their tone of tedious panegyric, their lamentable lack of
selection, of detachment, of design? They are as familiar as the
cortege of the undertaker, and wear the same air of slow,
funereal barbarism. One is tempted to suppose, of some of them,
that they were composed by that functionary as the final item of
his job. The studies in this book are indebted, in more ways than
one, to such works-- works which certainly deserve the name of
Standard Biographies. For they have provided me not only with
much indispensable information, but with something even more
precious-- an example. How many lessons are to be learned from
them! But it is hardly necessary to particularise. To preserve,
for instance, a becoming brevity-- a brevity which excludes
everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant--
that, surely, is the first duty of the biographer. The second, no
less surely, is to maintain his own freedom of spirit. It is not
his business to be complimentary; it is his business to lay bare
the facts of the case, as he understands them. That is what I
have aimed at in this book-- to lay bare the facts of some cases,
as I understand them, dispassionately, impartially, and without
ulterior intentions. To quote the words of a Master--'Je n'impose
rien; je ne propose rien: j'expose.'


A list of the principal sources from which I have drawn is
appended to each Biography. I would indicate, as an honourable
exception to the current commodity, Sir Edward Cook's excellent
Life of Florence Nightingale, without which my own study, though
composed on a very different scale and from a decidedly different
angle, could not have been written.