The stupid book is tiresome enough, because it ends by making one feel
that there is a real human being whom one cannot get at behind all the
tedious paragraphs, like some one stirring and coughing behind a
screen--or even more like the outline of a human figure covered up with
a quilt, so that one can just infer which is the head and which the
feet, but with the outlines all overlaid with a woolly padded texture
of meaningless words. Such biographers as these are hardly eagle-eating
monkeys. They are rather monkeys who would eat a live eagle if they
could catch one, and will mangle a dead one if they can find him. The
marvel is that with material at their command, with friends of their
victim to interrogate, and sometimes even with a personal knowledge of
him, they can yet contrive to avoid telling one anything interesting or
characteristic. The only points which seem to strike them are the
points in which their hero resembled other people, not the points in
which he differed from others. They tell you that they remember an
interesting conversation with the great man, and go on to say that no
words could do justice to the charm of his talk. Or they will tell you
his views on Free Trade or the Poor Law, and quote long extracts from
his speeches and public utterances. But they never admit one behind the
scenes, either because they were never there themselves, or did not
know it when they were.
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