TO GENERAL THE RIGHT HON. LORD HILL, G.C.B., G.C.H., & K.C., GENERAL COMMANDING-IN-CHIEF, COLONEL OF THE ROYAL REGIMENT OF HORSE GUARDS, &c. &c., THIS WORK IS MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. PREFACE. It was the opinion of some of the noblest writers of antiquity, that the lives of distinguished contemporaries—the great men of all times-formed a subject of the highest national interest and importance. Nor was it only in relation to after periods, but as an example to the age in which they lived, that it became their ambition to celebrate living worth-to hold up brilliant intellect and daring action to the emulation and applause of mankind. For this reason they sought to invest the subject with a dignity and grandeur of sentiment calculated to produce deep and lasting impression-to excite the nobler passions, rouse patriotism, a sense of independence, and love of country. In drawing characters whom they considered worthy of commemoration, the old classic writers were rather anxious to exhibit them as the teachers and benefactors of the existing generation, and through their influence of the future, than to obtrude the writer's individual views and opinions, or to enter into general dissertation upon subjects not immediately connected with their main design. By adhering to a clear and full narrative of facts, closely interwoven with their "high argument" in all its bearings; by drawing light from other sources only to illustrate one distinct mind and character, they laboured to perform the duty of correct report and impartial commentary, in preference to entering into general reasonings and disquisitions, and in so far becoming rather biographers of themselves, than of their principals, and not unfrequently presenting the latter in a secondary point of view. Works written upon this general plan are exceedingly pleasing when confined to pieces of autobiography; but the effect is different when the object in view ought to be to represent other characters in their full proportions before the public eye. It becomes then a biographer's duty to supply the entire text, as it were of their lives—the full volume of their minds-containing their words and actions, while he confines his own views to impartial display, and a careful estimate and summary of events. If the simple duties pointed out, and the distinction here made between biographies of a general character, resembling history more nearly than a narrative of lives, and pure biography, in which individual character only is studiously illustrated; it follows that the presence of the illustrator should never be unnecessarily obtruded; that it is his office only to exhibit and to explain; in short, to tell the story, by grouping |