The reason why such realism is bad art is not because the details are untrue, but because the proportion is wrong. One cannot tell everything in a biography, unless one is prepared to write on the scale of a volume for each week of the hero’s life. The art of the biographer is to select what is salient and typical, not what is abnormal and negligible; what he should aim at is to suggest, by skilful touches, a living portrait. If the subject is bald and wrinkled, he must be painted so. But there is no excuse for trying to depict his hero’s toe-nails, unless there is a very valid reason for doing so. And there is still less excuse for painting them so big that one can see little else in the picture! Ex ungue leonem, says the proverb; but it is a scientific and not an artistic maxim.
One sometimes wonders what will be the future of biographies; how, as libraries get fuller and records increase, it will be possible ever to write the lives of any but men of prime importance. I suppose the difficulty will solve itself in some perfectly simple and obvious manner; but the obstacle is that, as reading gets more common, the circle of trivial people who are interested in trousers and toe-nails and in little else does undoubtedly increase. Moreover, instead of fewer biographies being written, more and more people seem to be commemorated in stodgy volumes; and further, the selection could not be made by authority, because the kind of lives that are wanted are not the lives of dull important people, but the lives of interesting