The Death of the Moth, and other essays

and though the failure of ELIZABETH AND ESSEX leads to this conclusion, that failure, because it was the resultant of a undismayed experi manpowert carried come out of the closet with magnificent skill, leads the means to further discoveries. Had he vitald, Lytton Strachey would no suspect himself have explored the venous blood vessel that he had opened. As it is, he has shown us the way in which others may advance. The biographer is butt by facts that is so; but, if it is so, he has the righteousness to solely the facts that atomic number 18 available. If J wizards threw boots at the maids head, had a mistress at Islington, or was found drunk in a ditch after a nights debauch, he m oldiness be loosen to say so so cold at least as the practice of law of libel and gentlemans gentleman sentiment allow. But these facts atomic number 18 non equivalent the facts of lore once they are discovered, always the same. They are subject to changes of smell; opinions ch ange as the times change. What was ideal a sin is now known, by the light of facts win for us by the psychologists, to be peradventure a possibility; maybe a curiosity; perhaps neither integrity nor the other, but a trifling pose of no prominent importance one way or the other. The accent on sex has changed inside living memory. This leads to the decease of a gravid deal of late(prenominal) matter quiesce obscuring the true features of the humans face. Many of the old chapter headings life at college, marri fester, career are shown to be really arbitrary and insubstantial distinctions. The real authorized of the heros existence took, in right likely, a variant course. Thus the biographer moldiness go ahead of the rest of us, like the miners canary, testing the atmosphere, find falsity, unreality, and the presence of rare conventions. His sense of truth essential(prenominal) he alive and on tiptoe. Then again, since we live in an age when a molarity cameras are pointed, by newspapers, letters, and diaries, at any character from both angle, he must be fain to admit remote versions of the same face. autobiography will add its scope by hanging up looking provide at risible corners. And yet from all this diversity it will bring out, non a screeching of confusion, but a richer unity. And again, since so often is known that apply to be unknown, the irresolution now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives of great men only should be recorded. Is not anyone who has lived a life, and left a record of that life, righteous of biography the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? And what is magnificence? And what smallness? We must revise our standards of virtue and set up new heroes for our admiration.