Page:Principles of Biography.djvu/29

 tout se salt—"Sooner or later everything conies to light" There is another French proverb: Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner—"To understand all is to pardon all."

Both apophthegms make appeal to the biographer, and the second quite as relevant to his work as the first. Lives written in a hostile spirit may not be wholly untruthful. But they tend to emphasise unpleasing features and thereby give a wrongful impression. Scurrility is not candour. To pander to a love of scandal is a greater sin in a biographer than in anybody else. Lord Campbell wrote lives of lawyers, which satisfy many of the conditions of biography. But their depreciatory tone, which prompted the epigram that biography lends a new sting to death, suggests malignity and distorts the true perspective. The competent biographer may fail from want of Sympathy even when his skill is not in question. Like the portrait painter who is fascinated by forbidding aspects in a sitter's countenance, he may,, even without conscious intention, produce a caricature instead of a portrait.