idea; not content with mere
narration, however accurate in details. A narrative which fails in
portrayal, in picturesque impression, is not accurate; and a biography
which presents a man's thoughts and acts, yet does not over and above
them fashion his personality to the reader, is a failure. How much
conscious effort may be necessary to the due handling of materials, I
certainly cannot undertake to say; but persuaded I am that the utmost
results possible to any particular man can be attained only by passive
assimilation, and that so they will be attained to the measure of his
individual capacity. By such digestion a theme apparently dry may be
quickened to interest. Though not a lawyer, nor a student of
constitutions, I found Stubbs's _Constitutional History of England_
fascinating. I have not analyzed my pleasure, but I believe it to have
been due to portrayal; to arrangement of data by a man exceptionally
gifted for vivid presentation, who had so lived with his subject that
it had realized itself to him as a living whole, which he successfully
conveyed to his readers. There is no disjointment. The result is a
great historical picture; or a biography, of law as a benevolent
developing personality, moving amid the struggles and miseries of the
human throng, healing and redressing.

To _The Life of Nelson_ I applied the idea of this method, which I
thought to be helped rather than hindered by my warm admiration for
him, little short of affection. I had faith in the power of
attachment to comprehend character and action; and because of mine I
believed myself safer when necessary to censure. I grieved while I
condemned. I was sure also that, however far below an absolute best I
might fall, the best that I could do must thus come out. Amid approval
sufficient to gratify me, I found most satisfaction in that of a
friend who said he felt as if he had been living with my hero; and of
another who told me that after his day's work, which I knew to be
laborious, he had refreshed his evenings with _Nelson_. In the first
edition I fell into two mistakes of some importance, as well as others
in small details, the effect of which was to confirm me in my theory;
for while they were blemishes, and needed correction, they did not,
and do not, to my mind affect the portrait--the conveyance of true
personality.

Of these errors the most serious, regarded as a fault, was an
inadequate study of Nelson's course at Naples in 1799, so sharp