28 3Ir. Sidney Lee [Jan. 31, 



purpose is often served if lie catch a glimpse, or no glimpse at all, of 

 personages who command the biographer's most earnest attention. 

 The historian barely mentions men like Dr. Johnson, Benvenuto 

 Cellini, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, or Samuel Pepys. The 

 biographer, on the other hand, puts individual men under a magni- 

 fying glass and submits them to minute examination ; professionally 

 he cares little or nothing for the evolution of society. But while 

 the historian and biographer seek different goals, they can render 

 one another very genuine service on the road. The biogra^iher 

 requires an intelligent knowledge of the historical environment, if he 

 would portray in fitting perspective all the operations of his unit : 

 but his art is to sternly subordinate his scenery to his actors, and 

 never to crowd his stage with upholstery and scenic apparatus that 

 can only distract the spectators' attention from the proper interest of 

 tlie piece. The historian's debt to the biographer is even greater 

 than the biographer's to the historian. The biographer has to 

 explore many a dismal swamp in which the historian is not called 

 upon to set foot. Parish registers, academic archives, family letters, 

 uuprinted memoranda, county histories, genealogical dissertations 

 and pedigrees, are leading features of the country in which the bio- 

 grapher passes his days. But such material may secrete an impor- 

 tant historical fact, or throw a welcome light on an obscure step in an 

 historic movement. IMacaulay made frequent appeals to biography with 

 excellent effect, but Mr. Froude neglected it. His picture of Queen 

 Mary of England, as a hag-like bigot, might easily have been rectified 

 by an occasional resort to pedestrian biographical sources. Nor will 

 the lack of accessible biography long constitute a sufficient excuse for 

 the historian's neglect of biographic sources. The historian will soon 

 have at his command a completed register of national biography. 



The Method of National Biograj^hj. — National biography seeks, as 

 Priestley said of science, " to comprise as much knowledge as possible 

 in the smallest compass." Conciseness carried to the furthest limits 

 consistent with the due performance of his commemorative function, 

 is the first law of the national biographer's being. No place can be 

 accorded to rhetoric, voluble enthusiasm, emotion, or loquacious senti- 

 ment. The writings of authors, the works of painters or engravers, 

 must be cast into the unexhilarating form of chronological series 

 or catalogues, and the result must be rather like a map or plan 

 than a picture. The result need not necessarily be devoid of 

 literary art, and should give the reader the feeling — one as pleasing 

 as any that art can give — that to him has been imparted all the 

 information for which his commemorative instinct craves. The 

 national biographer must nerve himself to omit much detail, much 

 anecdote that may find a lawful place in individual biography. 

 It is solely in the few careers which exhibit unusual spiritual 

 tendencies or conspicuous deflections from the ordinary standard of 

 morality, that any reference to a man's moral or spiritual experience 

 is justifiable. Such lapses as the marital adventures of Byron, 



