on the great theatre of the world, with all the advantages of stage
effect and decoration, we anxiously beg to be admitted behind the
scenes, that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses.

Some may perhaps imagine, that the value of biography depends upon the
judgment and taste of the biographer: but on the contrary it may be
maintained, that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the extent
of his intellectual powers and of his literary talents. A plain
unvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative.
Where we see that a man has the power, we may naturally suspect that he
has the will to deceive us; and those who are used to literary
manufacture know how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of a
period, or the pointing of an antithesis.

That the ignorant may have their prejudices as well as the learned
cannot be disputed; but we see and despise vulgar errors: we never bow
to the authority of him who has no great name to sanction his
absurdities. The partiality which blinds a biographer to the defects of
his hero, in proportion as it is gross, ceases to be dangerous; but if
it be concealed by the appearance of candour, which men of great
abilities best know how to assume, it endangers our judgment sometimes,
and sometimes our morals. If her grace the Duchess of Newcastle, instead
of penning her lord's elaborate eulogium, had undertaken to write the
life of Savage, we should not have been in any danger of mistaking an
idle, ungrateful libertine, for a man of genius and virtue. The talents
of a biographer are often fatal to his reader. For these reasons the
public often judiciously countenance those who, without sagacity to
discriminate character, without elegance of style to relieve the
tediousness of narrative, without enlargement of mind to draw any
conclusions from the facts they relate, simply pour forth anecdotes, and