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 of biographic failure, owing to infringements of this law of brevity, are legion, and one or other recent examples will leap to the minds of everyone who subscribes to a circulating library. But every law is liable in uncovenanted conditions to a temporary, suspense. To every rule there are exceptions, which prove its normal justness. The longest biography in the English language is also the best. Boswell's Life of Johnson is indeed reckoned the best specimen of biography that has yet been written in any, tongue. Critics agree that life on a desert island would be tolerable with Boswell's biographic work for companion. That verdict may be a metaphorical flight But it has not been risked in comment on any other biography, and only in comment on two other books in English, the English Bible and Shakespeare.

To what is attributable Boswell's unique triumph, in spite of its challenge of the law of biographic brevity? The triumph is, primarily due to an unexampled confluence