"But, at any rate, a city life is most eventful," continued the
Baron. "The men who make, or take, the lives of poets and scholars,
always complain that these lives are barren of incidents. Hardly a
literary biography begins without some such apology, unwisely made.
I confess, however, that it is not made without some show of truth;
if, by incidents, we mean only those startling events, which
suddenly turn aside the stream of Time, and change the world's
history in an hour. There is certainly a uniformity, pleasing or
unpleasing, in literary life, which for the most part makes to-day
seem twin-born with yesterday. But if, byincidents, you mean events
in the history of the human mind, (and why not?) noiseless events,
that do not scar the forehead of the world as battles do, yet change
it not the less, then surely the lives of literary men are most
eventful. The complaint and the apology are both foolish. I do not
see why a successful book is not as great an event as a successful
campaign; only different in kind, and not easily compared."

"Indeed," interrupted Flemming, "in no sense is the complaint
strictly true, though at times apparently so. Events enough there
are, were they all set down. A life, that is worth writing at all,
is worth writing minutely. Besides, all literary men have not lived
in silence and solitude;--not all in stillness, not all in shadow.
For many have lived in troubled times, in the rude and adverse
fortunes of the state and age, and could say with Wallenstein,

`Our life was but a battle and a march;

And, like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless,

We stormed across the war convulsed earth.'