If the reader will but bear with me so far as to endure the thesis that the first theoretical object of the biographer should be indiscretion, not discretion, I will concede almost everything practical to delicacy. But this must be granted to me: that the aim of all portraiture ought to be the emphasizing of what makes the man different from, not like, other men. The widow almost always desires that her deceased hero should be represented as exactly like all other respectable men, only a little grander, a little more glorified. She hates, as only a bad biographer can hate, the telling of the truth with respect to those faults and foibles which made the light and shade of his character. This, it appears, was the primitive view of biography. The mass of medieval memorials was of the "expanded-tract" order: it was mainly composed of lives of the saints, tractates in which the possible and the impossible were mingled in inextricable disorder, but where every word was intended directly for edification. Here the biographer was a moralist whose hold upon exact truth of statement was very loose indeed, but who was determined that every word he wrote should strengthen his readers in the faith. Nor is this generation of biographers dead today. Half the lives of the great and good men, which are published in England and America, are expanded tracts. Let the biographer be tactful, but do not let him be cowardly; let him cultivate delicacy, but avoid its ridiculous parody, prudery. And I also quote this from James Anthony Froude: The usual custom in biography is to begin with the brightest side and to leave the faults to be discovered afterwards. It is dishonest and it does not answer. Of all literary sins, Carlyle himself detested most a false biography. Faults frankly acknowledged are frankly forgiven. Faults concealed work always like poison. Burns' offenses were made no secret of. They are now forgotten, and Burns stands without a shadow on him, the idol of his countrymen. Byron's diary was destroyed, and he remains and will remain with a stain of suspicion about him, which revives and will revive, and will never be wholly obliterated. "The truth shall make you free" in biography as in everything else. Falsehood and concealment are a great man's worst enemy. * * * * *