Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Tales, and Miscellaneous Pieces, Vol. 1
That the ignorant may have their prejudices as well as the learned cannot be disputed; but we see and despise vulgar errors: we never bow to the authority of him who has no great name to sanction his absurdities. The partiality which blinds a bio grapher to the defects of his hero, in proportion as it is gross, ceases to be dangerous; but if it be con cealed by the appearance of candour, which men of great abilities best know how to assume, it endangers our judgment sometimes, and sometimes our morals. If her grace the duchess of Newcastle, instead of penning her lord's elaborate eulogium, had under taken to write the life of Savage, we should not have been in any danger of mistaking an idle, ungrateful libertine for a man of genius and Virtue. The talents of a biographer are often fatal to his reader. For these reasons the public often judiciously countenance those, who, without sagacity to discriminate cha racter, without elegance of style to relieve the tedi ousness of narrative, without enlargement of mind to draw any conclusions from the facts they relate, simply pour forth anecdotes, and retail conversations, with all the minute prolixity of a gossip in a country town.
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