V
EARLY LIVES OF THE POETS
A student of history, who has to contend every day with the scarcity and inaccuracy of human records, finds himself forced to admit that men are wise, and care little for fame. Each generation of men goes about its business and its pleasure with immense energy and zest; each, when it has passed away, leaves the historians of a later era to spell out what they can from a few broken stones and documents preserved by chance. The opinion of Shakespeare, that
is the opinion of the sane world; and the desire for posthumous fame, 'that last infirmity of noble mind,' is a rare infirmity. The Romans were content to bequeath to us their blood and their law. If every human creature were provided with some separate and permanent memorial, we could not walk in the fields for tombstones.
I desire in this paper to trace the late and gradual growth of an interest in the Lives of English Authors, and to give some brief account of the earlier collections of printed biographies. Biography is not the least valuable part of modern literary history, and its origin is to be found in the new conceptions of literature and of history which were introduced at the time of the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages a writer was wholly
