therefore, all deformed persons
are extremely bold."

As in portraiture, so in biography, there must be light and shade.
The portrait-painter does not pose his sitter so as to bring out his
deformities; nor does the biographer give undue prominence to the
defects of the character he portrays. Not many men are so outspoken as
Cromwell was when he sat to Cooper for his miniature: "Paint me as I
am," said he, "warts and all." Yet, if we would have a faithful likeness
of faces and characters, they must be painted as they are. "Biography,"
said Sir Walter Scott, "the most interesting of every species of
composition, loses all its interest with me when the shades and lights
of the principal characters are not accurately and faithfully detailed.
I can no more sympathise with a mere eulogist, than I can with a ranting
hero on the stage." [197]

Addison liked to know as much as possible about the person and character
of his authors, inasmuch as it increased the pleasure and satisfaction
which he derived from the perusal of their books. What was their
history, their experience, their temper and disposition? Did their lives
resemble their books? They thought nobly--did they act nobly? "Should we
not delight," says Sir Egerton Brydges, "to have the frank story of the
lives and feelings of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Campbell, Rogers,
Moore, and Wilson, related by themselves?--with whom they lived early;
how their bent took a decided course; their likes and dislikes; their
difficulties and obstacles; their tastes, their passions; the rocks they
were conscious of having split upon; their regrets, their complacencies,
and their self-justifications?" [198]

When Mason was reproached for publishing the private letters of Gray,
he answered, "Would you always have my friends appear in full-dress?"
Johnson was of opinion that to write a man's life truly, it is necessary
that the biographer should have personally known him. But this condition
has been wanting in some of the best writers of biographies extant. [199]
In the case of Lord Campbell, his personal intimacy with Lords Lyndhurst
and Brougham seems to have been a positive disadvantage, leading him
to dwarf the excellences and to magnify the blots in their characters.
Again, Johnson says: "If a man profess to write a life, he must write it
really as it was. A man's peculiarities, and even his vices, should be
mentioned, because they mark his character." But there is always
this