than in other biographic forms. The object of national as of all collective biography is Priestley's object in scientific exposition—"to comprise as much knowledge as possible in the smallest compass." Indulgence in rhetoric, voluble enthusiasm, emotion, loquacious sentiment is for the national biographer the deadliest of sins. Yet his method will be of small avail if he be unable to arrange his bare facts and dates so as to indicate graphically the precise character, of the personality and of the achievement with which he is dealing,—if he fail to suggest the peculiar interest of the personality and the achievement by some happy epithet or brief touch of criticism. There are instances in which a miniature memoir thus graced has given a reader a sense of satisfaction almost as great as any that a largely planned biography can give—the feeling, namely, that to him is imparted all the information for which his commemorative instinct craves.
The methods of national biography are Spartan methods heartlessly enforced by
