These facts, and the experience of history, lead us to conclude that a man's life cannot be impartially written when his memory is yet fresh in people's minds. Thousands have had opportunities of judging, and bring their impressions to compare them with the page that records the actions from which they were taken; and if they be different from the idea the biographer intends to convey, it is not probable that, in every case, their possessors will be content to lay them aside. It is supposed, moreover, that a biographer owes a kind of vassalage to his subject--that he is obliged to defend him through thick and {ix } thin--in good and evil report. He is obliged, according to traditionary, though arbitrary laws, to suppress whatever will not tell in his favour, to put the very best face upon what he is compelled to relate, and to make the most of excellencies. His opinion, therefore, must be received with caution, for it is his duty to be partial, in the most odious sense of that word, and it would be a capital sin to deviate from this long-established rule. These difficulties do not beset the life that is here presented to the public. Father Ignatius had his alternations of praise and blame during life; but those who thought least of him were forced to admit his great sanctity. If this latter quality be conceded, apology has no room. An admitted saint does not require to be defended; for the _aureola_ of his own brow will shed the light through which his actions are to be viewed. We see, therefore, no wrong impressions that require to be removed--no calumnies that have to be cleared away--nothing, in fact, to be done, except to give a faithful history of his life. For this reason, we venture to publish this work before the second anniversary of his death; and it would have been published sooner, if the materials from which it is composed could have been arranged and digested. Again, he was heedless of the praise or blame of {x} men himself, and it would be an injustice to his memory to wait for a favourable moment for giving his thoughts publicity. Those who expect to find nothing in the lives of holy people but goodness and traits of high spirituality, will be disappointed when they read this. Those who are accustomed to read that some saints indeed have lived rather irregularly in their youth, but find themselves left in blessed ignorance of what those irregularities were, will also be disappointed. They shall find here recorded that young Spencer was not a saint, and they shall be given data whereon to form their own opinion too. They shall see him pass through various phases of religious views, and shall find themselves left to draw their own conclusions about his conduct throughout. And now, perhaps, it is better to give some reasons why this course was adopted in writing his life, rather than the usual one. Besides that already given, there are two others.