BIOGRAPHY
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
OF THE LATE
OF
BEDFORD
FEW species of literary composition excite so deep
or so general an interest as biography. It is not
difficult to trace to its source this prevalent feeling.
The interest felt in any literary work must depend on
the nature and number of the mental faculties to
which it is addressed, and to the gratification of
which it ministers. Now biography, being the record
of human life in its ordinary and entire course, necessarily
exhibits all the mental powers, whether intellectual,
moral, or animal, in their combined activity
and natural results. It is the nature of all the higher
faculties of the mind, that each sympathises with its
like; and barren of incident, indeed, must that life
be, the memorial of which does not find, in every
reader, some kindred feeling or talent which it can
pleasurably affect.
If this view be correct, it follows that, though a biographical memoir may gratify many, it is not exactly the same pleasure which it yields to all.
