Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/19

 surely an excusable, desire which prompts us to learn something more of the character of the great men who have stirred the thoughts and directed the passions of the race. A great writer, it is said, reveals the best part of himself in his works. But the longing for a more direct vision of the man behind the book, of the struggles by which he won his way to his successes, of the strength and the weaknesses by which he was helped and hindered, facilitates a clear appreciation of the works themselves. Even the greatest literary achievement becomes 'gilt o'er dusted,' and the best way of restoring is to watch in imagination the living hand which wrought it. Some appreciation of that truth must be allowed to the generations of Dryasdusts who have sought even from the driest receptacles—of which Carlyle complained so bitterly—to put together, if not a living figure, at least a framework to which we can adapt our more or less fanciful pictures. If the need is felt where the means of supply are so limited, can we blame the same sort of curiosity when it is applied to our near contemporaries? The interviewer, so his victims report, is apt to be a nuisance, impertinent and intrusive. But can we condemn him unreservedly? Is there not