Great works of fiction abound, but great biographies may be counted on the fingers.

It may be for the same reason that a great painter of portraits, the late John Philip, R.A., explained his preference for subject-painting, because, said he, "Portrait-painting does not pay." Biographic portraiture involves laborious investigation and careful collection of facts, judicious rejection and skilful condensation, as well as the art of presenting the character portrayed in the most attractive and lifelike form; whereas, in the work of fiction, the writer's imagination is free to create and to portray character, without being trammelled by references, or held down by the actual details of real life.
There is, indeed, no want among us of ponderous but lifeless memoirs, many of them little better than inventories, put together with the help of the scissors as much as of the pen.

What Constable said of the portraits of an inferior artist--"He takes all the bones and brains out of his heads"-- applies to a large class of portraiture, written as well as painted.

They have no more life in them than a piece of waxwork, or a clothes-dummy at a tailor's door.

What we want is a picture of a man as he lived, and lo! we have an exhibition of the biographer himself.