v., p. 185.]
MORE WORDS ABOUT SHELLEY.
There is a moral or a lesson to be found in the life of almost every
man, the chief duty of a biographer being to set forth and illustrate
this; and a history of the commonest individual, if written truly,
could not fail to be interesting to his fellows; for the feelings and
aspirations of men are pretty much alike all the world over, and the
elements of genius not very unequally distributed through the mass of
mankind,--the thing itself being a development due to circumstances,
very probably, as much as to anything singular in the man. But there
are few good biographies extant; the writers, for the most part,
contenting themselves with superficial facts, refusing or unable to
follow the mind and motive powers of the subject,--or following these
imperfectly. For this reason, they who would read the truest kind of
biographies must turn to those written by men of themselves,--that
is, the autobiographies; and these are, in fact, found to be among
the most attractive specimens of literature in our language, or any
other.
The life of any man is more or less of a mystery to other men, and
one who would write it effectively must have been intimate with him
from his youth onward.
Pages:
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167