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He would fain have opened the Way for me to join in my Guardian's Questioning, but I bore in Mind the Unseemliness of an unwarranted Acquaintanceship, and sought rather to avoid than to court the Glances which he was not over cautious in sending in my Direction." "A Maid's avoidance," observes the biographer, "of a Youth's Glances, is not of that Nature that is the Cutting off of all Hope."
Daring, keen, sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that he must be insane, and soberly replied to him. His proposed statute consists of eighty-two clauses, and is fortified by a "whereas" of a hundred and thirteen weighty reasons.
As in portraiture, so in biography there must be light and shade. The portrait-painter does not pose his sitter so as to bring out his deformities; nor does the biographer give undue prominence to the defects of the character he portrays. Not many men are so outspoken as Cromwell was when he sat to Cooper for his miniature: "Paint me as I am," said he, "wart and all."
The rogue biographer has told us that Girard's ship was loaded with "niggers," and that these were sold by the mercenary captain and the money pocketed by himself, "all being fair in love and war." This tale of business buccaneering has long been exploded, but it is a fact that the cargo was used by Girard as his first capital.
He confirms the account given by Park's biographer of his cold and reserved manners to strangers, and in particular, of his disgust with the indirect questions which curious visitors would often put to him upon the subject of his travels.
Middleton, the elegant biographer of Cicero: Lord Bolingbroke is said to have observed, when the news was told him, "Then is the best writer in England gone, and the worst." That Bolingbroke should have disliked Gordon and his politics, does not surprise me; but I cannot understand for what reason he, and other good judges, despised his writings.
The latest biographer of Galileo regards this motive as necessary to account for "the otherwise inexplicable change which took place in the conduct of Urban to his old friend;" but we cannot admit the truth of this supposition. The church had been placed in hostility to a powerful and liberal party, which was adverse to its interests.
But, having once got the clew, my subsequent researches acquainted me with the main facts of the following narrative; although, in writing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and legendary license, worthier of a small poet than of a grave biographer.
'Why, no, sir, Johnson had decided, 'after the man is dead, for then it is done historically. A biographer that would omit or disguise the relations of Nelson to Lady Hamilton, would be justly suspected of disingenuousness, and Lockhart, especially in his treatment of the political side of his subject, for example in the notorious Beacon incident is but too open to this charge.
If he put the same work on Cavour, he would get the unearned increment. I think he showed his sense. Of course the biographer has the advantage of you in one important particular. He knows how his story is coming out In a way, he's betting on a certainty.
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