Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakspeare in us; that is, to our mos...t apprehensive and sympathetic hour.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is in this impossibility of attaining to a synthesis of the inner life and the outward that the inferiority of the biographer t...o the novelist lies. The biographer quite clearly sees Peel, say, seated on his bench while his opponents overwhelm him with perhaps undeserved censure. He sees him motionless, miserable, his head bent on his breast. He asks himself: "What is he thinking?" and he knows nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue--one... given and received in entire disinterestedness--since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, not the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no necessary connection between the important events of a life and the records of it that have been preserved in memory, ...in documents, in memorials, or in living testimony. The biographer must compose his life of what he has, just as the archeologist must restore his temple or his statue with such fragments as thieving time and careless men have left him; but fate often ironically leaves him a well-preserved leg and a dismembered torso, while the head, which would supply the main clue to the body, is missing. Hence, in addition to the purposive selection exercised by the subject himself and by the biographer in making use of such materials as are left, there exists a purely external selection dominated by chance, which cuts across the evidence in an arbitrary fashion. To correct for such distortions the biographer must be an anatomist of character: he must be able to restore the missing nose in plaster, even if he does not find the original marble.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the ...creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty.... The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only ...the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Addison writes with the ease of a gentleman. His readers fancy that a wise and accomplished companion is talking to them; so that ...he insinuates his sentiments and taste into their minds by an imperceptible influence. Johnson writes like a teacher. He dictates to his readers as if from an academical chair. They attend with awe and admiration; and his precepts are impressed upon them by his commanding eloquence. Addison's style, like a light wine, pleases everybody from the first. Johnson's, like a liquor of more body, seems too strong at first, but, by degrees, is highly relished.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The anarchy, assassination, and sacrilege by which the Kingdom of France has been disgraced, desolated, and polluted for some year...s past cannot but have excited the strongest emotions of horror in every virtuous Briton. But within these days our hearts have been pierced by the recital of proceedings in that country more brutal than any recorded in the annals of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »