On comparing the different species of biography, some persons have given an opinion in favour of me. moirs, of which the subject is his own historian. Of this number is the author of the Idler, who considers the advantage of a perfect knowledge of the facts to be recorded, as more than a balance to the disadvan tages inseparable from such an undertaking. In these memoirs, the author cannot deviate from truth through ignorance, or involuntary error. His memory is com petent to the taste, and his conscience demands that it be faithfully executed, if it be executed at all ; and though it is inevitable that his narrative should have the colouring of self-love, every man is sufficiently acquainted with the strength of that principle in his own breast, to make due allowance for its operation. The reader is therefore upon his guard against its de lusive representations, and less liable to imposition than when the narrator pretends to the impartiality of an indifferent observer, or when the bias, if he can be suspected of any, is only such as is impressed by friendship, whose partiality may be judged indiffe fence, when compared with the influence of self-love.
There is, however, one kind of biography, which ap pears to unite in a good degree the advantage which each of the other possesses separately ; in which the narrative of the historian is supported, and elucidated by the epistolary correspondence of the subject of his history. Recent examples of this sort are before the public in the lives of the contemporary poets Burns and Cowper.
It would seem needless to remark, that this kind of biography should be appropriated to names of the first eminence on account of its voluminous form, had not instances occurred in which it is employed on subjects of inferior consideration. But whatever may be the gratification and advantage of possessing such biographies, all who know how to estimate entire con fidence between man and man, will enter their pro test against an unlicensed, unwarranted, and unfeeling disclosure of what was penned only for private in spection, and in full confidence that it would never be exposed to the public eye. (J. ai.)