but as instances of labored learning, of careful special pleading,
and of brilliant rhetoric. Elsewhere, however, he has descended from
philosophy, and not been above the pedantry of detail. And he has given
us, in consequence, charming lives,--successful, in fact, just so far as
he has followed in the footsteps of the old Greek. Yet who would for
a moment compare his Pitt, his Goldsmith, or his William IV., as
biography, with Plutarch's Alcibiades, or Cato the Censor? We remember
the fact that Goldsmith sometimes wore a peach-blossom suit, but we see
Cato in his toga.

Very many works have been written, purporting to be "The Life and Times"
of this or that man. Where a man has occupied a large historic place,
has been moulded by his times, and has moulded in turn the coming years,
such works are well enough as history. As biography they are failures.
The Times get the upper hand, and thrust down the Life. Without the
Life, such works would be better, too, as history; for man and the world
are two different things, and their respective provinces cannot, without
confusion, be thrown into one. Now every leading man bears a twofold
character. He is man, and something more: he is a power in history.
Whatever concerns him as man,--his humanity, his individuality, his
personal qualities, his character and inclinations, "the marks and
indications of the soul," as Plutarch phrases it,--all this, and hardly
more than this, is matter for biography, and for that alone. But so far
as he is a representative man, standing for communities, for nations,
for the world of his time,--so far as he is an historic force, making
and solving, in some degree, large human problems,--so far as he is the
organ chosen by destiny to aid in the development of his race,--just so
far he is a maker of history, and therefore its proper subject, and its
alone. Napoleon was not only a man, but he was Europe for some twenty
years. Louis XIV was the Europe of half a century. There should be lives