Whatever the worth of this theory, it was due in large measure to revulsion from a form of biography, to me always displeasing and essentially crude, which gives a narrative of external life-events, disjointed continually by letters. Profuse recourse to letters simply turns over to the reader the task which the biographer has undertaken to do for him. Perhaps the biographer cannot do it. Then he had better not undertake the job. A collection of letters is one thing, a biography another; and they do not mix well when a career abounds in incident. Letters are material for biography, as original documents are material for history; but as documents are not history, so letters are not biography. The historian and biographer by publishing virtually contract to present their readers with a digested, reasoned whole; the best expression, full yet balanced, that they can give of the truth concerning a period, or a man. It is a labor of time and patience, and should be also of love; one which the reader is to be spared, on the principle that a thousand men should not have to do, each for himself, the work the one writer professes. It is no fair treatment to tumble at their feet a basketful of papers, and virtually say, "There! find out the man for yourself." The interest of lives, of course, varies, and with it the opportunity of the biographer. I do not mean in degree, which is trite to remark, but in kind, which is less recognized. There are men the value of whose memory to their race lies in their thought and words, whose career is uneventful. Yet even with them the impression of personality is not as vividly produced by masses of correspondence as it may be by the petty occurrences of daily life, which for them are the analogues of the stirring incidents that mark the course of the man of public action, statesman or warrior. The reason is plain; the character of few rises to the height of their words, written or spoken. These show their wisdom, or power, and are uplifting; but their shortcomings, too, have a virtue. We fight the better for appreciating that victors have known defeat. The supreme gift of biography to mankind is personality; not what the man thought or did, but what he was. Herein is inspiration and reproof; motive force, inspiring or deterrent. If nothing better, mere recognition, or exultation in an excellence to which we do not attain, has a saving grace of its own.