few greatest, but
of all great, Englishmen the most universally capable. They desire
facts, stated as such, simply, in chronological sequence, and, when it
is at all practicable, in the actor's own words, not artificially
carved, coloured, digested, and classified. As for failings and
infirmities, they are more equitable and less liable to unreasonable
disgusts than a biographer is inclined to fancy. They are content that a
great man's faults, real or apparent, should be left to be justified,
excused, or at all events harmonized, in the mass of good and ill.

No biographer of Ralegh need for lack of occupation stray from the
direct path of telling his readers the plain story of an eventful life.
The rightful demands on his resources are enough to absorb the most
plentiful stores of leisure, patience, and self-denial. He should be
willing to spend weeks or months on loosing a knot visible to students
alone, which others have not noticed, and, if they had, would think
might as profitably have been left tied. He should collect, and weigh,
and have the courage to refuse to use, piles of matter which do not
enlighten. He should be prepared to devote years to the search for a
clue to a career with a bewildering capacity for sudden transformation
scenes. He should have the courage, when he has lost the trace, to
acknowledge that he has wandered. He should feel an interest so supreme
in his subject, in its shadows as in its lights, as neither to count the
cost of labour in its service, nor to find affection for the man
incompatible with the condemnation of his errors. Finally, after having
arrived at a clear perception of the true method to be pursued, and ends
to be aimed at, he should be able to recognize how very imperfectly he
has succeeded in acting up to his theory.

W.S.

LONDON:
_September_, 1891.

AUTHORITIES

Not a few readers and critics, who have been so kind as to speak
otherwise onl