This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ...at hand to report them. It has of late become much the fashion to make up the lives of significant men very largely from their journals and their letters. Some of the most instructive and delightful biographies of modern times are of this class; such as#hose of Robert Burns, Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, John Sterling, ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ...at hand to report them. It has of late become much the fashion to make up the lives of significant men very largely from their journals and their letters. Some of the most instructive and delightful biographies of modern times are of this class; such as#hose of Robert Burns, Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, John Sterling, Walter Scott, John Wilson, Thomas Chalmers, Samuel Romilly, John Foster, Dr. Thomas Arnold; of Charlotte Bronte, J. Blanco White, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Edward Irving, Richard Whately, B. G. Niebuhr, Frederick Perthes, John Keble, Frederick W. Robertson, Henry Crabb Robinson, Baron Bunsen, Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, Horace Mann, and Lyman Beecher. In all these instances the persons named were more or less distinguished for public and literary activity. This fact suggests the remark that the lives of this class of persons are generally more instructive and interesting than those of any other. The reason certainly cannot be that their intellects were superior, or their principles were more elevated; that their feelings and tastes were more refined, or their influence was more commanding than were those of others whose lives remain wholly unwritten. It is rather that such men more frequently leave behind them copious materials of this sort. But even this is not universally the case. It is only men who write easily, and of such men only here and there one who leaves behind him a journal or diary in whitfh he notes events as they occur, or records his views in regard to them, or his own principles, feelings, and aims. Many journals which are extended and copious are chiefly objective, and fail to express the individuality of the man, and to manifest his inmost feelings and the springs of his character. Very many really able and communicative...
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