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hopes in private life be moralised, or the sorrows of a family consecrated, by the pen of the father or the friend? The eye, which looks through the magnifying tube of interest or vanity in the public panegyric, may be deceived in the private by affection. In either case, the good is sure to be doubled, and what is amiss to be thrown at a distance. There is however little room for my intellectual vision to be thus deluded. Partiality is the standing reproach of biographers: nor are we disposed to pass a harsh sentence against an error on the side of candour. It is natural to conceal those spots in a beloved character, which we lament; and to extinguish private vices in a radiance of public glory. But I have neither motive nor means for practising such a deception, venial as in some cases it may be. My office is of a far more humble order; yet it has soothed and rewarded me in the performance, as you predicted that it would. I had to relate, from plain and authentic documents, the early progress of
