These are its legitimate objects, instead of which, •not 'infrequently have been substituted such as it would be difficult to reconcile with the nature of mo - nifty. This censure is pronounced not so much up on direct and palpable fabrication, which generally involves its own disgrace and condemnation, as upon false construction, partial representation, and falla cious colouring of facts, which are in the main true, either with a view to some end distinct from utility, or on the mischievous principle of promoting good ends by any means. This is an abuse of biographi cal writing to which all whose minds are possessed by a sectarian spirit are naturally prone. With them it is a part of religion to maintain the immaculate character of the founders, or principal ornaments of their sect ; and to accomplish this, as much ingenui ty, and not seldom as little honesty, is displayed as in the eloquence of the bar. By a very common con. fusion of ideas, the credit of the man, and the truth of that system of opinions which he conceived or supported, are thought to have an indissoluble con nection, and the one must at all events be established for the sake of the other. Another abuse, which is indeed akin to the former, and issues from the same source, is, the attempt to make biography subser vient to the purposes of political or religious party. With this view a name is chosen which men have been accustomed to venerate ; and though the man was horn " not for an au," or a sect, but for all man kind, his name is forced into the service of particular bodies of men, and made to stand as a sort of autho ritative signature to certain sets of opinion. The vio lence which is done in • such instances to historical truth, is not the whole of the evil ; the purpose for which evidence is suborned, and testimony perverted, is condemned by every friend of truth. Few causes have thrown such impediments in the way of en quiry, and given such stability to error, as the impo sition of names. When authority is opposed to ar gument, reason must be silent ; from that moment it is put out of court ; the cause is referred to arbitrary decision ; it is to be determined not by an appeal to the common understanding of mankind, but to the judgment of one whose powers of discrimination might not exceed, and whose means of information probably fell below those which are possessed by some of his successors. But the most perverted use is made of this kind of history, when it is employed in the service of malice and detraction. Not only is living excellence exposed to the persecution of envy ; its malignity has dared to penetrate the sanctuary of the tomb. Long after the curtain has been dropt, the hiss of jealousy or malevolence has been prolong ed, and though it may have been drowned at first by general applause, it has found its time to be heard, and that too often with effect. The honest and able biographer holds the balance of departed merit, and feels his office to be one of high responsibility ; but when the libeller of the dead places himself on the bench, envy usurps the seat of justice, merit is robbed of its reward, the chambers of the dead are violated, and sacrilege is added to injustice. This abuse of biography is the more dangerous, because the detrac tor will never want an audience as long as envy and ill-nature are found among mankind ; the little-mind ed will always crowd around him, and it is well if mediocrity does not lend a patient ear to representa tions, which seem to give it elevation by lowering the standard of comparison. The faults which have been. mentioned have little claim upon indulgence ; but there are errors incident to biography which are en titled to greater lenity. It is natural that the writer should contract something like a friendship for the subject of his memoirs ; and it is no wonder, if, un der its influence, he is sometimes tempted to produce too flattering a picture. Not contented to set down nought in malice, he may be bribed by his feelings to suppress what ought to be set down in justice, to throw a veil over railings, and place merit in a light too strong for truth. Phis is a weakness which it requires as much apathy as strength of mind to regard with extreme severity,, especially if the historian was the associate and friend of the subject of his history : the partiality is amiable, and though our judgment must condemn it, the heart of every good mail will plead in palliation of the offence. Still it is a weak ness and an error, and one which is not innocent in its effect, whatever it may be in its source: by shaking the authority of the whole relation, it frustrates the design of it, if that design was, as it ought to be, moral improvement. It may also be directly preju dicial to the mind in which right principles of action are not fully established ; for it is too much to ex pect, that the relaxation of rigour which has been admitted in judging the actions of others, should have no influence in the judgment we pass upon our own : the apologist of other men is not likely to be a very severe critic upon himself ; it is enough that he is not more lenient to his own failings than to theirs ; he cannot in reason be required to pronounce a more rigorous sentence when his own cause is determined.
If the historian has his partialities and prejudices, all other men have also theirs. Nations are nut free from them any more than individuals, and there are some to which duration, and general suffrage, have given a sort of prescriptive right to govern. It is the duty of the biographer to be upon his guard against the influence of public prejudice scarcely less than his own. Though it may be presumed, that the judgment which has been passed upon characters by successive generations, or by a great majority of any single generation, has reason on its side, this must not be laid down as a universal and infallible rule. There is a fashion both in praise and censure, which one age transmits to the next, till it has acquired the sanction of antiquity : it is not easy to account other wise for the manner in which some names are record / ed in history, one being the signal for extravagant panegyric, and another for unqualified cem4ure,though nothing is produced in evidence respecting either, which can justify such warmth of applause or con demnation. The memory, as well as the lives of men, is often attended with a good or ill forme, that seems to preside over the reputation after death as it did over the condition in life, with little regard to the true measure of merit or demerit in either. In these instances, the biographer must dare to oppose the stream of opinion ; a duty that requires both forti tude and address, whether the opinion respect persons or principles : and as every error has its own anta gonist, he who undertakes this labour, is also himself in danger of being enticed by the love of singularity, and of that notice which is attracted by it, to affect new views of characters and actions, widely differing from those which are commonly received, but differ ing without sufficient evidence and reason. Of this affectation, a late eminent writer, Lord Orford, has been accused ; and notwithstanding the ingenuity with which he has added probability to novelty in many of his biographical views, the charge will scarcely be thought to be altogether unfounded.
In taking a survey of the difficulties that press up on biography in particular, the first presents itself, arises from the nature of the authority upon which a principal part of the biography must often rest. National history can refer to national archives,
and public documents are the vouchers of public events ; but the principal facts in biography, from their nature, will be frequently supported only by private testimony and traditional report. These are authorities which are not always accessible, and when they are so, they are not always the most intelligible or secure. Yet they may be the best, and indeed the only witnesses that can be called in, upon the faith of whose representations new facts are to be produced, false statements to be corrected, some matters of ge neral belief to be controverted, and others to be set in an entirely new light. Hence the biographer will not find it easy to satisfy the public, nor always to assure himself, that his authorities, although the best the case admits, are entitled to unlimited confidence. They form the pedestal of his work, but he cannot conceal from himself that it is sometimes a very tering pedestal. There is one defect which is nse parable from biography, and must therefore be char ged upon the nature of the undertaking, and not up on any unskilfulness. in the execution. The causes upon which the principal events of a man's life are suspended, are often unknown even to himself. His days have taken their complexion from influences, of which he became sensible only in their remote effects. Impressions were made at a time, and in a manner, that prevented their being marked down ; but though no minute of them is preserved, they have left a bias upon the whole conduct of his life, perhaps determined his pursuits, and decided his condition, and his character. We are naturally inquisitive re specting the beginning of whatever has become ad mirable in its progress, and great in its completion. The sources of the stream that inundated and enrich ed a wide extent of country, could not fail to become an object of eager curiosity; and, in perusing the lives of men who have explored new regions of science, and discovered mines which successive generations have worked without exhausting them of their trea sures, we cannot avoid wishing to see the tract by which they advanced to :he discovery, and to trace it to the very first step that was taken in such a happy direction. The same curiosity in a greater or less degree attends the contemplation of every kind and measure of eminence. We wish to see it in its causes ; to in . spect the spring, and compare its force when motion commenced, and before it was communicated to the long chain of instruments by which it acted with the ultimate effect, when the whole machine was brought into play. Such an analysis would not only be gra tifying to curiosity, but might lead to reflections of great practical utility, especially in the important bu siness of education. It is seldom, however, that we have the means of looking so narrowly into the me chanism of the lives of the most eminent persons, any more than of those below them. Though the supe riority of their powers may have been, and probably was always apparent to the sagacious observer, yet the circumstance, or combination of circumstances, which gave them their direction for the most laart, eludes the enquiry even of him whose life was passed tinder its influence. The story of the fall of the ap ple, which is said to have directed the penetration of a Newton to the law of gravitation, is well known ; and whether it have authenticity or not, it has served to show the eagerness of curiosity to possess such facts. But as every man is a moral agent, and what ever be his powers, deserves to be contemplated prin cipally on account of his moral capacity and rela tions, the most interesting view that we can take of a man's life, regards it as a process for the forma tion and developement of moral character. It is at the same time the view which it is most difficult to take with exactness, and exhibit with fidelity and en tireness. In men of eminence, and biography pro fesses to record the lives of such only, it. is not too much to presume, that the grand features of the mo ral character will be marked with sufficient strength, to make it an easy task to present a faithful portrait. The impression of their virtues or vices will be left in their actions, the hest and only certain memorial of what they were, a memorial which every man is able to decypher. But the philosopher and the mo ralist will wish to look much farther, not only to in fer the moral constitution of the mind from the ha bits and actions of the life, but to see that constitu tion in its elements, to trace it in its growth, and note the influences under which it was expanded into beauty, or distorted into deformity. He would see, if it were permitted him, the moral habits in the pro cess and act, as it were, of crystallization, and pene trate the subtle and secret action of the mind by which they were fashioned and defined, such as they appear in the life. This insight, however, into the actual impressions and motions of the mind, whilst character was forming, the biographer can scarcely be expected to obtain, since it is seldom that a re flecting man could give a complete and certain his tory of his own moral formation. He must be con tent to supply the deficiencies of recollection by con jecture ; to account for the changes, or determination of character, by assigning probable causes, rather than such as are proved by the memory of past conscious ness to have actually existed ; and if, instead of trust ing to recollection, lie has made minutes of the feel ings, as well as the events of his life during the whole of its progress, there is still room for suspecting, that some impressions, which were very influential in producing character, escaped present and immediate observation. These remarks furnish, perhaps, the best apology for the prolix and minute detail of conversa tions, and occurrences not much distinguished for wisdom and interest, which is found in some biogra phies. If this minute prolixity be pardonable in any writer, it is in the historian of particular lives, who must sometimes give what is little, and almost puerile, and certainly tiresome, a place in his memoirs, in or der to set in its true light what is important, and full ofInstruction. It is a fault too upon which few are very severe, but critics by profession. The read er, finding himself amused, and interested in the most trifling detail that regards men- of extraordinary en dowment, easily forgives the fond partiality, the ha bitual garrulity, and even the communicative vanity of the narrator, when these serve to make him better acquainted with the subject of his tale. Nothwith standing the censure that has been incurred, and in part merited by the biographer of Johnson, his volu minous Memorabilia have not found the fewer readers for their particularity and chit-chat prolixity. We are not apt to be violently disgusted with this sort of minuteness when it is employed on the lives of extra ordinary men ; it is only when bestowed upon ordi nary persons, who did, or possessed nothing when living, which could entitle them to occupy so much space in the annals of the dead, that we turn from it with the impatience that is natural to one who suffers from impertinence.