Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/445



BIOGRAPHY

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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

OF THE LATE

BEDFORD

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EW species of literary composition excite so deep or so general an interest as biography. It is not difficult to trace to its source this prevalent feeling. The interest felt in any literary work must depend on the nature and number of the mental faculties to which it is addressed, and to the gratification of which it ministers. Now biography, being the record of human life in its ordinary and entire course, necessarily exhibits all the mental powers, whether intellectual, moral, or animal, in their combined activity and natural results. It is the nature of all the higher faculties of the mind, that each sympathises with its like; and barren of incident, indeed, must that life be, the memorial of which does not find, in every reader, some kindred feeling or talent which it can pleasurably affect.

If this view be correct, it follows that, though a biographical memoir may gratify many, it is not exactly the same pleasure which it yields to all.