But with the horror and irony of John Charteris's assassination the biographer of Rudolph Musgrave has really nothing to do save in so far as this event influenced the life of Rudolph Musgrave.

At the tomb of Achilles, Alexander declared that he esteemed him happy in having had so famous a poet to proclaim his actions; and scarcely less fortunate were they who had such a biographer as Plutarch to record their lives.

(Works, ii. 348), attacks Johnson's biographers for lowering his character by publishing his private conversation.

The Alexandræan Tragedy, Cræsus, Darius, and Julius Cæsar, all which in the opinion of the ingenious Mr. Coxeter (whose indefatigable industry in collecting materials for this work, which he lived not to publish, has furnished the present Biographers with many circumstances they could not otherwise have known) were written in his lordship's youth, and before he undertook any state employment.

Suetonius, born about the year 70 A.D., shortly after Nero's death, was rather a biographer than an historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank.

My colleague at Venice, Howells, one of Mr. Lincoln's most fortunate appointments, owed his position, not to his literary abilities, which were then unknown to the country at large, but to his having written a campaign life of Lincoln, a service which was always considered by the successful candidate as entitling the biographer to some appointment.

This, to students of the Laureate's writings, is of high value, in addition to the service rendered by the biographer in tracing in his father's poetic work the influences which fashioned it and the pains he took to give it its marvellous beauty and artistic finish of expression.

I will not anticipate the duty of the biographer by an extended notice of the life of Mr. Allston; but it may be interesting to some readers to know the outline of his life, and the different circumstances under which the several pieces in this volume were written.

It must have sometimes enabled the artist to make large profits; but the nature of the contract prevents his biographer from forming even a vague estimate of their amount.

" This contention between Condivi and Vasari, our two contemporary authorities upon the facts of Michelangelo's life, may not seem to be a matter of great moment for his biographer after the lapse of four centuries.