ievements--in a person's life.
The second is _scenic_ or _descriptive_ biography, which aims at
interest by means of characteristic incidents or anecdotes. The third is
_philosophic_, which tries to trace the relation of a person's life to
the age in which he lived, and to estimate the influence he exerted on
his own and subsequent ages. The first is more common, the second more
interesting, the third more instructive; but it is evident that the best
biographies present a judicious combination of all three types.

The first essential of biography, as of history in general, is truth.
When we are studying a man's life we want to know the facts; otherwise
we shall not be able to judge correctly of his life and work. There are
two principal sources of error in writing biography: the first is
ignorance, which leads to the omission of important particulars or to a
misinterpretation of those that are known; the other source of error is
prejudice for or against the person whose life is portrayed. This
prejudice leads, on the one hand, to such a presentation of the
biographical facts as to magnify the merits of the man; and on the
other, it leads to such a suppression or distortion of the facts as to
detract from his just deserts. Both faults are illustrated in Johnson's
"Lives of the Poets," which, though excellent in the main, are sometimes
defective for lack of research, and colored by the writer's strong Tory
and Anglican sentiments.

_Autobiography_ is the story of a man's life written by himself. It is
perhaps the most interesting form of biography. In autobiography the
writer has the advantage of an intimate acquaintance not only with the
outward facts but also with the secret influences and motives by which
his life has been controlled. It takes us, as it were, behind the scenes
of history; but at the same time there is inevitably the error that
springs from undue partiality. And though men like Rousseau, Gibbon, and
Franklin attempt to divest themselves of this prejudice, and even
succeed in a remarkable degree, there is reason to suspect the omission
of facts and motives that would reflect too unfavorably upon the
character.

A _diary_ is a record of one's daily occupations and experiences. It
sustains the same relation to biography that chronicles or annals do to
history: it furnishes the materials out of which biography is made. When
the diarist is a man of prominence, as in the case of Dean Swift, his
journal thr