THE ETHICS OF BIOGRAPHY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1043, 4 February 1911, Page 9

THE ETHICS OF BIOGRAPHY.

' In an address at Liverpool on "Tho Ethics of Biography,"- Mr,.. Edmund Gosse had some interesting things to say on tho theory and practice of a difficult literary art. .Mr. Gos'se noted, and justly, 'the-decline in the ""public appetit.e for fiction and the increase' in tno dimand ior biography, lie ; might have discriminated, however,' between a legitimate and an undesirable demand for biographical books. There has of late been an altogether objectionable increase in tho output of (and, -therefore,' presumably in the demand for) the moro sensational kind of biography, and the seamy records of the courts of old have been ransacked for piquant and not always too authenticated details of tho lives of fair and frail ladies wiio might well have been left in tho oblivion into which they 'had fallen. This scouring of tho bypaths and dark corners of history has resulted in a flood of slipshod and slovenly historical work, as fleeting and transient in its voguo as the lightest and most inconsiderable kind c-f fiction. If a biography is any good at all—if it is accurately and truly set forth —it should bo permanent-. .Their transiency condemns these modern essays in tho art. Mr. Gosse raised a subject oil-which discussion must be endless-when ho praised

"indiscretion" , (with a cavcat, of course, 011. behalf of "good taste") ill biography. No doubt he speaks quite truly -when he says that modern biographic.? suffer from hero-worship and snobbishness, and 110 one will question bis dictum that the dark shades as well as the light of a man's life ought to be put 011 record. But those lives which are the products of the noble but uncritical zeal of relative's and private'secretaries are commonly inconsiderable, and, in ' any case the exceptions arc glorious. That hero-worship is 110 bad basis.for a biography BoswelL stands to witness: "The Life of Sir Walter Scott" and "The Life.of Macaulay" show that such eloso relationships as those of son-in-law and nephew are not universal Qualifications. Tho truth is that Mr. Gosfo's praise of-indiscretion could havo been urged) with better apnropriatoness at almost anv other time ill tile history of biography than tho present. The flood of pseudo-biograph-ical literature to which we have referred is evidence of that.—" Manchester. Guardian.".