Is it necessary that they should be the record of a noble character?
Certainly not. We remember Pepys, who--well, never mind what he does.
We call to mind Cellini; _he_ runs behind a fellow-creature, and
with 'admirable address' sticks a dagger in the nape of his neck, and
long afterwards records the fact, almost with reverence, in his life's
story. Can anything be more revolting than some portions of the
revelation Benjamin Franklin was pleased to make of himself in
writing? And what about Rousseau? Yet, when we have pleaded guilty for
these men, a modern Savonarola, who had persuaded us to make a bonfire
of their works, would do well to keep a sharp look-out, lest at the
last moment we should be found substituting 'Pearson on the Creed' for
Pepys, Coleridge's 'Friend' for Cellini, John Foster's Essays for
Franklin, and Roget's Bridgewater Treatise for Rousseau.

Neither will it do to suppose that the interest of a memoir depends on
its writer having been concerned in great affairs, or lived in
stirring times. The dullest memoirs written even in English, and not
excepting those maimed records of life known as 'religious biography,'
are the work of men of the 'attache' order, who, having been mixed up
in events which the newspapers of the day chronicled as 'Important
Intelligence,' were not unnaturally led to cherish the belief that
people would like to have from their pens full, true and particular
accounts of all that then happened, or, as they, if moderns, would
probably prefer to say, transpired. But the World, whatever an
over-bold Exeter Hall may say of her old associate the Devil, is not
a stupid person, and declines to be taken in twice; and turning a deaf
ear to the most painstaking and trustworthy accounts of deceased
Cabinets and silenced Conferences, goes journeying along her broad
way, chuckling over some old joke in Boswell, and reading with fresh
delight the all-about-nothing letters of Cowper and Lamb.