Omniana/Volume 2/Biography
227. Biography.
Mr. Daniel Lambert and the Irish Giant both died in fear of the surgeons. Great men of every description are in equal danger from their biographers,.. a race of Resurrection-men against whom neither laws nor parent coffins afford any protection. No sooner is the lion dead than these hungry flesh-flies swarm about him, verifying a part only of Sampson's riddle,.. they find meat, but they produce no sweetness. First come the news-writers, then the magazines, with what Sir Richard Phillips calls "a good death for the month." The sharking booksellers, ever on the watch to tempt and delude the curiosity of the lower public, then set their Ghouls at Work;..and lastly comes the over zealous admirer, like the Roman Catholics, who rob the body of their saint of his teeth and his nails,.. to collect, enshrine, and hold out to public view all that ought to have been laid with him in the grave.