BIOGRAPHY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 770, 19 March 1910, Page 9

BIOGRAPHY.

The groat feature of -the nineteenth century, as contrasted'with earlier'times, is its, wealth of biography (writes Professor Hugh AValker in the "Glasgow Herald"). Before Johnson there is hardly - a writer in our literature who is known to us "in his ,hal)it as,lie ; lived." Since his . time,/what ■ with-.-.biographies and autobiographies and -letters; there is scarcely m\o;oi the leaders who. is not well known. • Th6'importance'of this biographical material varies'-greatly, not only With the quality of • the biography, but with the character.-of the l man. In the case of Johnson the biography outweighs in importance all the volumes he has. written. In the case of Gibbon, instructive, as is the autobiography, our judgment of the "Decline and, Fall" in" no way depsnds upon it;'nor would it be easy to'imagine a biography of Hume which could make the treatise on human nature either move ov less valuable. But, on the other hand, Lnuib is a man whose 'personality is impressed upon everything lie wrote, and from a hundred points light is reflected back from his life upon his essays. The more we lcuow : of him the better we appreciate them; The same is true of Dr. John Brown, who had a genius akin to - Larfb'£, and \no small share of his charm. too much has been made of the biographical element in George Eliot,' yet a knowledge of her relations with George Lewes reveals a new moaning in some of tho profoundest passages she ever wrote, is it reasonable to believe that-the solemn note she always -sounds on the/ question 'of- the: relations of the- sexes derives none of its solemnity from tier; own. experience ? Is'a- knowledge of-Dickans's 'own-,acquain-tance with the Londonstreets,' of. his sense of personal relation with his characters, and of his theatrical instinct, purely idle? Scott is lriore comprehensible when wo have read about the Liddesdale raids, when, wo know that lie spoke: habitually to his humblest pendents as if they were 'his.blood relations, and when we have his own assurance that he npver travelled with "tho ■ most arrant cumber-corner" without carrying away something worth remembering?

Except fiction, perhaps no form of literature is more popular than biography. The popular instinct is sound:'"the proper study of mankind is man." The condemnation of the curiosity which is supposed to actuate, biographers and .readers of biography; and the complaints about the .excessive length of biographies, touch only accidental ■ faults, and leave almost uudiniinished the value of the art when skilfully, or even only competently, practised.