BIOGRAPHY, a very entertaining and instructive species of history, containing the life of some remarkable person or persons.
Lord Bacon regrets, that the lives of eminent men are not more frequently written : for, adds he, though kings, princes, and great personages, be few ; yet there are many other excellent men, who deserve better than vague reports and barren elogies.
Biography, or the art of describing and writing lives, is a branch or species of history, in many respects as useful and important as that of history itself; inas much as it represents great men more distinctly, unencumbered with associates ; and descending into the detail of their actions and characters, their virtues and failings, we obtain a more particular, and, of course, a more interesting acquaint. ance with individuals, than general his tory allows A writer of lives may, and ought, to descend to minute circum stances and familiar incidents. He is ex pected to give the private, as well as the public, life of those whose actions be re cords ; and it is from private life, from familiar, domestic, and apparently trivial occurrences, that we often derive the most accurate knoWledge of the real cha racter.
The subjects of Biography are not on ly the lives of public or private persons, who have been eminent and beneficial to the world, but those also of persons no torious for their vice and profligacy, which may serve, when justly character ised, as warnings to others, by exhibit ing the fatal consequences, which, sooner or later, generally follow licentious prac tices. As for those who have exposed their lives, or devoted their time and talents, for the service of their fellow creatures, it is but a debt of gratitude to perpetuate their memories, by making posterity acquainted with their merits and usefulness. In the lives of public persons, their public characters are prin cipally, but not solely, to be regarded ; the world is interested in the minutest actions of great men, and their examples, both as public and private characters, may be made subservient to the well be ing and prosperity of society.
It has been a matter of dispute among the learned, whether any one ought to write his own history. There are in stances, both ancient and modern, that may be adduced as precedents for the practice : and the reason assigned for it is, that no man can be so much the mas ter of the subject as the person himself: but, on the other hand, it is a very diffi cult task for any one to write an impartial history of his own actions. Plutarch men
tions two cases, in which it is allowable for a man to commend himself, and to be the publisher of his own merits ; which are, when the doing of it may be of con siderable advantage either to himself or to others. Notwithstanding this high au thority, the former case is unquestion ably liable to great objections, because a man is to be the judge in his own cause, and therefore very liable to exceed the limits of truth, when his own interests are concerned, and when he wishes to render himself conspicuous for virtue or talents. The ancients, however, had a peculiar method of diverting the reader's attention from themselves, when they had occasion to record their own actions, and of thus rendering what they said less invidious, which was, by speaking of themselves in the third person. Among the moderns a practice has been intro duced, which cannot be too strongly re probated, though sanctioned by men of great talent, integrity, and real worth; namely, of making the memoirs of them selves the vehicle of abuse of their con temporaries, every one of whom would, no doubt, be able to give a very different and perhaps plausible reason, fur the se veral actions which the biographer has undertaken to scrutinize and condemn.
Dr. Priestley has constructed and pub lished a "Biographical Chart," of which our plate is given as a speciMen. This .chart represents the interval of time be tween the year 1200 before the Chris tian xra, and 1800 after Christ, divided by an equal scale into centuries. It con tains about 2000 names of persons, the most distinguished in the annals of tame, the length of whose lives is represented by fines drawn in proportion to their real duration, and terminated in such a man ner as to correspond to the dates of their births and deaths. These names are dis tinguished into several classes by paral lel lines running the whole length of the chart, the contents of each division be ing expressed at the end of it. The chronology is noted in the margin, on the tipper side, by the year before and after Christ, and on the lower by the same xra, and also by the succession of such kings as were most distinguished in the whole period. See Plate Moans.