coming upon the track of one of these ghouls. He was writing a Life of
a somewhat eccentric politician, and wrote to me asking me to obtain
for him a sight of a certain document. I forwarded his letter to the
relatives of the man in question. What was my surprise when they
replied that the biographer was not only wholly unauthorised by
themselves, but that they had written to him to remonstrate against his
expressed intention, and to beg him to desist. I forwarded the letter
to him, and added some comments of my own. The only result was that he
replied regretting the opposition of the relatives, saying that the
life of a public man was public property, and that he thought it his
duty to continue his researches. The book appeared, and a vile rag-bag
it was, like the life of a man written by a private detective from the
reminiscences of under-servants. The worst of it is that such a
compilation brings a man money, because there are always plenty of
people who like to dabble in mud; and a ghoul is the most impervious of
beings, probably because a ghoul of this species regards himself merely
as an unprejudiced seeker after truth, and claims to be what he would
call a realist.

The reason why such realism is bad art is not because the details are
untrue, but because the proportion is wrong. One cannot tell everything
in a biography, unless one is prepared to write on the scale of a
volume for each week of the hero's life. The art of the biographer is
to select what is salient and typical, not what is abnormal and
negligible; what he should aim at is to suggest, by skilful touches, a
living portrait. If the subject is bald and wrinkled, he must be
painted so. But there is no excuse for trying to depict his hero's
toe-nails, unless there is a very valid reason for doing so. And there
is still less excuse for painting them so big that one can see little
else in the picture! _Ex ungue leonem_, says the proverb; but it is a
scientific and not an artistic maxim.

One sometimes wonders what will be the future of biographies; how, as
libraries get fuller and records increase, it will be possible ever to
write the lives of any but men of prime importance. I suppose the
difficulty will solve itself in some perfectly simple and obvious
manner; but the obstacle is that, as reading gets more common, the
circle of trivial people who are interested in trousers and toe-nails
and in little else does undoubtedly increase. Moreover, instead o