It is very laborious, very learned, and in the main, we believe, very
accurate; it is exceedingly long,--there are 780 pages in this volume,
and there are to be two volumes more; it touches on very many subjects,
and each of these has been investigated to the very best of the
author's ability. No one can wish to speak with censure of a book on
which so much genuine labor has been expended; and yet we are bound, as
true critics, to say that we think it has been composed upon a
principle that is utterly erroneous. In justice to ourselves we must
explain our meaning.

There are two methods on which biography may consistently be written.
The first of these is what we may call the "exhaustive" method. Every
fact which is known about the hero may be told us; everything which he
did, everything which he would not do, everything which other people
did to him, everything which other people would not do to him, may be
narrated at full length. We may have a complete picture of all the
events of his life; of all which he underwent, and all which he
achieved. We may, as Mr. Carlyle expresses it, have a complete account
"of his effect upon the universe, and of the effect of the universe
upon him." [2] We admit that biographies of this species would be very
long, and generally very tedious; we know that the world could not
contain very many of them: but nevertheless, the principle on which
they may be written is intelligible.

The second method on which the life of a man may be written is the
selective. Instead of telling everything, we may choose what we will
tell. We may select out of the numberless events, from among the
innumerable actions of his life, those events and those actions which
exemplify his true character, which prove to us what were the true
limits of his talents, what was the degree of his deficiencies, which
were his defects, which his vices; in a word, we may select the traits
and the particulars which seem to give us the best idea of the man as
he lived and as he was. On this side the Flood, as Sydney Smith would
have said, we should have fancied that this was the only practicable
principle on which biographies can be written about persons of whom
many details are recorded. For ancient heroes the exhaustive method is
possible: all that can be known of them is contained in a few short
passages of Greek and Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever
can be said about every one of these; the result wo