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178. Whether narrative in general does not suffer from such vagrancy—whether the stream loses depth, force, and clearness, by such perpetual meanderings, we shall not stay to inquire. We can only record our aspiration, uttered fresh from the perusal of the lives before us, O si sic omnes! It is easy to forgive a writer his serpentine intricacies, when every involution and convolution is so full of suggestiveness, and when to deny him the right he assumes, would be to denude the maypole of its wreathing garlands, or to convert Hogarth’s line of beauty into a mathematical right line; Mr. Derwent Coleridge properly characterises these "biographies" as biographical essays—vehicles of remark and discussion, everywhere distinguished by keen observation, genial humour, and right feeling; often lawlessly digressive, yet never felt as an interruption, nor pursued to weariness; serious wisdom and varied knowledge, conveyed in most delightful form. Not expecting much documentary research or critical examination, our part is to welcome the appearance of the author, behind the occasionally withdrawn veil of conventional reserve, like old Fuller or Montaigne, speaking in his own person—sometimes in a sportive, often in a familiar vein—with a freedom unmarked by affectation or mannerism, the spontaneous issue of the biographer's mind, varied by the varying mood. For "the style of the work passes through every variety of tone; but the transition is always easy, because it is always natural. Sometimes it is grave and solemn; shortly after, playful and careless; then dogmatic and sententious. It is sometimes highly poetical, or rather poetry itself, pede soluto; but it is never forced." Such, in fact, as Hartley is in those right pleasant essays of bis, which we used to admire in Blackwood, long, long ago, without knowing who owned them—and Hartley had a finger in the "Noctes" themselves—such he is in the "Lives of Northern Worthies." A little more attention to method is about the only differential.

His own estimate of this, his "largest, if not his highest literary achievement," appears to have been extremely moderate. He considered it overpraised. Remembering the difficulties which attended its publication, and comparing it with his own ideal standard of excellence, such a judgment was natural.

"How," he asks, in a letter to a friend, "in the haste with which the work is to be got out, is it possible to hunt out for original facts, or to collect original documents, even if they were always accessible, which is far from being the case?" In another place he states, that he had to write eight, nine, and ten hours a day, to keep up with the press. Of course, from the necessity of the case, some portions of the work are mere compilation.

Not the least notable feature of this work is its large-hearted toleration—the liberality and catholicity with which it appraises the widely differing subjects of which it treats. The biographer's duty is, as Hartley observes in the introductory essay, to endeavour to place himself at the exact point, in relation to general objects, in which his subject was placed, and to see things as he saw them—not, indeed, neglecting to avail himself of the vantage-ground which time or circumstances may have given him to correct what was delusive in the partial aspect, but never forgetting, while he exposes the error, to explain its cause. In presenting the several "Worthies" to whom these volumes are devoted