as each may have occurred to me,—to illustrate the lives of the men depicted, and reproduce the "form and pressure" of their literary epoch. I have discoursed about the books, which, happily for the book-reader, are to be found at every stall; and I have told of many a one, albo corvo rarior which the book-collector would "pawn his dukedom" to acquire. After the Newgate Calendar, there are no sadder pages in the history of man than those afforded by the Biographies of authors;[1] whence the desire and justification to relieve the gloomy records by extrinsic matter of any degree of relevancy to suggest its introduction. Thus I have retold forgotten stories; refreshed commonplaces; recorded noteworthy events; revised former judgments; revived old scandals; revealed indifferently the friendships and the quarrels, the loves and the hates, the amenities and the acerbities, of a long past day. Desultory however, as my illustrations are, and of varied character, as the title-page imports, there yet may be something in them to please a diversity of tastes. What is neither new nor attractive to one reader may yet be so to another; and thus, in their very discursiveness, they may prove, it is hoped, an humble illustration of that species of writing, of which the younger Pliny set before us the precept and the example:— "Ipsâ varietate tentamus efficere, ut alia aliis, quædam fortasse omnibus placeant."
That there were Giants in the olden days is the belief of all; nor is this the mere cry of the laudator temporis acti. Time would appear to have for the mental eye some of the effects of space for the physical. The objects presented for consideration become undefined and exaggerated in the medium interposed, derive adventitious interest from association, and cease to exhibit those trivial defects which often mar the appreciation of great and enduring qualities. Thus, it is difficult to form an abstract judgment of the great men of the past, and weigh their gifts in an equal scale with those of our more immediate contemporaries. Nevertheless, with this consideration before me, I am unable to divest myself of the conviction that the celebrated writers of the former half of the present century awaken a deep and increasing personal curiosity, which can never be claimed for those of the latter by a future race of critics and biographers.
- ↑ "Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from Letters to be wise:
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol."
Dr. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes.
