the other
hand, there would be exhibited pretty generally a tender spirit of
dealing with human infirmities; a large application of human errors to
the benefit of succeeding generations; and, lastly, there would be an
opening made for the free examination of many lives which are now in a
manner closed against criticism; whilst to each separate life there
would be an access and an invitation laid bare for minds hitherto
feeling themselves excluded from approaching the subject by imperfect
sympathy with the principles and doctrines which those lives were
supposed to illustrate.

But our reformed view of biography would be better explained by a sketch
applied to Cicero's life or to Milton's. In either case we might easily
show, consistently with the exposure of enormous errors, that each was
the wisest man of his own day. And with regard to Cicero in particular,
out of his own letters to Atticus, we might show that every capital
opinion which he held on the politics of Rome in his own day was false,
groundless, contradictory. Yet for all that, we would engage to leave
the reader in a state of far deeper admiration for the man than the
hollow and hypocritical Middleton ever felt himself, or could therefore
have communicated to his readers.

EDITOR'S NOTE.--The reference on p. 122 is to the famous case of
Courvoisier, in 1840, and this fixes 1841 as the date of the essay.
Courvoisier was a valet who murdered and robbed his master, putting
the plate into the care of an old woman, and making it appear a
burglary. He was defended by a barrister named Philips, who
received from the prisoner a confession of his guilt, and
afterwards, in court, took Heaven to witness that he believed him
innocent, though the woman, by accident almost, had been found, and
given evidence. Philips was disbarred.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] In Mrs. Hannah More's drawing-room at Barley Wood, amongst the few
pictures which adorned it, hung a kit-kat portrait of John Henderson.
This, and our private knowledge that Mrs. H. M. had personally known and
admired Henderson, led us to converse with that lady about him. What we
gleaned from her in addition to the notices of Aguttar and of some
amongst Johnson's biographers may yet see the light.

_XIV. GREAT FORGERS: CHATTERTON AND WALPOLE, AND 'JUNIUS.'_

I have ever been disposed to regard as the most venial of deceptions
such impositions as Chatterton had pr