the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves
from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then
attaches a fanatical belief. It is the protest of romance
against the commonplace of life. The incidents of the legend
become the hero's surest passport to immortality. The ironic
philosopher reflects with a smile that Sir Walter Raleigh is
more safely inshrined in the memory of mankind because he set
his cloak for the Virgin Queen to walk on than because he
carried the English name to undiscovered countries.
Charles Strickland lived obscurely. He made enemies rather
than friends. It is not strange, then, that those who wrote of
him should have eked out their scanty recollections with a
lively fancy, and it is evident that there was enough in the
little that was known of him to give opportunity to the romantic
scribe; there was much in his life which was strange and terrible,
in his character something outrageous, and in his fate
not a little that was pathetic. In due course a legend arose
of such circumstantiality that the wise historian would
hesitate to attack it.

But a wise historian is precisely what the Rev. Robert
Strickland is not. He wrote his biography[3] avowedly to
"remove certain misconceptions which had gained currency" in
regard to the later part of his father's life, and which had
"caused considerable pain to persons still living." It is
obvious that there was much in the commonly received account
of Strickland's life to embarrass a respectable family.
I have read this work with a good deal of amusement, and upon
this I congratulate myself, since it is colourless and dull.
Mr. Strickland has drawn the portrait of an excellent husband