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Updated: June 25, 2025
They know well that the public will not take the trouble to consult manuscripts, State papers, pamphlets, rare biographies, but will content themselves with ready-made history; and they therefore go on unblushing to republish their old romance, leaving poor truth, after she has been painfully haled up to the well's mouth, to tumble miserably to the bottom of it again.
The hermetic and alchemical writings are available in English in the edition of A. E. Waite, London, 1894. The main facts of his life you can find in all the biographies. Suffice it here to say that he was born at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, in 1493, the son of a physician, from whom he appears to have had his early training both in medicine and in chemistry.
He peers among the asterisks of the triennial catalogue of the University for the names of graduates who have been seventy years out of college and remain still unstarred. He is curious about the biographies of centenarians. Such escapades as those of that terrible old sinner and ancestor of great men, the Reverend Stephen Bachelder, interest him as they never did before.
We shall consider now a female pituitocentric who presents the strangest contrasts in physique, physiognomy, conduct and character, dependent upon a variation in the balance between the two portions of the pituitary. All biographies consist of prevarications and all autobiographies of fiction.
Clough, in his excellent Preface, says on this subject, "The fault which runs through all the earlier biographies, from that of Rualdus downwards, is the assumption, wholly untenable, that Plutarch passed many years, as many perhaps as forty, at Rome. The entire character of his life is of course altered by such an impression."
And now we must turn to Sir James Turner's memoirs of himself; for, strange to say, this extraordinary man was remarkably fond of literary composition, and wrote, besides the amusing account of his own adventures just mentioned, a large number of essays and short biographies, and a work on war, entitled Pallas Armata.
He wrote upwards of 50 novels in a brisk, breezy style, of which the best known are perhaps The Romance of War , Adventures of an Aide-de-Camp, Frank Hilton, Bothwell, Harry Ogilvie, and The Yellow Frigate. He also wrote biographies of Kirkcaldy of Grange, Montrose, and others which, however, are not always trustworthy from an historical point of view.
Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men. By François Arago, Member of the Institute. Translated by Admiral W.H. Smyth, D.C.L., F.R.S., etc., the Rev. Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., and Robert Grant, M.A., F.R.A.S. Second Series. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 486. $1.00. The Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold. By his Son, Blanchard Jerrold. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 450. $1.00.
The voice which used to squawk and squeak Is now for ever dumb Yet may you see his bones and beak All in the Mu-se-um. This is the quality which chiefly inspires the Cautionary Tales, that admirable series of biographies.
This was worthy of an artist, but it was done in vain; and although I think I have read nearly all the biographies of Burns, I cannot remember one in which the modesty of nature was not violated, or where Fergusson was not sacrificed to the credit of his follower's originality.
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