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PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPfiY 
 
PRINCIPLES OF 
 BIOGRAPHY 
 
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 annlion: FETTER LANE, E.C. 
 
 C. F. CLAY, Manager 
 
 (miiabnxsi : loo, PRINCES STREET 
 
 iSnlin: A. ASHER AND CO. 
 
 leipjia: F. A. BROCKHAUS 
 
 0ctaBotk: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Bomiaa anB Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 Ali rii;hts reservea 
 
PRINCIPLES OF 
 BIOGRAPHY 
 
 THE LESLIE STEPHEN LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE SENATE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE 
 ON 13 MAY 191 1 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR SIDNEY LEE 
 
 Hon. D.Litt. Oxford 
 
 Cambridge : 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1911 
 
dambttligt : 
 
 PRINTEU BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
PEINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 I APPRECIATE very highly the honour which 
 the electors have done me in conferring on 
 me the office of Leslie Stephen Lecturer 
 in this University. A word of respectful 
 admiration seems due to the liberality of 
 the electors in bestowing this dignity for 
 the second time in succession on a graduate 
 of the sister University. 
 
 I propose to deal broadly with a very 
 familiar ambition — the ambition to record 
 in written words, on the printed page, the 
 career of a man or woman. My design is 
 to consider in the first place the essential {T) 
 quality of the theme which justly merits 
 biographic eflfbrt, and in the second place to/^ 
 discuss the methods of presentment which are 
 Ukely to serve the true purpose of biography 
 
2 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 to best effect. Some paths whicli the bio- 
 grapher should avoid will also call for notice. 
 I hope to suggest causes of success or failure 
 in the practice of biography. 
 
 II 
 
 It is outside my scope to deal in any 
 detail with the biography of particular 
 persons. But I think I may without impro- 
 priety venture at the outset on a few words 
 about the man in whose memory this lecture- 
 ship has been founded, and whose name it 
 bears. I am conscious that I lack many 
 of the qualifications which my two pre- 
 decessors in this honourable office enjoyed. 
 But I believe I may without immodesty 
 claim one advantage in this post, which 
 neither of them shared with me. Leslie 
 Stephen was the master under whom I 
 served my literary apprenticeship and it was 
 as his pupil that I grew to be his colleague and 
 his friend. He gave me my earhest lessons 
 in the writing of biography, and in speaking 
 of its principles I am guided by his teaching. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 3 
 
 I am expressing views coloured by the 
 experience for which he trained me. 
 
 There still happily survive members of 
 this University and literary friends in London 
 who knew Leslie Stephen in days far earlier 
 than those of my first acquaintance with him. 
 Compared with the companions of his youth 
 or early middle age I have small right to 
 speak of him. My association with him only 
 concerned the last twenty-one years of his 
 life. Yet I may plead that outside the ranks 
 of his family I owe him debts of knowledge 
 and encouragement which have not, I think, 
 been excelled. 
 
 Stephen belonged to a notable genera- 
 tion, a generation the heroes of which seem 
 to have been cast in a larger mould than 
 those of my own. Stephen was the affec- 
 tionate disciple of Darwin, the admiring 
 acquaintance of Tennyson, the frequent but 
 rather critical companion of Froude, the 
 close friend of Henry Sidgwick, of George 
 Meredith, of James Kussell Lowell. He 
 was personally known to Browning, Ruskin, 
 
 1—2 
 
4 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Fitzgerald and Carlyle. With such men as 
 these he would be the first to disclaim 
 equality, but he belonged to their orbit. 
 
 It was Stephen's habit to depreciate 
 himself, and to underestimate the regard 
 in which others held him. His qualities did 
 not make for wide popularity. He did not 
 seek what Tennyson calls "the blare and blaze 
 of fame." Yet he established a reputation 
 which his greatest coevals acknowledged — 
 a reputation which came of the virility and 
 perspicuity of his work in ethics, in literary 
 criticism, and above all in biography. 
 
 Justly may the University claim some 
 share in his fame. To Cambridge Stephen 
 owed mainly the greatest blessing of life — 
 health, as well as a large stock of his 
 intellectual equipment. In Stephen's case 
 Cambridge made of a weakly boy an athletic 
 man. His training as an undergraduate 
 turned him into an athlete in body no less 
 than in mind. Not that his physical health 
 was ever obtrusively robust, but the physical 
 exercise of his undergraduate days, in which 
 he engaged with a wholly spontaneous zeal, 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 5 
 
 clearly helped him to measure a span of 
 life exceeding the psalmist's three score 
 years and ten. Even more notable is the 
 influence which this place exerted on his 
 intellectual temper. The ideal of dry 
 common sense, which dominated thought 
 here in his youthful days, was his guiding star 
 through life. He was always impatient of 
 rhetoric, of sentimentality, of floridity in life 
 or literature. His virtues as man and writer 
 were somewhat of the Spartan kind. It was 
 his life here in youth and early middle age 
 that chiefly bred the terseness, the frankness, 
 the dialectical adroitness which give his 
 literary work its savour. Although he severed 
 his connection with his University before he 
 was forty, and though to some extent his 
 sympathies with Cambridge afterwards de- 
 cayed, its beneficent influences were never 
 obliterated in him. 
 
 To the world at large as years advanced 
 he seemed reserved and melancholy. I 
 have heard him groan for hours together 
 over the verbosity and blindness of bio- 
 
6 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 graphers. But his seasons of depression, 
 save in sickness, were passing moods. No 
 man found richer solace than he in the early 
 friendships which he formed in his University. 
 His enthusiasm for his college while under- 
 graduate, fellow and tutor, always kept alive 
 happy memories, which helped to assuage 
 sorrow, as I can testify from some evenings 
 spent with him, when heavy domestic grief 
 bowed down his spirit. "I love the sleepy 
 river," he said in his last days, " not even the 
 Alpine scenery is dearer to me." 
 
 Often a gladiator wielding unsparingly 
 the sword of plain speech against orthodox 
 beliefs, he dealt his strokes fairly and squarely 
 and few of his adversaries cherished lasting 
 resentment. Wary of enthusiasm and im- 
 patient of insincerity or incompetence, he 
 admired without reserve all greatness in 
 deed or thought. Every honest endeavour 
 won his sympathy. His tenderness of heart 
 was without any uncharitable leaven. There 
 was always abundance of affectionate interest 
 in those with whom he worked. Notably in 
 
PRINCIPLE8-0F BIOGRAPHY 7 
 
 his case is the style of the author the character 
 of the man. " I think," wrote Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, "it is always wholesome to read 
 Leslie Stephen." The dictum is in too minor 
 a key to soiind the whole truth, but it is the 
 unpretending sort of language which Stephen 
 would have appreciated about himself, 
 especially from such a quarter. 
 
 Ill 
 
 V^ Biography exists to satisfy a natural 
 instmct in man — the commemorative instinct 
 — the universal desire to keep alive the 
 memories of those who by character and 
 exploits have distinguished themselves from 
 the mass of mankind. Art, pictorial, plastic, 
 monumental art, competes with biography 
 in preserving memories of buried humanity. 
 But Jacques Amyot, the great prose writer 
 of the French Renaissance — Amyot who, 
 by his French translation of the works of 
 Plutarch, first made the Greek master of 
 biography an influence on modern thought 
 
8 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 and conduct — wrote these wise words on 
 the relative values of biography and art as 
 means of commemorating men's characters 
 and achievements : " There is neither picture, 
 nor image of marble, nor arch of triumph, 
 nor pillar, nor sumptuous sepulchre, can 
 match the durableness of an eloquent bio- 
 graphy, furnished with the qualities which it 
 ought to have." " Furnished with the qualities 
 which it ought to have" — there is the problem 
 which we are met to face. Biography is not so 
 imposing to the general eye as pyramids and 
 mausoleums, statues and columns, portraits 
 and memorial foundations, but it is the safest 
 way, as Thomas Fuller wrote, to protect a 
 memory from oblivion. Plutarch, Tacitus 
 and Suetonius' biographical memorials of 
 distinguished men have worn better than the 
 more substantial tributes of art to their 
 heroes' fame. 
 
 The aim of biography is, in general terms, 
 to hand down to a future age the history 
 of individual men or women, to transmit 
 enduringly their character and exploits. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 9 
 
 Character and exploits are for biographical 
 purposes inseparable. Character which does 
 not translate itself into exploit is for the 
 biographer a mere phantasm. The exploit 
 may range from mere talk, as in the case of 
 Johnson, to empire-building and military 
 conquest, as in the case of Julius Caesar or 
 Napoleon. But character and exploit jointly 
 constitute biographic personality. Biography 
 aims at satisfying the_ commemorative in- 
 stinct by exercise of its power to transmit 
 personality. 
 
 The biographic aim implies two constant 
 and obvious conditions. Firstly, the subject- 
 mjitterjihe character and achievement out of 
 which the biography is to be woven, must be 
 capable of moving the interest of posterity. 
 Secondly, the manner or style of the record 
 should be of a texture which is calculated 
 to endure, to outlive the fashion or taste 
 of the hour. In other words, biography 
 depends for its successful accomplishment 
 on the two elements of fit matter and fit 
 manner, of fit theme and fit treatment. 
 
10 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Good treatment will not compensate for 
 a bad theme, nor will a good theme com- 
 pensate for bad treatment. Theme and 
 treatment must both answer equally a call 
 of permanent distinction. There are cases 
 in which a good subject is found in combina- 
 tion with a bad form. That indeed is no 
 uncommon experience. In the result, the 
 commemorative instinct remains unsatisfied 
 and biography fails to perform its function. 
 The converse association of a bad theme 
 with good treatment, of bad matter with 
 good manner, is rarer, and may kindle some 
 literary interest, although not an interest 
 of biographic concern. For the life of a 
 nonentity or a mediocrity, however skilfully 
 contrived, conflicts with primary biographic 
 principles. Unless subject-matter and style 
 be both of a commensurate sufficiency, 
 biography lacks "the qualities which it 
 ought to have," the qualities which ensure 
 permanence, the qualities which satisfy the 
 commemorative instinct. 
 
 What constitutes fitness in a biographic 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 11 
 
 theme ? The question raises puzzling issues. 
 The commemorative instinct which biography 
 has to satisfy scarcely seems to obey in its 
 habitual working any one clear immutable 
 law.^^The Italian poet Ariosto imagined, with 
 some allegorical vagueness, that at the end of 
 every man's thread of life there hung a medal 
 stamped with his name, and that, as Death 
 severed life's thread with its fatal shears. Time 
 seized the medal and dropped it into the 
 river of Lethe. Yet a few, a very few, of the 
 stamped medals were caught as they fell 
 towards the waters of oblivion by swans, 
 who carried off the medals and deposited 
 them in a temple or museum of immortality. 
 Ariosto's swans are biographers: by what 
 motive are they impelled to rescue any 
 medals of personality from the flood of for- 
 getfulness into which they let the mass sink ?_/ 
 
 Perhaps the old Greek definition of the fit 
 theme of tragedy may be usefully adapted to 
 the fit theme of biography. A fit biographic 
 theme is, in the Aristotelian phrase, a career 
 which is " serious, complete and of a certain 
 
12 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 magnitude." An unfit biographic theme is 
 a career of trivial aim, incomplete, without 
 magnitude, of or below mediocrity. The 
 second clause in this definition, which pre- 
 scribes the need of completeness, offers no 
 ambiguity. It excludes from the scope of 
 biography careembf living men, careers which 
 arelncomplete, because death withholds th e 
 fimshing touch. Death is a part of life and 
 no man is fit subject for biography till he is 
 dead. Living men have been made themes 
 of biography. But the choice defies the 
 cardinal condition of completeness. There 
 is usually abroad an idle curiosity about 
 prominent persons during their life-time. It 
 is not the business of biography to appease 
 mere inquisitiveness. Its primary business is 
 to be complete. The living theme can at best 
 be a torso, a fragment. There clings to it, too, 
 a savour either of the scandal or of the un- 
 balanced laudation which living men rarely 
 escape. Politicians, while they are yet active 
 on the political stage, are often panegyrised or 
 vilifiedbybiographical partisans. The efficient 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 13 
 
 commemorative instinct, which sets little store 
 by such panegyric or vilification, craves, before 
 all things, the completeness which death alone 
 assures. No man's memory can be accounted 
 great until it has outlived his life. 
 
 At the same time there is danger in 
 postponing indefinitely biographic com- 
 memoration in cases where it is rightly 
 due. There are insuperable obstacles to 
 writing the lives of men long after their 
 relatives and associates have passed away. 
 Even the life of Shakespeare has suffered 
 through the long interval which separates 
 the date of his death from the first efforts 
 of his biographers, and there are some of 
 Shakespeare's literary contemporaries, whose 
 biographic commemoration has been post- 
 poned to so distant a date after their career 
 has closed that the attempt to satisfy the 
 just call of the commemorative instinct has 
 altogether failed. 
 
 But the theme of biography must be 
 far more than "complete." It must be, in 
 addition, both " serious " and " of a certain 
 magnitude." By seriousness we may under- 
 
14 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 stand the quality which stirs and firmly holds 
 the attention of the earnest-minded. 
 
 What constitutes the needful "magnitude" 
 in a biographic theme ? It is difficult to set 
 up a fixed standard whereby to measure the 
 dimensions of a human action. But by way 
 of tentative suggestion or hypothesis, the 
 volume of a human action may be said to vary, 
 from the biographer's point of view, with the 
 number of times that it has been accom- 
 plished or is capable of accomplishment. 
 
 The magnitude of human action is neces- 
 sarily of many degrees : the scale ascends and 
 descends. The production by Shakespeare of 
 his thirty-seven plays is an action of the first 
 magnitude, because the achievement is unique. 
 The victory of Wellington at Waterloo is an 
 action of great but of lesser magnitude, 
 because deeds of like calibre have been 
 achieved by other military commanders, and 
 are doubtless capable, if the need arise, of 
 accomplishment again. As we descend the 
 scale of achievement, we reach by slow grada- 
 tions the level of action which forms the 
 terminal limit of the biographic province. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 15 
 
 Actions, however beneficent or honourable, 
 which are accomplished or are capable of 
 accomplishment by many thousands of persons 
 are actions of mediocrity, and lack the dimen- 
 sion which justifies the biographer's notice. 
 
 The fact that a man is a devoted husband 
 and father, an efficient schoolmaster, an ex- 
 emplary parish priest, gives him in itself no 
 claim to biographic commemoration, because 
 his actions, although meritorious, are practic- 
 ally indistinguishable from those of thousands 
 of his fellows. It follows further that official 
 dignities, except of the rarest and most digni- 
 fied kind, give in themselves no claim to bio- 
 graphic commemoration. That a man should 
 become a peer, a member of parliament, a lord 
 mayor, even a professor, and attend to his 
 duties, are actions or experiences that have 
 been accomplished or are capable of accom- 
 plishment by too large a number of persons 
 to render them in themselves of appreciable 
 magnitude. At the same time office may 
 well give a man an opportunity of distinction 
 which he might otherwise be without; official 
 
16 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 responsibility may well lift his career to the 
 requisite level of eminence. 
 
 In appraising the magnitude — the bio- 
 graphic capacity or content — of a career, one 
 must needs guard against certain false notions 
 — eiSwXa or idols in Baconian terminology — 
 which prevail widely and tend to distort the 
 judgment. Domestic partiality, social con- 
 tiguity, fortuitous clamour of the crowd — such 
 things frequently cause mediocrity to mas- 
 querade as magnitude. The biographer has 
 to forswear the measuring rods of the family 
 hearth, of the hospitable board, of journalistic 
 advertisement. A kinsman or a kinswoman, 
 an intimate companion, is easily moved by 
 private affection to credit undiscriminatingly 
 a man or woman's activity with the dimensions 
 that justify biographic commemoration. A 
 newspaper records day by day the activities 
 of some seeker after notoriety, until his 
 name grows more familiar to his generation 
 than that of Shakespeare or Nelson. Evan- 
 escent repute may very easily, through 
 journalistic iteration, be mistaken for that 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 17 
 
 which will excite the commemorative instinct 
 hereafter. 
 
 In estimating the magnitude of human 
 action, there is need of some workable 
 measure or gauge which shall operate in- 
 dependently of mere contemporary opinion. 
 Contemporary fame is often withheld as 
 arbitrarily as it is bestowed. Posthumous 
 fame at times comes into being with strange 
 suddenness, without any contemporary herald- 
 ing at all. How suggestive to the student of 
 biography is the fact that the name and 
 work of Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk 
 and biological enquirer, who died nearly 
 thirty years ago "unwept, unhonoured and 
 unsung," should fill ten columns of the new 
 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a 
 space in excess of that devoted to any 
 one of the numerous heroes of science 
 who enjoyed repute in their own lifetime. 
 Current fame is no sure evidence of bio- 
 graphic fitness. The tumult and the shout- 
 ing die and they may leave nothing behind 
 which satisfies the biographic tests of com- 
 pleteness, seriousness and magnitude. 
 
18 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 IV 
 
 The biographer having found his fit theme 
 is faced with the problem of its treatment. 
 His aim is to transmit personality, to satisfy 
 the commemorative instinct. He may learn 
 something of the lawful processes from a pre- 
 liminary study of the processes which are un- 
 lawful. The main path which he should follow 
 may gain in clear definition if he be warned 
 at the outset against certain neighbouring 
 paths which are easily capable of leading him 
 astray. Biography must resolutely preserve 
 its independence of three imposing themes of 
 study, which are often seen to compete for its 
 control. True biography is no handmaid of 
 ethical instruction. Its purpose is not that 
 of history. It does not exist to serve biolo- 
 gical or anthropological science. Any assist- 
 ance that biography renders these three great 
 interests — ethical, historical and scientific — 
 should be accidental; such aid is neither 
 essential nor obligatory. Biography rules a 
 domain of its own; it is autonomous — an 
 attribute with which it is not always credited. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 19 
 
 It was an amiable tenet in the orthodox 
 creed of an ancient biographic school, that 
 the career destined for biographic treat- 
 ment should directly teach morality, should 
 be conspicuously virtuous. The biography 
 should, before all else, " show virtue her own 
 feature," or at any rate hymn her worth. 
 Gentle Izaak Walton, like many biographers 
 who wrote before and after him, regarded 
 biography as " an honour due to the virtuous 
 dead, and a lesson in magnanimity to those 
 who shall succeed them." In Walton's de- 
 mure judgment, dead men who are morally 
 unworthy lie outside the scope of biography. 
 It speaks well for the goodness of the world 
 that good men have occupied more biographic 
 pens than bad men, and that biographers 
 have always cherished a charitable preference 
 for benefactors over malefactors. But therein 
 lies no proof that the merits of biography 
 depend on its powers of edification. 
 
 It is with very large qualifications that 
 Walton's ethical presumption can pass cur- 
 rent. Sinners excite the commemorative 
 
 2—2 
 
20 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 instinct as well as saints. The careers of 
 both Napoleon I and Napoleon III satisfy all 
 conditions of the biographic theme, in spite 
 of their spacious infringements of moral law. 
 Suetonius defied no biographic principle 
 when he treated of Koman emperors, many 
 of whom were monsters of infamy. Biography 
 is a truthful picture of life, of life's tangled 
 skein, good and ill together. Biography 
 prejudices its chances of success when it is 
 consciously designed as an ethical guide of 
 life. 
 
 Candour, which shall be innocent of 
 ethical fervour or even of ethical intention, 
 is a cardinal principle of right biographic 
 method. It is often the biographer's anxious 
 duty to present great achievements in near 
 alliance with moral failings. Coleridge was 
 a great poet and an illuminating thinker. 
 But he was deficient in the moral sense, and 
 justified himself for his offences by " amazing 
 wrigglings and self-reproaches and astonish- 
 ing pouring forth of imctuous twaddling." 
 Byron, Porson, Nelson, Pamell and many 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 21 
 
 more for whom the commemorative instinct 
 assuredly demands biographic commemora- 
 tion combined great exploits with notorious 
 defiance of virtue. 
 
 The ethical fallacy of biography has 
 sanctioned two evasive methods of handling 
 such perplexing phases of life — a method 
 of suppression and a method of extenua- 
 tion. The method of suppression has found 
 distinguished advocates. Tennyson asked 
 "what business has the public to want to 
 know about Byron's wildnesses? He has 
 given them fine work and they ought to be 
 satisfied." Here indeed we are advised, either 
 to dispense with all biography of Byron, or 
 only to accept a biography of him from which 
 his "wildnesses " are excluded. The cravings 
 of the commemorative instinct which Byron's 
 career has already excited render both these 
 counsels fatile. 
 
 r 
 
 The alternative method of extenuation 
 has been adopted by an eminent man of 
 letters of our own day in treating of an 
 illustrious poetic contemporary of Byron — 
 of Shelley. Writing Shelley's life under the 
 
22 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 admiring eyes of surviving relatives, the 
 biographer has made other people responsible 
 for most of Shelley's flagrant errors of con- 
 duct and has credited the poet's personality 
 with an unfailing beneficence. In view of 
 the biographer's true goal it is diflScult to 
 speak of the whitewashing method more 
 indulgently than of the method of suppres- 
 sion. The biographer is a narrator, not a^ 
 moralist, and candour is the salt of his 
 narrative. He accepts alike what clearh 
 tells in a man's favour and what clearly tellg 
 against him. Neither omission nor partisaji 
 vindication will satisfy the primary needs of 
 the art. 
 
 At the same time the biographer is likely 
 to miss his aim of transmitting personality 
 truthfully if he give more space or emphasis 
 to a man's lapses from virtue than is pro- 
 portioned to their effects on his achievement. 
 Although he may not fill the preacher's pulpit, 
 a touch of sympathy with human frailty, of 
 charity for wrongdoing, will the better fit him 
 for his task. 
 
 There is a French proverb : Tot ou tard, 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 23 
 
 tout se salt — "Sooner or later everything 
 comes to light." There is another French pro- 
 verb : Tout comprendre, dest toutpardonner— 
 " To understand all is to pardon all." 
 
 Both apophthegms make appeal to the 
 biographer, and the second is quite as relevant 
 to his work as the first. Lives written in a 
 hostile spirit may not be wholly untruthful. 
 But they tend to emphasise unpleasing 
 features and thereby give a wrongful im- 
 pression. Scurrility is not candour. To 
 pander to a love of scandal is a greater 
 sin in a biographer than in anybody else. 
 Lord Campbell wrote lives of lawyers, which 
 satisfy many of the conditions of biography. 
 But their depreciatory tone, which prompted 
 the epigram that biography lends a new 
 sting to death, suggests malignity and 
 distorts the true perspective. The com- 
 petent biographer may fail Irom want of 
 sympathy even when his skill is not in question. 
 Like the portrait painter who is fascinated by 
 forbidding aspects in a sitter's countenance, 
 he may, even without conscious intention, 
 produce a caricature instead of a portrait. 
 
24 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 All gradations of moral infirmity, from 
 serious crime to mere deviation from accepted 
 codes of good manners, will from time to time 
 claim the biographer's notice and call for 
 presentation in due perspective. Downright 
 offences are not his only sources of embar- 
 rassment. Perhaps more often is he con- 
 fronted with inconsistencies of conduct or 
 opinion, with sudden changes of beliefs, 
 religious or political, which are currently sus- 
 pected of dishonesty. Defective sympathy 
 or partisan hostility is here as harmful as any 
 resolve to point a moral. " That conversion,". 
 says the moralist, " will always be suspected 
 which concurs with interest." The suspicion 
 is inevitable, but is conversion invariably 
 dishonest ? May not increase of knowledge 
 or a greater concentration of thought on the 
 questions at issue induce a natural and an 
 honest process of development ? Was Words- 
 worth a lost leader who left the revolutionary 
 companions of his early years for the orthodox 
 Tories just to receive a handful of silver and 
 a bit of ribbon to stick in his coat ? Was 
 Disraeli's early abandonment of a radical 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 25 
 
 programme the act of a self-seeking ad- 
 venturer? Was Gladstone's unexpected 
 adoption of the policy of Irish Home Rule 
 prompted by impulses of reckless ambition, 
 by the hope of stealing meanly a march on 
 political rivals? The biographer must hold 
 the scales even. He must look before and 
 after, and close his ears to party resentments 
 of the hour. He must abide by the just and 
 generous principles which move a critical 
 friend's j udgment. Wherever he honestly can, 
 a friend allows the benefit of the doubt ; he 
 extenuates nothing, nor sets down aught in 
 malice. Brutus claimed that the record of 
 Caesar's life in the Capitol presented the 
 dictator's "glories wherein he was worthy" by 
 the side of the dictator's "offences wherein 
 he was unworthy." Neither were the merits 
 under-estimated nor were the defects over- 
 emphasised. Brutus's simple words suggest 
 the nicely adjusted scales in which the 
 moral blemishes of great men should be 
 weighed by the biographer. The aim of 
 biography is not the moral edification which 
 
26 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 may flow from the survey of either vice or 
 virtue ; J it is the truthful transmission of 
 personality. 
 
 V 
 
 The pursuit by the biographer of the 
 historian's aims may prove as disastrous as 
 any competition with the austere aims of 
 the moraUst. The historical method is as 
 harmful to biography as the method of 
 moral edification. History encroaches on 
 the biographer's province to the prejudice 
 of his art. Bacon, in his survey of learning, 
 carefully distinguished the " history of times " 
 (that is, annals or chronicles) or the " history 
 of action " (that is, histories in the accepted 
 sense) from "lives." Bacon warns us that 
 history sets forth the pomp of public business ; 
 while biography reveals the true and inward 
 sources of action, tells of private no less than 
 of public conduct, and pays as much attention 
 to the slender wires as to the great weights 
 that hang from them. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 27 
 
 The distinction between history and bio- 
 graphy lies so much on the surface that a 
 confusion between them is barely justifiable. 
 History may be compared to mechanics, the 
 science which determines the power of bodies 
 in the mass. Biography may be compared 
 to chemistry, the science which analyses 
 substances and resolves them into their 
 constituent elements. The historian has to 
 describe the aggregate movement of men and 
 the manner in which that aggregate move- 
 ment fashions political or social events and 
 institutions. The historian has only to take 
 into account those aspects of men's lives 
 which afiect the movements of the crowd that 
 co-operates with them. The biographer's con- 
 cern with the crowd is quite subsidiary and 
 secondary. From the mass of mankind he 
 draws apart those units who are in a decisive 
 degree distinguishable from their neighbours. 
 He submits them to minute examination, and 
 his record of observation becomes a mirror of 
 their exploits and character from the cradle 
 to the grave. The historian looks at mankind 
 
28 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 through a field-glass. The biographer puts 
 individual men under a magnifying glass. 
 
 It goes without saying that the biographer 
 must frequently appeal for aid to the 
 historian. An intelligent knowledge of the 
 historical environment — of the contemporary 
 trend of the aggregate movement of men — 
 is indispensable to the biographer, if he 
 would portray in fitting perspective all the 
 operations of his unit. One cannot detach 
 a sovereign or a statesman from the political 
 world in which he has his being. The cir- 
 cumstance of politics is the scenery of the 
 statesman's biography. But it is the art 
 of the biographer sternly to subordinate 
 his scenery to his actors. He must never 
 crowd his stage with upholstery and scenic 
 apparatus that can only distract the spec- 
 tators' attention from the proper interest 
 of the piece. If you attempt the life of 
 Mary Queen of Scots, you miss your aim 
 when you obscure the human interest and 
 personal adventure, in which her career 
 abounds, by grafting upon it an exhaustive 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 29 
 
 exposition of the intricate relations of 
 Scottish Presbyterians with Roman Catholics, 
 or of Queen Elizabeth's tortuous foreign 
 policy. These things are the bricks and 
 mortar of history. , Fragments of them may 
 be needed as props in outlying portions of 
 the biographical edifice, but even then they 
 must be kept largely out of sight. 
 
 On these grounds I am afraid that that 
 mass of laborious works which bears the title 
 of "the life and times" of this or that 
 celebrated person, calls for censure. These 
 weighty volumes can be classed neither with 
 right history nor with right biography. Most 
 of them must be reckoned fruit of a mis- 
 directed zeal. One would not wish to speak 
 disrespectfully of the self-denying toil which 
 has raised a mountain of stones on however 
 sprawling a plan to a great man's memory. 
 But when one surveys that swollen cairn The 
 Life of John Milton narrated in connexion 
 toith the political, ecclesiastical and literary 
 history of his time which occupied a great 
 part of David Masson's long and distinguished 
 
30 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 career, I accept in spite of the varied uses 
 of the majestic volumes that plaintive judg- 
 ment of Carlyle : 
 
 " Masson has hung on his Milton peg all the politics, 
 which Milton, poor fellow, had never much to do with 
 except to print a pamphlet or two." 
 
 Masson has hung on "his Milton peg" 
 not only " all the politics which Milton, poor 
 fellow, had never much to do with " but also 
 all the ecclesiastical and literary history 
 with which Milton had even less concern. 
 Biography is not a peg for anything save 
 the character and exploits of a man whose 
 career answers the tests of biographic fitness. 
 
 I should hardly be bold enough to speak 
 of the relations of biography and science, 
 and of the peril to biographic method of 
 bringing the two studies into too close a con- 
 junction, had not the late Sir Francis Galton 
 and several living correspondents urged on 
 me, in my capacity of editor of The Dictionary 
 of National Biography, the general advantage 
 of adapting the biographic method of the 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 31 
 
 Dictionary to the needs of the scientific 
 investigation of heredity and eugenics. 
 
 Biography, it has been argued, should 
 serve as handmaid to this new and absorbing 
 department of biology and anthropology. 
 The biographer should collect, after due 
 scrutiny, those details of genealogy, habit 
 and physiological characteristics which may 
 help the student of genetics to determine 
 hiunan types, to diagnose "variations from 
 type," to distinguish acquired from inherited 
 characteristics, and to arrive by such roads 
 at a finite conception of human individuality. 
 If biography, without deviating from its 
 true purpose or method, can aid the scientific 
 inquiry into the origin and development of 
 ability or genius, all is well. But, if bio- 
 graphic effort is to be swayed by conditions 
 of genetical study, if it is to inquire minutely 
 and statistically into the distant ramifica- 
 tions of every great man's pedigree, with 
 the result that undistinguished grandfathers, 
 grandmothers, fathers, mothers, even second 
 cousins, shall receive almost as close atten- 
 
32 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 tion as the great man himself, then dangers 
 may be apprehended. Whether the secret 
 of genius will ever be solved is for the future 
 to determine. The biographer has no call to 
 pursue speculation on the fascinating theme. 
 
 VI 
 
 Like all branches of modern literature, 
 biography was efficiently practised by Greece 
 and Rome, and it is to classical tuition that 
 the modern art is deeply indebted. It was 
 Amyot's great French translation of Plutarch 
 which introduced the biography of disciplined 
 purpose to the modem world, with lasting 
 benefit to life and literature. 
 
 Plutarch's method is in one respect 
 peculiar to himself He endeavours to empha- 
 sise points of character and conduct in one 
 man by instituting a formal comparison of 
 them with traits of similar type in anotlier 
 man. He writes what he calls "parallel lives" 
 of some twenty great Greeks and Romans. 
 Having written of Alexander the Great, he 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 33 
 
 gives an account of Caesar; having written 
 of Demosthenes, he gives an account of 
 Cicero. In every instance he adds to his 
 pair of lives a chapter of comparisons and 
 contrasts. The parallel method enhances 
 the vividness of the portraiture, but it is 
 not the feature of his work which gives it its 
 permanent influence. His individual themes, 
 and his detached treatment of them, deserve 
 chief scrutiny. 
 
 Plutarch's subjects are all leaders in 
 politics or war. Heroes of literature and art 
 lie outside his sphere. From the modern point 
 of view the range is arbitrarily limited. But 
 his limitation of theme does not prejudice the 
 value of his example. His guiding principles 
 of treatment are of universal application. 
 He collects authorities in ample store. His 
 materials included not only written books 
 and documents, but also experience and 
 knowledge gathered in converse with well- 
 informed persons. He bases his narrative 
 on contemporary evidence wherever it is 
 accessible, but he is watchful of the lies 
 
34 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 and fables of hearsay accretions. Where 
 two conflicting versions of one incident are 
 at hand, he selects the one which is in closer 
 harmony with his hero's manners and nature. 
 
 But wide as is Plutarch's field of research, 
 he is discriminating in his choice of detail. 
 He knows the value of perspective. He did 
 not, he tells us, declare all things at large. 
 At times he wrote briefly of the noblest and 
 most notorious achievements. He preferred 
 to concentrate his attention upon what 
 to the unseeing eye looked insignificant — 
 upon "a light occasion, a word or some 
 sport." "Therein," he adds, "men's nature, 
 dispositions and manners appear more 
 plainly than the famous battles won, wherein 
 are slain 10,000 men." 
 
 Personality was Plutarch's quarry. It was 
 therefore needful for him to bring into due 
 prominence the singularity of each human 
 theme. His studies inevitably acquainted 
 him with many unhappy or ungracious 
 features in great men's lives, which asked 
 admission to his canvas. The irailties were 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 35 
 
 neither suppressed nor extenuated. Yet a 
 sense of what he called "reverent shame" 
 deterred him from enlarging on men's frailties 
 beyond the needs of his art. He was a just 
 biographer who was not distracted from his 
 proper aim by ethical fervour or by partisan- 
 ship. Nor were the purposes of history 
 or science within his scope. 
 
 None of Plutarch's biographic principles 
 can be ignored with impunity. Very effi- 
 ciently does his example warn the biographer 
 against two faults to which biography of 
 more modem date has shown itself peculiarly 
 prone — the fault of misty sentimentality 
 or vague rhapsodizing^ and the fa,int of 
 tedioQsness. The value of rhapsodical or 
 sentimmiEal biography is commonly over- 
 estimated when it is credited with any method 
 at all. In a few instances an eloquent piece 
 of literature is the outcome. But it is litera- 
 ture which belongs to another category than 
 that of biography. Boccaccio's rhapsodical 
 account of Dante is a favourable specimen of 
 its class. We learn there much of the effect 
 
 3—2 
 
36 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 of love on youthful hearts. There is a fiery 
 denunciation of the city of Florence for her 
 guilt in banishing her greatest citizen. But 
 Boccaccio's impassioned rhetoric leaves the 
 story of Dante's life untold. 
 
 The rhapsodical or sentimental mode 
 of biography will always have its votaries. 
 It often makes a powerful appeal to the 
 hearts of the ingenuous kindred of a departed 
 relative. But the vapour of sentimentahty 
 is usually fatal to biographic light. I have 
 already suggested how liable domestic 
 partiality is to err in the choice of the 
 biographic theme. It is no less harmful 
 in ordinary conditions to biographic treat- 
 ment or method. Very rarely will domestic 
 sentiment recognize the limitations of the 
 biographic art, or obey the cry for candour 
 and perspective. Whether the theme be fit 
 or no, the pen which is guided by domestic 
 enthusiasm will, as a rule, flow to satiety 
 with sentimental vagueness and inaccuracy. 
 The advantage of intimate knowledge which 
 might seem to come of a kinsman's personal 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 37 
 
 propinquity to the biographic hero counts 
 save in a few notable instances for very 
 little or for nothing. The domestic pen is 
 too often innocent of literary experience. 
 The faculty of selection and arrangement is 
 wanting, or is at any rate lost in the stream 
 of cloudy panegyric. There are tendencies 
 to emphasise the immaterial and to ignore 
 the material. The sentimental image has 
 to be protected at all hazards. How often 
 has one foimd in biographies of distinguished 
 men, which are compiled under the domestic 
 eye or by the domestic hand, that youthfiil 
 struggles with sordid poverty or suffering, 
 that irregular experiences of budding man- 
 hood are ignored or half told from a mis- 
 guided fear of disturbing the sentimental 
 bias. I may not reveal the secrets of my 
 own prison-house. But I could recall many 
 a surprising example of domestic anxiety to 
 gloss over or misrepresent truthful and perti- 
 nent details in careers of immediate ancestors, 
 because domestic illusion, which is often bred 
 of the blindest conventions of propriety, 
 
38 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 scents an unedifying savour in facts which 
 are quite harmless but quite necessary. 
 
 Domestic sentimentality has been known 
 to exert pressure on the biographer who 
 stands outside the domestic circle. He at 
 times lacks the nerve to resist all its assaults. 
 The peril is indeed ubiquitous. It is per- 
 haps some consolation that Shakespeare's 
 life was written after all his descendants 
 were dead; for who knows, had they been 
 alive, that such a detail as that his father 
 was a village shopkeeper and went bankrupt 
 would have been dismissed to oblivion by 
 an invertebrate and conciliatory biographer, 
 at the call of an ill-balanced domestic pride. 
 
 VII 
 
 Leslie Stephen said of a recent biography 
 — which enjoyed some vogue — that it was 
 "too long and too idolatrous." Those epi- 
 thets "too long and too idolatrous " indicate 
 the two worst faults in biographic method, 
 which Plutarch's teaching condemns. Of the 
 biographic vice of idolatry, which springs 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 39 
 
 largely from domestic partiality, I have 
 already spoken enough. The vice of undue 
 length is equally widespread and its preva- 
 lence stands in little need of illustration. It 
 is a failing against which Plutarch's example 
 warns us even more loudly than against 
 idolatry. Yet it flourishes luxuriantly in 
 spite of the master's warning. The lineal 
 measurement of biography has no single, 
 fixed scale. There is a threefold gradua- 
 tion answering in the first place to the 
 importance of the career, in the second 
 place to the gross amount of available 
 material, and in the third place to the in- 
 trinsic value or biographic pertinence of the 
 surviving records. The correspondence or 
 the journals or the reports of conversation 
 out of which the biographic web is to be 
 woven vary immensely in biographic service. 
 Lack of the raw material would make it 
 impossible to write a life of ^Shakespeare of 
 the same length as Lord Morley's Life of 
 Gladstone. But brevity may be enjoined, in 
 the case of men of the first eminence, not 
 
40 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 solely on the ground that the raw material 
 is scanty. Even where the raw material be 
 abundant, it may be deficient in the quality 
 which illumines personality and may prove 
 useless for biographic purposes. Among 
 men of action especially, the faculty of self- 
 expression in letters and papers is often 
 crude and ill-developed. Diaries are filled 
 with formalities of daily experience, with 
 excerpts from travellers' guidebooks, or with 
 commonplace reflections. The intrinsic in- 
 terest for the biographer amounts to little 
 more than proof of the writer's inability to 
 transmit his individuality through his pen. 
 Here drastic summarizing is alone permis- 
 sible. In citing diaries the half or much less 
 than half is very frequently more valuable 
 than the whole. Rigid selection and lavish 
 rejection of available records are processes 
 which the biographer has often to practise 
 in the sternest temper. 
 
 It may be needful for the biographer 
 to examine mountainous masses of manu- 
 script, but he must sift their contents in 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 41 
 
 the light of true biographic principles. The 
 balance has to be kept even between what 
 precedes and what follows. No digression is 
 permissible from the straight path of the 
 hero's personality. The mode of work, which 
 was adopted by one of the most skilful artists 
 in black and white of our time, Phil May, 
 may well offer the biographer suggestion 
 here. Phil May in his drawings presented 
 character with admirable fidelity. In the 
 finished result the fewest possible lines were 
 present. But the preliminary draft was, I 
 understand, crowded with lines, the majority 
 of which were erased by the artist before 
 his work left his hand. Let the biographer 
 note down every detail in fulness and at 
 length. But before offering his labour to the 
 world, let him excise every detail that does 
 not make for graphic portrayal of character 
 and exploit. No mere impressionist sketch 
 satisfies the conditions of adequate biography. 
 Bulpersonality is not transmitted on the bio- 
 graphic canvas through over-crowded detail. 
 More than "ever at the present day is there 
 
42 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 imperative need of winnowing biographic 
 information, of dismissing the voluminous 
 chaff while conserving the grain. The grow- 
 ing habit of ephemeral publicity, the methods 
 of reporting the minutiae of prominent 
 people's daily life, not merely by aid of the 
 printing press, but by the new mechanical 
 inventions of photograph, phonograph and 
 even cinematograph, all accumulate raw 
 biographic material in giant heaps at an un- 
 precedented rate. The biographer's labours 
 will hereafter be immensely increased; but 
 they will be labours lost, unless principles of 
 discrimination be rigorously applied. 
 
 VIII 
 
 A discriminating brevity is a law of the 
 right biographic method — abrevity graduated 
 by considerations on the one hand of the 
 genuine importance of the theme or career, 
 and on the other of the genuine value and 
 interest of the available material. Instances 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 43 
 
 of biographic failure, owing to infringements 
 of this law of brevity, are legion, and one 
 or other recent examples will leap to the 
 minds of everyone who subscribes to a cir- 
 culating library. But every law is liable 
 in uncovenanted conditions to a temporary 
 suspense. To every rule there are excep- 
 tions, which prove its normal justness. The 
 longest biography in the English language 
 is also the best. Boswell's Life of Johnson 
 is indeed reckoned the best specimen of 
 biography that has yet been written in any 
 tongue. Critics agree that life on a desert 
 island would be tolerable with Boswell's 
 biographic work for companion. That 
 verdict may be a metaphorical flight. But 
 it has not been risked in comment on any 
 other biography, and only in comment on 
 two other books in English, the English 
 Bible and Shakespeare. 
 
 To what is attributable Boswell's unique 
 triumph, in spite of its challenge of the law 
 of biographic brevity? The triumph is 
 primarily due to an unexampled confluence 
 
44 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 of two very unusual phenomena. A bio- 
 graphic theme of unprecedented breadth 
 and energy found biographic treatment of 
 an abnormally microscopic intensity. The 
 outcome is what men of science might well 
 call a " sport." 
 
 There is no precise parallel to the 
 episode of which Boswell's biography was 
 bred. Dr Johnson, a being of rare in- 
 tellectual and moral manliness, draws to 
 himself, when well advanced in years, the 
 loyal and unquestioning adoration of a 
 rarely inquisitive young man, whose chief 
 virtues are those of the faithful hound. 
 Boswell's personality, save in his aspect 
 of biographer, deserves small respect. Self- 
 indulgent, libidinous, drunken, vain, he 
 develops in relation to Johnson a parasitical 
 temper which makes him glorious. Boswell 
 pursues Johnson for twenty years like his 
 shadow, and takes note of all that fell from 
 the great man's lips, the tones of his voice, 
 the expressions of his countenance. It is for- 
 tunate for us that he should have done much 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 45 
 
 which self-respecting persons would scorn 
 to do. The salt of Boswell's biography is 
 his literal reports of Johnson's conversation, 
 reports in the spirit of the interviewer, which 
 run to enormous length and account for the 
 colossal dimensions of the book. 
 
 No other biographer has sought or ob- 
 tained the like opportunity of interviewing 
 his hero and reporting his conversation. It 
 is doubtful if any hero save Johnson could 
 have come through the ordeal satisfactorily. 
 It is fallacious to suggest that a mediocrity 
 would, if submitted to the pertinacious 
 scrutiny of a Boswell, give occasion for a 
 biographic tour de force comparable with 
 Johnson's life. There was a singular union 
 of two exceptional human forces which, 
 despite dissimilarity, proved to be mutually 
 complementary. That miracle is responsible 
 for the supreme effect. Until such a con- 
 junction be repeated, Boswell's work will 
 stand alone, quite out of the sphere of normal 
 biography. 
 
 Boswell's book defies all traditional 
 
46 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 biographic scale ; its flood of reported talk 
 is biographic license, not law. Yet it is 
 the paradoxical truth that Boswell's work 
 illustrates to perfection many features of 
 first importance to right biographic method. 
 In spite of its unconscionable length and 
 diffuseness, Boswell's biography always keeps 
 with admirable tenacity to the fundamental 
 purpose of transmitting personality. Every 
 page makes its contribution to this single 
 end. There are no digressions, no super- 
 fluities, no distracting issues. All the meti- 
 culous detail makes for a unity on which 
 Plutarch could hardly improve. 
 
 In the second place Boswell is the 
 supreme champion of the great principle 
 of biographic frankness ; his native candour 
 robs his tendency to idolatry of its familiar 
 mischiefs. He declines to suppress anything 
 that helps his reader to realize Johnson's 
 personality. He bluntly refused Miss 
 Hannah More's request "to mitigate some 
 of the asperities of our most revered and 
 departed friend." He would " not cut off" the 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 47 
 
 doctor's claws nor make his tiger a cat to 
 please anybody." He was so faithful to the 
 biographic law of candour that the frequent 
 snubs which the doctor administered to the 
 writer himself find a due place in the record. 
 
 Boswell's presentation of himself in the 
 biography offers a third piece of valuable 
 instruction to the biographer. It was not 
 in Boswell's nature to efface himself Yet 
 it cannot be said of him, as of some other 
 biographers, that he brings himself on the 
 stage at the expense of his subject. There 
 are biographies which fail helplessly because 
 the writer is always thinking as much, or 
 perhaps more, of himself than of his theme. 
 He is seeking to share in the honours of 
 publicity. Boswell does not efface himself, 
 but he envelops himself in the spirit of his 
 theme ; he stands in its shadow and never in 
 its light. 
 
 Lastly Boswell was an industrious collector 
 of information. It may be objected that for 
 the fifty-four years of Johnson's life, -.which 
 preceded Boswell's introduction to him, 
 
48 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 something more than Boswell knew has 
 come to light since he wrote. It may be 
 admitted that Boswell neglected a few 
 sources of information from petty personal 
 grudges against those who controlled them. 
 The cry has indeed been lately raised, that 
 some pigmy contemporary biographers of 
 Johnson reveal a few phases of the doctor's 
 character which Boswell either wilfully or 
 unwittingly overlooked or minimised. Spots 
 have been detected in the sun, but the 
 sun's rays are undimmed. Boswell's achieve- 
 ment glows with a steadier and more 
 expansive radiance than any other star in 
 the biographic firmament. 
 
 There is yet another biography in the 
 English language which transgresses the law 
 of brevity without marring its effect, nay, 
 with enhancement of its effect. There is a 
 second exception to the principle of brevity 
 which fails to impugn the normal rule, if on 
 grounds quite different from those which 
 Boswell pleads with security. Lockhart's 
 Life of Scott is the second best biography 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 49 
 
 in the language, Boswell's biography being 
 the first. But Lockhart's merit is mainly- 
 due to the excellence and the abundance 
 of the raw material provided for him in 
 Scott's ample journals and correspondence. 
 He was spared Boswell's toil of reporter and 
 collector of information; almost all was 
 ready to his hands and he had merely to 
 apply to his vast store those faculties of 
 selection and arrangement which came of 
 his literary efl&ciency and experience. It 
 is very rare for a man of Sir Walter Scott's 
 supreme genius, whose career and character, 
 too, are free of dark places or mysteries 
 prompting suppression or extenuation, to 
 leave to a competent biographer an immense 
 mass of fit biographic records penned by his 
 own hand. So happy an event seems as 
 unlikely to recur as a second meeting of 
 a Johnson with a Boswell. Lockhart's chal- 
 lenge of the law of brevity is justified, and 
 the justification barely touches normal 
 experience. 
 
50 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 IX 
 
 Encyclopaedic or collective biography 
 is a special branch of biography which has 
 not been infrequently practised, both in 
 classical and modern times. To collective 
 biography, in the form of national biography, 
 Leslie Stephen dedicated immense energy, 
 and to it I, in succession to him, have devoted 
 almost all my adult life. The methods of 
 collective or national biography clearly differ 
 from those of individual biography in literary 
 design and in the opportunity which is 
 offered of literary enibellishment. But there 
 are points at which the method of the two 
 biographic kinds converge. Collective or 
 national biography, which brings a long 
 series of lives within the confines of a single 
 literary scheme, presses the obligations of 
 brevity and conciseness to limits which 
 individual or independent biography is not 
 required to respect. Facts and dates loom 
 larger in collective or national biography 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 51 
 
 than in other biographic forms. The object 
 of national as of all collective biography is 
 Priestley's object in scientific exposition — " to 
 comprise as much knowledge as possible in 
 the smallest compass." Indulgence in rhetoric, 
 voluble enthusiasm, emotion, loquacious 
 sentiment is for the national biographer 
 the deadliest of sins. Yet his method will 
 be of small avail if he be imable to arrange 
 his bare facts and dates so as to indicate 
 graphically the precise character of the 
 personality and of the achievement with which 
 he is dealing,— if he fail to suggest the 
 peculiar interest of the personality and the 
 achievement by some happy epithet or brief 
 touch of criticism. There are instances in 
 which a miniature memoir thus graced has 
 given a reader a sense of satisfaction almost 
 as great as any that a largely planned bio- 
 graphy can give — the feeling, namely, that 
 to him is imparted all the information for 
 which his commemorative instinct craves. 
 The methods of national biography are 
 Spartan methods heartlessly enforced by 
 
52 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 an editor's vigilance. It might perhaps be 
 doubted if any of the Spartan methods 
 of collective biography could be adopted 
 with advantage by independent biographers 
 who are free of the collective biographer's 
 shackles. 
 
 Yet the virtue of liberty may be overvalued. 
 The collective biographer submits from the 
 outset to a strict discipline. Without under- 
 rating the dissimilarity of the conditions in 
 which the independent biographer works, one 
 may often impute to him without injustice 
 a lack of any such training as is required 
 of his humbler brother-craftsmen. In the 
 absence of disciplinary control, an vm- 
 trained biographer has been known to fling 
 before his readers a confused mass of 
 irrelevant and inaccurate information, to load 
 his page with unimpressive sentiment, with 
 the result that the hero's really eminent 
 achievements and distinctive characteristics 
 are buried under the dust and ashes of 
 special pleading, commonplace gossip and 
 helpless eulogy. Occasionally at any rate 
 
PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 53 
 
 nothing would be lost by an exchange of 
 a shapeless and woolly effigy from the 
 unchartered workshop of a free and 
 independent biographer, for a skeleton of 
 facts and dates from the collective bio- 
 grapher's law-ridden factory. 
 
 None the less, from the purely literary 
 point of view, a contribution to collective 
 biography however useful and efficient cannot 
 rank with a thoroughly workmanlike effort in 
 individual biography. It is individual bio- 
 graphy which gives unrestricted opportunities 
 of literary skill. Where the theme is fit, 
 the independent biographer has scope for 
 the exercise of almost every literary gift. 
 
 Varied qualities are demanded of the 
 successful biographer. He must have the 
 patience to sift dust heaps of written or 
 printed papers. He must have the insight 
 to interpret what he has sifted, and the 
 capacity to give form to the essence of his 
 
54 PRINCIPLES OF BIOGRAPHY 
 
 findings. A Frenchman has said that the 
 features of Alexander ought only to be 
 preserved by the chisel of Apelles. The ad- 
 monition impUes that magnitude in a career 
 demands corresponding eminence in the 
 biographer. No doubt the ideal partnership 
 is there indicated. But like all counsels of 
 perfection, this ideal union shrinks from 
 realization. Did the precept prevail, the 
 field of biography would be very circum- 
 scribed and few biographers would find 
 employment. It is more workaday coimsel 
 to bid the biographer avoid unfit themes and 
 to treat fit themes with scrupulous accuracy, 
 with perfect frankness, with discriminating 
 sympathy and with resolute brevity. Not 
 otherwise is one of ordinary clay likely to 
 minister worthily to the commemorative 
 instinct of his fellow men and to transmit 
 to an after-age a memorable personality.