1909] 071 The Pitfalls of Biography 599 



selection or arrangement. In considering what details should be 

 retained and what dismissed, the biographer shows whether he is 

 actuated bj sound or unsound Boswellism, that is to say, whether he 

 uses detail recklessly, or whether he selects only what will illustrate 

 the career or the character of his subject in a vital degree. One 

 great cause of difference of opinion on the subject of the limits and 

 direction of biographical portraiture is the radical hostility of the two 

 groups of people for whose behoof each portrait is made. Besides the 

 majority, whose curiosity is to be entertained and whose legitimate 

 interest is to be stimulated, a respectable minority will always be 

 found whose object is to curtail intimate revelations, and to defy all 

 curiosity so far as it is possible to do so. We must, therefore, accept 

 a compromise. The biographer must start prepared to meet with 

 opposition of a legitimate and natural kind, but he should determine 

 to reveal as much as may, without want of decorum, be revealed. 

 Indeed, we must venture to say that the first theoretical object of the 

 biographer should be indiscretion, not discretion. A conviction of the 

 uniformity of human character is one main cause of dull and false 

 biography. A man is labelled " good " or " great," and he is presented 

 to us as great or good all through and upon every side. Another 

 dangerous pitfall is the habit of concealing with scrupulous inexacti- 

 tude facts and conditions which were not admirable, but which were 

 essential, and left a lasting mark on the character and the career of a 

 man. Those are often made the subject of direct, although pious, false- 

 hood. The moral aspect in biography is involved in difficulty, because 

 each individual instance needs a law unto itself. But the proper atti- 

 tude to adopt in considering the treatment of a body of personal history 

 is to be tactful, but not cowardly ; to cultivate dehcacy, but to avoid 

 its ridiculous parody, false dehcacy. There should be no unnecessary 

 pandering to the snobbishness, weakness, or blindness of survivors. 

 If the portrait is to be painted at all, it must be true, and the bio- 

 grapher must not be unduly alarmed, if some people call him indiscreet. 



[B. G.] 



Vol. XIX. (No. 103) 2 ii 



