language of letters and articulate sounds into the language of events
and symbolical persons?

And here again let me recur to the aid of analogy. Suppose a life of
Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law, or a life of Lord Bacon by his
chaplain; that a part of the records of the Court of Chancery
belonging to these periods were lost; that in Roper's or in Rawley's
biographical work there were preserved a series of dicta and
judgments attributed to these illustrious Chancellors, many and
important specimens of their table discourses, with large extracts
from works written by them, and from some that are no longer extant.
Let it be supposed, too, that there are no grounds, internal or
external, to doubt either the moral, intellectual, or circumstantial
competence of the biographers. Suppose, moreover, that wherever the
opportunity existed of collating their documents and quotations with
the records and works still preserved, the former were found
substantially correct and faithful, the few differences in nowise
altering or disturbing the spirit and purpose of the paragraphs in
which they were found; and that of what was not collatable, and to
which no test ab extra could be applied, the far larger part bore
witness in itself of the same spirit and origin; and that not only by
its characteristic features, but by its surpassing excellence, it
rendered the chances of its having had any other author than the
giant-mind, to whom the biographer ascribes it, small indeed! Now,
from the nature and objects of my pursuits, I have, we will suppose,
frequent occasion to refer to one or other of these works; for
example, to Rawley's Dicta et Facta Francisci de Verulam. At one
time I might refer to the work in some such words as--"Remember what
Francis of Verulam said or judged;" or, "If you believe not me, yet
believe Lord Bacon." At another time I might take the running title