'I do much admire that these times have so little esteemed the vertues of the times, as that the writing of _Lives_ should be no more frequent. For although there be not many soveraign princes, or absolute commanders, and that states are most collected into monarchies; yet are there many worthy personages that deserve better than dispersed report, or barren elogies; for herein the invention of one of the late poets is proper, and doth well inrich the ancient fiction. For he faineth, that at the end of the thread or web of every man's life, there was a little medal containing the person's name; and that _Time_ waiteth upon the _Sheers_, and as soon as the thread was cut, caught the medals, and carried them to the river _Lethe_; and about the bank there were many birds flying up and down, and would get the medals, and carry them in their beak a little while, and then let them fall into the river. Onely there were a few _Swans_, which if they got a name, would carry it to a temple where it was consecrate.' _In_ LLOYD'S _State Worthies_, vol. i. 'It is a melancholy reflection to look back on so many great families as have formerly adorned the county of Cornwall, and are now no more: the Grenvilles, the Arundells, Carminows, Champernons, Bodrugans, Mohuns, Killegrews, Bevilles, Trevarions, which had great sway and possessions in these parts. The most lasting families have only their seasons, more or less, of a certain constitutional strength. They have their spring and summer sunshine glare, their wane, decline, and death: they flourish and shine perhaps for ages;--at last they sicken; their light grows pale, and, at a crisis when the off-sets are withered and the old stock is blasted, the whole tribe disappears, and leave the world as they have done Cornwall. There are limits ordained to everything under the sun: _man will not abide in honour_.' DR. BORLASE (_as quoted by_ LYSONS _in 'Magna Britannia,'_ vol. iii.--_Cornwall_, p. clxxiv.). 'Every man in the degree in which he has wit and culture finds his curiosity inflamed concerning the modes of living and thinking of other men.' EMERSON'S '_Essay on Intellect_.' '"The biographical part of literature," said Dr. Johnson, "is what I love the best"; and his remark is echoed daily in the hearts, if not in the words, of hundreds of readers: * * * and though for the last half-century pure fiction has been in the ascendant, the popularity of biography, if not relatively, yet absolutely, seems to be continually increasing.' _Quarterly Review_, No. 313, _January, 1884_. [Illustration: (end of chapter vignette.)] [Illustration: (beginning of chapter vignette.)] INTRODUCTION.