his weaknesses surrendered to the vulgar gaze, could have pained the living man--is nothing due to his memory, now that he is laid beneath the turf, now that his voice can never more be raised to upbraid a violated confidence? Many modern biographers, we regret to say, do not appear to be influenced by any such consideration. They never seem to have asked themselves the question--Would my friend, if he had been compiling his own memoirs, have inserted such a letter for publication--does it not refer to a matter eminently private and personal, and never to be communicated to the world? Instead of applying this test, they print everything, and rather plume themselves on their impartiality in suppressing nothing. They thus exhibit the life not only of the author but of the man. Literary and personal history are blended together. The senator is not only exhibited in the House of Commons, but we are courteously invited to attend at the _accouchement_ of his wife. What title has any of us, in the abstract, to write the private history of his next-door neighbour? Be he poet, lawyer, physician, or divine, his private sayings and doings are his property, not that of a gaping and curious public. No man dares to say to another, "Come, my good fellow! it is full time that the world should know a little about your domestic concerns. I have been keeping a sort of note-book of your proceedings ever since we were at school together, and I intend to make a few pounds by exhibiting you in your true colours. You recollect when you were in love with old Tomnoddy's daughter? I have written a capital account of your interview with her that fine forenoon in the Botanical Gardens! True, she jilted you, and went off with young Heavystern of the Dragoons, but the public won't relish the scene a bit the less on that account. Then I have got some letters of yours from our mutual friend Fitzjaw. How very hard-up you must have been at the time when you supplicated him for twenty pounds to keep you out of jail! You were rather severe, the other day when I met you at dinner, upon your professional brother Jenkinson; but I daresay that what you said was all very true, so I shall publish that likewise. By the way--how is your wife? She had a lot of money, had she not? At all events people say so, and it is shrewdly surmised that you did not marry her for her beauty. I don't mean to say that _I_ think so, but such is the _on dit_, and I have set it down accordingly in my journal. Do, pray, tell me about that quarrel between you and your mother-in-law! Is it true that she threw a joint-stool at your head? How our friends will roar when they see the details in print!" Is the case less flagrant if the manuscript is not sent to press, until our neighbour is deposited in his coffin? We cannot perceive the difference. If the feelings of living people are to be taken as the criterion, only one of the domestic actors is removed from the stage of existence.