t
judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect
accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from
their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we
may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real
characters. The life of a great or of a little man written by himself,
the familiar letters, the diary of any individual published by his
friends or by his enemies, after his decease, are esteemed important
literary curiosities. We are surely justified, in this eager desire, to
collect the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives, not only
of the great and good, but even of the worthless and insignificant,
since it is only by a comparison of their actual happiness or misery
in the privacy of domestic life that we can form a just estimate of the
real reward of virtue, or the real punishment of vice. That the great
are not as happy as they seem, that the external circumstances of
fortune and rank do not constitute felicity, is asserted by every
moralist: the historian can seldom, consistently with his dignity, pause
to illustrate this truth; it is therefore to the biographer we must have
recourse. After we have beheld splendid characters playing their parts
on the great theatre of the world, with all the advantages of stage
effect and decoration, we anxiously beg to be admitted behind the
scenes, that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses.

Some may perhaps imagine that the value of biography depends upon the
judgment and taste of the biographer; but on the contrary it may be
maintained, that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the
extent of his intellectual powers and of his literary talents. A plain
unvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative.
Where we see that a man has the power, we may naturally suspect that
he has the will to deceive us; and those who are used to literary
manufacture know how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of a
period, or the pointing of an antithesis.

That the ignorant may have their prejudices as well as the learned
cannot be disputed; but we see and despise vulgar errors: we never
bow to the authority of him who has no great name to sanction his
absurdities. The partiality which blinds a biographer to the defects of
his hero, in proportion as it is gross, ceases to be dangerous; but
if it be concealed by the appearance of candour, which men of gre