Life of Liston" a very clever satire on those biographers who, like the
monkish historians mentioned by Fuller, in his "Church History of
Britain," swell the bowels of their books with empty wind, in default of
sufficient solid food to fill them,--who, according to Addison, ascribe
to the unfortunate persons whose lives they pretend to write works which
they never wrote and actions which they never performed, celebrate
virtues which they were never famous for and excuse faults which they
were never guilty of? And does not Lamb, in this work, very happily
ridicule the pedantry and conceit of certain grave and dignified
biographers whose works are to be found in most gentlemen's libraries?

Therefore, as a piece of most admirable fooling, as a bit of harmless,
good-natured pleasantry, as a specimen of pleasant satire, of subtile
irony, this "Memoir of Listen" is well worthy of a place in all editions
of Charles Lamb's writings.

* * * * *

"BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.

"The subject of our Memoir is lineally descended from Johan de
L'Estonne, (see 'Domesday Book,' where he is so written,) who came in
with the Conqueror, and had lands awarded him at Lupton Magna, in Kent.
His particular merits or services Fabian, whose authority I chiefly
follow, has forgotten, or perhaps thought it immaterial, to specify.
Fuller thinks that he was standard-bearer to Hugo de Agmondesham, a
powerful Norman baron, who was slain by the hand of Harold himself at
the fatal Battle of Hastings. Be this as it may, we find a family of
that name flourishing some centuries later in that county. John
Delliston, Knight, was high sheriff for Kent, according to Fabian,
_quinto Henrici Sexti_; and we trace the lineal branch flourishing
downwards,--the orthography varying, according to the unsettled usage of
the times, from Delleston to Leston or Liston, between which it seems to
have alternated, till, in the latter end of the reign of James I., it
finally settled into the determinate and pleasing dissyllabic
arrangement which it still retains. Aminadab Liston, the eldest male
representative of the family of that day, was of the strictest order of
Puritans. Mr. Foss, of Pall Mall, has obligingly communicated to me an
undoubted tract of his, which bears the initials only, A.L., and is
entitled, 'The Grinning Glass: or Actor's Mirrour, wherein the
vituperative Visnomy of vicious Players for the Scene is as virtuously