become a terrible reflection, that they may one day be delivered over helpless into the hands of some one, who, with no power in the world to call him to account, will give what view he pleases of their life and career and all their most private relationships. He may be a man without that power of penetrating beneath the surface into the character of another, which is sympathy, imagination, genius, all in one. He may be one of those who understand only what is spoken, to whom everything has a rigid interpretation, who take au pied de la lettre utterances in tended for anything rather than that matter-of-fact statement. He may be incapable of appreciating the special conditions of another's education or habits of living, and from his different point of view may find only in the familiar facts entrusted to him material for dishonoring a memory. This may well give a sting to death among those who cannot fail to be aware that their lives will have an interest to mankind.

which men prepare themselves for their exit from the familiar universe and entry into the unknown? He leaves his name to those that come after him with a confidence that is full of pathos. Let them say what they will, he can answer nothing; he cannot explain or defend himself out of his grave; they may kick at the dead lion who will; he who could a little while ago have crushed them with a touch, must now bear everything without the power to ward off a single indignity. But rare indeed are the circumstances in which any alarm is felt on this score. The dy ing have full faith in the justice that will be done them when they are dead. They are delivered over into the hands of all that have a grievance against them, into the power of their enemies, if they have any; but they have no fear. And to the credit of humanity, be it said, this last touching faith in the good-will of men is scarcely ever without justification. As a general rule, justice may be calculated

upon over a grave.

Nothing, indeed, can be more touching, The biographer alone can interrupt the more pathetic, than the helplessness of operation of this rule of natural equity. the dead in such a case. It is easy to He stands, in the first instance, in the say that it will matter little to them. How place of posterity, for those who, with a can we tell that it matters little to them? touching confidence, thus await its decisA year, a month ago, it would not have ion. He has it in his power to guide the mattered little what their country and final deliverance, like that judge whose society, their friends, known and unknown, summing up so often decides the verdict. the world, for which they lived and la- And hence there arises a weighty quesbored, thought of them. Had they imag-tion in which we think much is involved. ined that the end of this life should also If a man, on the eve of so important an make an end of those friendly thoughts undertaking, finds that the idea he has and warm admirations that consoled their concluding days, and the tender respect fulness with which their name was spok en, could we imagine it possible that they should have regarded with indifference this sudden failure of their reputation? A man who is conscious of having left much behind him which the world will not willingly let die, and of leaving at the same time no duty unfulfilled, no sin to be discovered, no record which can leap to light and shame him, feels himself secure, at least in this, that he will not suffer at the hands of posterity. He may have been misconceived in life, but then he will be righted. Circumstances may have kept him in the background, or obscured his fame, but then there will be justice done. He may smile even, with melancholy disdain, yet pleasure, to think that the generation to come will build the tomb of the prophet whom their fathers have slain; and who can doubt that if this conviction were taken away, it would take much from the comfort with

a

formed of the person whose good name is in his hands is an unfavorable one, and that all he can do by telling the story of his life is to lessen or destroy that good name not indeed by revealing any sys tem of hypocrisy or concealed vice, which it might be to the benefit of public morals to expose, but by an exhibition of personal idiosyncrasies repulsive to the ordinary mind and contradictory of the veneration with which the world has hitherto regarded a man of genius-is it in such a case his duty to speak at all? Is the necessity of producing another book among many so imperative that the natural reluctance, which any honorable man must feel, to put forth accusations which can only be answered at second hand, and which the person principally concerned is powerless to reply to, must be disregard ed? There are cases of perverted intel ligence in which the detractor does not perceive the moral bearing of the state ments he has to make, and thus maligns his subject without being sensible of it,

But

with a certain innocence of mind, perhaps | for instance; should the scandal be so
even glorying in the shame he originates. great that investigation was imperative,
But this can scarcely be the case, except then with patience and care, waiting till
in an obtuse understanding and unin- the fumes of passion had died away, and
structed judgment. We can imagine that every privilege of perspective had been
in such circumstances a high-minded man, attained, the work should be done.
alarmed by his own discoveries - which if there were no such necessity, it is im-
we must suppose to have been made after possible that a man could be compelled to
the death of his hero, since it is scarcely criminate his friend, or to soil an estab-
possible that any one should love and fre- lished reputation entrusted to his care.
quent, and identify himself with, a char- In this case his plain duty would be to
acter of this description - would seek refrain.
every means of getting rid of the ungra-
cious task set before him; that he would,
in the first place, anxiously consult every
authority, and test and compare every
piece of evidence, and try every method
of dispelling the painful shadows which
were gathering between him and the ob-
ject of his trust; and that, finally, rather
than be the instrument of ruining a vir-
tuous reputation, and betraying the secret
weakness of a man whom the world held
in honor, he would retire from the field
altogether, and leave with a sad heart the
work which he could only execute in this
way to some less severe moralist, who
might be able to throw upon it a gentler
light. This is the view which we believe
most good men would take of a position
so painful. In private life most of us
would rather not hear new facts disadvan-
tageous to our friends who are dead, and
would consider the publication of them a
breach of every delicate sentiment. To
bring a great man, who has lived in the
common daylight without reproach during
his life, to the bar of this world's opinion
after his death, is in itself a painful act.
The defendant is, in all cases, silenced
by English law; but, at least, he has the
privilege of communicating all the facts
in his favor to his advocate, and furnish-
ing explanations of his conduct for coun-
sel's use. But the dead have no such
safeguard; they have no longer any pri-
vacy; their very hearts, like their desks
and private drawers and cabinets, can be
ransacked for evidence to their disadvan-
tage. Is it in any conceivable case a
biographer's duty to do this? If the
question, as one of literary and social
morals, were submitted to any competent
tribunal, or jury of his peers, the answer,
we think, would be unanimous. Should
something more powerful than any pri-
vate sentiment demand the performance
of so painful a duty; should there exist
other and darker accusations that might
be made were not these acknowledged
and established, an argument which might
perhaps have held in the case of Byron,

We have, perhaps, dwelt too long on the graver side of a subject which so many recent publications have brought forcibly under the consideration of all men, and specially of those of the lit erary profession. But there are also ques tions involved of less solemnity, which still should not be passed over in any discussion of the duties of a writer of biog raphy. We remember being consulted upon one such work, in which a mass of original letters, in the very autograph of the subject of the memoir, were shovelled up entire into the printer's hands with an inconceivable disrespect, and all the superfluity inevitable in such indiscriminate publication. The writer in this case meant only to do his work with as little trouble as possible, and, as a matter of fact, contrived to make two large volumes thus out of a life with no events in it, which might have been treated advantageously in a small octavo. Such has been the system adopted in another wellknown instance, where the careless jottings of a diary have been swept up with hasty hands and thrust into the respectable text, affording a curious and comical reminder to the reader of a former popu lar conception of the hero, and certain well-known tendencies in his character which the well-intentioned biographer would have been the last willingly to recall. Such unintentional betrayal arises however, no doubt, from a certain opacity of intellect, and is consequently not a fault so much as a mistake, which would be laugh. able if it were not so injurious. It is not a mistake, however, but an offence against social morals, which even an obtuse mind cannot make with impunity, that the foolishness thus imported into the record is calculated to wound many living persons besides discrediting the character of the diarist. To appeal to the higher morals in order to condemn such a breach of the simplest social code, seems a waste of force, since society ought to be able to enforce respect for its own rule. There is no more favorite imagination in romance

right to be so present; the position is ludicrously incongruous. And in the irritation of the sufferers, and the amusement of those who do not suffer, there is an element of irreverence, of disrespect, which annuls all the advantages of death. In this case the biographer has brought back a figure of which we had altogether forgotten the comic side, out of the nat ural deference and respectful gravity with which we were glad to contemplate him, into the atmosphere of Punch, and the familiarity of a most unreverential appellation.

than that of a Palace of Truth, an enchanted place, in which every man is compelled to express his opinion of his neighbors with a candor which at present is used only to third parties. But a book is a dangerous medium for such simple speaking. If the person with whom you are conversing suddenly tells you that you are an empty fool, and he has always thought you so, you have at least the consolation that it is said to you only, and not to all your friends and acquaintances. But there is something bewildering in the sensation, when, through the pages of a hasty biography, we suddenly hear a voice Can nothing be done to prevent this which has been used to talk to us in system of desecration? The most bitter pleasanter tones, discoursing audibly to of pessimists would scarcely desire that earth and heaven in this simple and can- all the softening tenderness which death did fashion about us and our concerns. brings with it should be thus rudely and The startled victim feels for the first mo- ruthlessly disturbed. Half of the harm, ment as if he were an eavesdropper, one no doubt, arises from the frantic haste of those proverbial listeners who never which confounds all broader and larger hear any good of themselves, and has to views, and turns us from any attempts we satisfy his conscience that this is not a may wish to make to gain a higher friend. dishonorable action of which he is being ship with the spirit, into an enforced conguilty before he realizes what it actually templation of those tricks of attitude and is an action perhaps not very honor- gesture, those twitches of nervous moveable, but without blame so far as he is ment, and little vulgarities of personal concerned. It is at all times an odd ex- peculiarity which do not, whatever may perience to hear ourselves discussed; not be said to the contrary, make the man. those who are our best friends will do it In a language in which there are noble in a way entirely pleasing to our con- examples of the art of biography, it is sciousness. There is a something, a tone, curious that we should find so general a a smile, perhaps even an excuse, when we callousness to the claims upon our respect, feel no excuse to be necessary, which jars upon even the most ordinary consideraupon that absolute sense of property tion of what their wishes and feelings which we have in ourselves. And the would have been, of persons so very reeffect is proportionally stronger when a cently separated from us. Perhaps it is famous person, on whose words we have still worse when what is done is in a preoften hung, suddenly, and with startling tended compliance with their desires, a composure, begins at our very ear to pub-compliance in the letter and utter conlish to the world what our friends say of The sensation is still more startling than that with which we should receive the candid remarks of the Palace of Truth. There is nothing in it of the gravity with which we would wish to receive the stric tures of a Right Reverend Father in God, translated into a better sphere, who might indeed admonish us for our good with perfect propriety; but it is whimsically like the old notions which a gossiping world once entertained of that well-known personage, and which we had put away, with all untimely smiles and nicknames, when he became a portion of the past. We feel now that being past, he has no

us.

tradiction in the spirit. The profound offence which this course of proceeding has given to all who had any personal knowledge of the victims, and almost all whose opinion is worth having on such a subject, makes a curious balance to the unthinking satisfaction of the common public in such revelations of domestic privacy as it could not have hoped for, the crystallized gossip which is always "so interesting" to the crowd. But when a writer chooses this cheap method of success it is perhaps hopeless to attempt to call him to a perception of any higher duty.

M. O. W. OLIPHANT.

WHICH TELLS US OF PLATONIC LOVE the beginning of the century, and occu