On Friday evening, the Rev. Canon Butcher delivered a lecture at the Temperance Hall on Biography, Mr. C. P. Blethen presiding.
'The Lecturer said perpetual calls on hi time had prevented him from giving a lecture altogether new, and it was but right that he should inform' them that a portion of his address was delivered at Hongkew to an audience of fourteen persons—one of whom was deaf—on a very wet and cold night five He'tnaaid not wick to lear it again, they years ago. If any lady or gentleman recollected could retire; and their money, he presumed, would be returned at the doors. (Laughter.) He remembered on one occasion; when spending delightful hour in the National Portrait Gallery at Westminster, observing two gentlemen gazing with a strong. British stare at the pictured faces. They passed some of the finest works of Lely, Vandyke, trid the great Sir Joshua, without' spark of interest appearing in their eyes. They looked on the portraits of princes, statesmen, authors and men of science, without " gleam of Betsing intelligence, eud at Maha they jesceuded the stairs one said to the other, "What a lot of old swells." He conceived that those persons would have enjoyed their visit. much more had they devoted some previous hours to the study of Biography.
or himself, he confessed the study had a peculiar fascination. He divided the subject for his purposes into two parts,—the first, who wrote the best Biography; the second, whose Biographies were the best worth reading when written, The moment mentioned " good Biographer, one odd, absurd, figure stated up before hie nind's, oye—thak of James Boswell, of whom Lord Macau wrote, Demosthenes is not more d cidedly the first orator, than Boswell ist) first of Biographiers. He has While, as to Boswell personally, 1 on to write, "He was, if we are to give any credit to his own account, or to the united testimony of all who knew bit, a man of the meanest and feeble st intellect, Johnson de: cribed him as. fellow who had only chance of immortality by not ha been when the Dunciad was written, He was the laughing stock of the whole of that brilliant society which has owed to him the greater part of its fame." Strong 1 but, one was afraid, too true, to be inferred from it;—thab qualities necessary to. make a good Diographer are of the Jowest order. That something of the spy and the tattler quired to enable a man to excel in this parti cular branch of Literature. 'Though a dis agreeable conclusion to come to, the great success of Boswell almost guve colour to supposition. Certainly a good Biograp! should have minute powers of observation He should note many things that are' inherently worth noting, a group of facts sufficiently numero jive a proper base for a broad generalization. hould. frequently change hin point of view; and above all he should have a very warm enthusiasm as to the merits of the person whose life he essayed to write. This could be adapted to everyday life, It was an excellent thing for them all, Biographers or not, to culti-the capacity for ads jou, and not to of The Lectureruextasked the delicate question, id women make good Biogtaphers? At first ight, we might think that their distinguish.
ities fitted them pre-eminently for the ing faithful lives. They possessed. minute and delicate powers of observation and wrote frequently in facile and sympathetic style, and their capacity for enthusiastic admiration was specially developed. Yet if they took Truth as their motto, they must acknowledge that women were rarely even second rate. The most ambitious female biographer he recollected was Miss Agues Strickland, who wrote the Lives of the Queens of England in many volumes,—very popular thirty yeara at looking at them now, what did they the Royal wardrobe. What their Majesties did was never considered so important, as what their Majesties wore Then, as another instance, Mrs. Gaskell took so much delight in ier Miography of Gharlotte Bronts, the authoress of Jane yre, that in her anxiety to elevate the character of her heroine, the biographer described her father and brother in so offensive a mauner that she narrowly escaped an action for libel The second point of his lecture was, whose biographies were the best worth reading when written, They were most decidedly the works those writers who had been distinguished by the possession of the three great qualities of persevering patience, cheerful large-minieduess,, and the capacity for improvement. It might be thought tnat he had made tov much of the first mentioned quality, but he was supported by a great authority, who had said that genius was nothing save a long pat The qua-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.