Voluminous biographical trivialities render the real character almost invisible, like the counterfeit frankincense which smoke-blacks the favourite idol of a Catholic Church. To scribble trifles on the glass of an inn window is the mark of an idler; but to engrave them on the marble monument, sacred to the memory of the departed Great, is something worse than idleness. As insignificant stories derive no real respectability from the eminence of the person who happens to be the subject of them, they are apt to have their insipidity seasoned by the same bad passions that accompany the habit of gossiping in general. And the misapprehensions of weak men meeting with the misinterpretations of malignant men, have often formed the groundwork of the most grievous calumnies. The duty of an honest biographer is to portray the prominent imperfections as well as excellencies of his subject. But this in not an excuse for heaping together a multitude of particulars, which can prove nothing of any man that might not have been taken for granted of all men. In the present age, of celebrating the personality, we should all desist from this mania of busying ourselves with the names of others, which is still more alarming as a symptom than it is troublesome as a disease. It is worse than a crime to inflict upon the mind vulgar scandal and personal anxiety, thus polluting with evil passions the very sanctuary to which we should flee for refuge from them! Roger North’s biography of Lord Chief Justice Saunders. Very corpulent and beastly, a mere lump of morbid flesh. Those whose ill fortune it was to stand near him were confessors, and in summer time almost martyrs. He seldom moved without a parcel of youths hanging about him, revelling and jesting with them. But he had a goodness of nature and disposition in such a great a degree, that he may be deservedly styled a true Philanthropist.
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