Very lately Mr Hepworth Dixon, whose work has recalled us to this subject, has presented us with a life of Howard. It cannot be said of Mr Dixon's book that it is either dull or insipid; it has some of the elements of popularity; but we cannot better describe it in a few words than by saying that it is a _caricature_ of a popular biography. Its flippancy, its conceit, its egregious pretensions, its tawdry _novelistic_ style, are past all sufferance. It is too bad to criticise. But as, in the dearth of any popular biography of Howard, it has assumed for a time a position it by no means merits, we cannot pass it by entirely without notice. For, besides that Mr Dixon writes throughout with execrable taste, he has not dealt conscientiously with the materials before him. His notion of the duty of a biographer is this--that he is to collect every incident of the least piquancy, no matter by whom related, or on what authority, and colour it himself as highly as he can. Evidently the most serious preparation he has made, for writing the life of Howard, has been a course of reading in French romances. It is with the spirit and manner of a Eugene Sue that he sits down to describe the grand and simple career of Howard. Mr Dixon has not added a single new fact to the biography of Howard, nor any novelty whatever, except such as he has drawn from his own imagination. Nor does he assist in sifting the narrative; on the contrary, whatever dust has the least sparkle in it, though it has been thrice thrown away, he assiduously collects. That he should have nothing new to relate is no matter of blame; it is probable that no future biographer will be able to do more than recast and reanimate the materials to be found in Brown and Aikin. But why this pretence of having written a life of Howard from "original documents?" We beg pardon: he does not absolutely say that he has written _the Life of Howard_ from original documents--the original document, for there is but one, may apply to the "_prison-world of Europe_," of which also he professes to write. This "earliest document of any value connected with the _penology of England_," which, with much parade, he prints for the first time, relates to the state of prisons before the labours of Howard. Impossible to suppose, therefore, that Mr Hepworth Dixon meant his readers to infer that, by the aid of this document, he was about to give them an original Life of Howard. Let us look at Mr Dixon's preface--it is worth while. It thus commences:-- "Several reasons combined to induce the writer _to undertake the work of making out for the reading world_ a new biography of Howard; the chief of them fell under two heads:-- "_It lay in his path._ Years ago now, circumstances, which do not require to be explained in this place, called his attention to the vast subject of the _prison-world_."