LIYES OF AUTHORS NOT PICTUEESQUE. 315 



are not. "We feel all the wliile that this is not the man, 

 it is but his outline, his frame, his shell. What we want 

 to get at is the man himself, and unfortunately that is 

 just what we never do get at. It is but little to know 

 that his head is covered with golden curls, or thatched 

 with the snows of age, when we know nothing of the 

 brain within it — nothing of the thoughts that struggle 

 there like mad demons, or sleep serenely like angels. 

 Give us an insight into the man : open his secret doors 

 and let us see his heart, whether it be noble or base. 

 Does his blood run rich with love, or boil and seethe with 

 hate ? Or does it lie like a stagnant pool in a dead marsh, 

 loathsome, horrible ? We can never know. 



Granting, however, that the inner life of a man is 

 hidden from us, there is still his outer life to be narrated, 

 and it is with this that most biographers occupy them- 

 selves. It is not, or should not be, difficult to write the 

 life of a soldier, for the biographer's work is ready done 

 to his hands. What can be want better than 



" The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, 

 The royal banner, and all quality, 

 Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war ?" 



The biographies of actors, and other adventurers, are 

 excellent reading. But authors, whose days and years 

 are proverbially barren of incident, and whose profession 

 keeps them from mingling actively with the world — how 

 shall their lives be made interesting? The most that 

 can be done for an author, in a picturesque point of view, 

 is to describe him with pens, ink, and paper before him. 

 From these, by the subtle alchemy of his genius, books 

 are made — poems, novels, histories, but how is a mystery, 



