We beg that these remarks may be considered, not as strictures upon any individual example, but as bearing upon the general style of modern biography. This is a gossiping world, in which great men are the exceptions; and when one of these ceases to exist, the public becomes clamorous to learn the whole minutiæ of his private life. That is a depraved taste, and one which ought not to be gratified. The author is to be judged by the works which he voluntarily surrenders to the public, not by the tenor of his private history, which ought not to be irreverently exposed. Thus, in compiling the life of a poet, we maintain that a literary executor has purely a literary function to perform. Out of the mass of materials which he may fortuitously collect, his duty is to select such portions as may illustrate the public doings of the man: he may, without transgressing the boundaries of propriety, inform us of the circumstances which suggested the idea of any particular work, the difficulties which were overcome by the author in the course of its composition, and even exhibit the correspondence relative thereto. These are matters of literary history which we may ask for, and obtain, without any breach of the conventional rules of society. Whatever refers to public life is public, and may be printed: whatever refers solely to domestic existence is private, and ought to be held sacred. A very little reflection, we think, will demonstrate the propriety of this distinction. If we have a dear and valued friend, to whom, in the hours of adversity or of joy, we are wont to communicate the thoughts which lie at the bottom of our soul, we write to him in the full conviction that he will regard these letters as addressed to himself alone. We do not insult him, nor wrong the holy attributes of friendship so much, as to warn him against communicating our thoughts to any one else in the world. We never dream that he will do so, else assuredly those letters never would have been written. If we were to discover that we had so grievously erred as to repose confidence in a person who, the moment he received a letter penned in a paroxysm of emotion and revealing a secret of our existence, was capable of exhibiting it to the circle of his acquaintance, of a surety he should never more be troubled with any of our correspondence. Would any man dare to print such documents during the life of the writer? We need not pause for a reply: there can be but one. And _why_ is this? Because these communications bear on their face the stamp of the strictest privacy--because they were addressed to, and meant for the eye of but one human being in the universe--because they betray the emotions of a soul which asks sympathy from a friend, with only less reverence than it implores comfort from its God! Does death, then, free the friend and the confidant from all restraint? If the knowledge that his secret had been divulged, his agonies exposed,