more for whom the commemorative instinct assuredly demands biographic commemoration combined great exploits with notorious defiance, of virtue.
The ethical fallacy of biography has sanctioned two evasive methods of handling such perplexing phases of life—a method of suppression and a method of extenuation. The method of suppression has found distinguished advocates. Tennyson asked "what business has the public to want to know about Byron's wildnesses? He has given them fine work and they ought to be satisfied." Here indeed we are advised, either to dispense with all biography of Byron, or only to accept a biography of him from which his "wildnesses" are excluded. The cravings of the commemorative instinct Which Byron's career has already excited render both these counsels futile.
The alternative method of extenuation has been adopted by an eminent man of letters of our own day in treating of an illustrious poetic contemporary of Byron— of Shelley. Writing Shelley's life under the
