of us attached to our opinions; that is one of the "natural
affections" of which we hear so much in youth; but few of us are
altogether free from paralysing doubts and scruples. For my part, I have
a small idea of the degree of accuracy possible to man, and I feel sure
these studies teem with error. One and all were written with genuine
interest in the subject; many, however, have been conceived and finished
with imperfect knowledge; and all have lain, from beginning to end,
under the disadvantages inherent in this style of writing.

Of these disadvantages a word must here be said. 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. But in the
short study, the writer, having seized his "point of view," must keep
his eye steadily to that. He seeks, perhaps, rather to differentiate
than truly to characterise. The proportions of the sitter must be
sacrificed to the proportions of the portrait; the lights are
heightened, the shadows overcharged; the chosen expression, continually
forced, may degenerate at length into a grimace; and we have at best
something of a caricature, at worst a calumny. Hence, if they be
readable at all and hang together by their own