The writer
of short studies, having to condense in a few pages the
events of a whole lifetime, and the effect on his own mind of
many various volumes, is bound, above all things, to make
that condensation logical and striking. For the only
justification of his writing at all is that he shall present
a brief, reasoned, and memorable view. By the necessity of
the case, all the more neutral circumstances are omitted from
his narrative; and that of itself, by the negative
exaggeration of which I have spoken in the text, lends to the
matter in hand a certain false and specious glitter. By the
necessity of the case, again, he is forced to view his
subject throughout in a particular illumination, like a
studio artifice. Like Hales with Pepys, he must nearly break
his sitter's neck to get the proper shadows on the portrait.
It is from one side only that he has time to represent his
subject. The side selected will either be the one most
striking to himself, or the one most obscured by controversy;
and in both cases that will be the one most liable to
strained and sophisticated reading. In a biography, this and
that is displayed; the hero is seen at home, playing the
flute; the different tendencies of his work come, one after
another, into notice; and thus something like a true, general
impression of the subject may at last be struck.
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