Biography has generally been written by literary critics, and one requires no apology in any case for ranking the biographers among the critics. =John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)= himself was a notable example. He was editor of the _Quarterly Review_, and an industrious writer for many years; but he is best known to us by his "Life of Sir Walter Scott," which was published--it is worthy of note--in 1837, the year of the Queen's accession. Lockhart's "Scott" is beyond question the most important biography of the reign. The longest is that of Milton by Professor Masson. =David Masson (1822- )= has held a chair of literature in University College, London, and later at Edinburgh. Few men know English literature better than he. His name will always be associated with his monumental "Life of Milton," a solid, accurate, exhaustive book; but he has written pleasantly on "British Novelists and their Styles" and "Drummond of Hawthornden," besides sundry other books. Many of our poets have had capable biographers. Professor Knight of St Andrews has devoted himself for many years to Wordsworth, and has written his biography besides editing his collected works. The late James Dykes Campbell (1835-1894) wrote a biography of Coleridge distinguished by remarkable thoroughness. Professor W. J. Courthope has proved himself Pope's best biographer and editor, and is giving us a good "History of English Poetry," which at present reaches only to the Reformation. Mr Churton Collins, one of the most thorough of our critics, has written on Swift, as has also Sir Henry Craik; and Swift's life in Ireland has been gracefully sketched by Mr Richard Ashe King, a novelist whose "Love the Debt" and "The Wearing of the Green" have commanded a large audience. Swift has been a favourite subject with the biographers. A life of him was the task upon which =John Forster (1812-1876)= was engaged at the time of his death. Forster was an untiring biographer, and he benefited literature as well by his death as by his life, in that he bequeathed his fine library of books and manuscripts to the nation. John Forster wrote a Life of Walter Savage Landor, another of Goldsmith, and another of Charles Dickens, against which it was urged that he had introduced too much of his own personality. Perhaps Forster's best work was his "Life of Sir John Eliot," an expansion of a biography of that patriot which he had contributed to his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth."