Frequently the reason of this is, that though they occupy a place, perhaps an important place, in the great drama of history, yet they have not played one of the _foremost_ parts; and general history cannot spare much time or space beyond what is necessary to describe the main progress of events, and the actions and characters of those who were most prominently concerned in them. Other men may have been greater in themselves; they may have been first-rate in their own sphere, but that sphere was too much secluded or circumscribed to admit of the extensive and conspicuous public influence of which alone history takes much cognisance. They are to history what those side or background figures in the pictures of great medieval painters are to the grand central subject of the piece: they do but help to fill up the canvas, yet the picture would not be complete without them. They are notable personages, well worthy of being separately depicted, though in the large historical representation they play a subordinate part. To take out one of these side figures of history, and to make it the centre of a separate picture, grouping round it all the great events and characters among which it moved, is the work of a biographer. And by many it will be felt that nothing invests the general history of any period with such a living interest as viewing it through the light of some one human life. How was this individual soul affected by the movement of the great forces with which it was surrounded? How did it affect them, in its turn, wherever in its progress it came into contact with them? This one consideration will confer on many details of history an importance and freshness of which they seemed too trivial or too dull to be susceptible.