96 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



in proportion to the degree in which he manifests the power of exhibiting 

 himself attractively in a spontaneous variety of forms and circumstances; 

 the arrangement of his plot is entirely arbitrary. For the life- writer, on 

 the contrary, the plot is prescribed, and he has the difficult task of giving 

 to each form and circumstance the hue and colouring which properly be- 

 longs to it. His excellence consists in the readiness with which he indues 

 himself with the true feelings and qualities of his subject. He must re- 

 joice with him, and weep with him he must sympathise with all his pre- 

 dilections and prejudices he must entertain all his opinions believe in 

 his faith cherish his hopes shrink under his fears in fact, he must trans- 

 form himself into the being whose likeness he wishes to point. And, all 

 this without parting with his own idiosyncrasy, the office of which is to 

 shade and set in distinct relief those parts of the picture, which the imper- 

 fect and transient view afforded in the confusion of social intercourse, pre- 

 vented from being distinctly or intelligibly seen. To this extent, and in 

 this capacity, it is the duty of the life- writer to display the hue of his own 

 character, but no further, and for no other purpose. Otherwise, the por- 

 trait cannot be a true one; it will be, more or less, a fancy portrait dis- 

 tortion, or, at least, incorrectness, must be the consequence unimportant 

 parts brought into prominent view, strong features left in the shade, and 

 so forth the difference, and, perhaps, the difficulty with respect to the 

 likeness itself, if riot in regard of the artist being the same as in the pic- 

 torial art, between a real and a fancy portrait. 



Abstractedly, we might judge that the pen of a good novel-writer would 

 be the best calculated to exhibit in lively and attractive colours the nature 

 and working of the leading qualities of the subject ; and we might simi- 

 larly deem a writer of that class the most able to merge his own idiosyn- 

 sycrasies in those of his hero ; but comparison will convince us of the 

 wide difference in this respect between history and fiction. The matter- 

 of-fact precision of the one imposes on the writer innumerable restrictions, 

 from which he is exempted by the arbitrary freedom of the other. 



We complain of these biographies that they are not written as lives 

 ought to be written ; but the preceding remarks will sufficiently define the 

 nature of our objection. Short as these memoirs are, no one can read them 

 without detecting the pen of the moralist. In many instances persons are 

 treated as if they were imaginary personages, the author dilating with 

 fanciful discursiveness, as occurs particularly in the life of Richardson, on 

 points on which it would have been better and more dignified to touch 

 with gentleness and delicacy. Nor can the series be perused by one ac- 

 quainted with the character of the author's mind without seeing that his 

 judgment was biassed by an aristocratic feeling and antiquarian taste in 

 favour of noble births and far-derived descent. The higher the birth, and 

 the longer the lineage, the more favour is shewn by Sir Walter; and where 

 his sensibilities are wrought upon by personal and favoured connexion, as 

 in the case of the Duke of Buccleugh, his partiality or gratitude sinks into 

 servile adulation. 



But our limits will not allow us to describe at length our feelings of 

 assent or opposition to Sir Walter in the matter of these biographies ; we 

 shall, therefore, conclude with acknowledging that we are not insensible to 

 the attractiveness of the style in which they are written, nor unimpressed 

 with the value of the sagacious remarks they contain on life and manners, 

 and of many of the critical observations on the productions of those persons 

 whose works he examines. 



