We must go back again to the ancients, for the reasons already stated, and also because all the details common and familiar, but true and characteristic, are banished by modern stylists, so that men are as much tricked out by our modern authors in their private life as in public.  Propriety, no less strict in literature than in life, no longer permits us to say anything in public which we might not do in public; and as we may only show the man dressed up for his part, we never see a man in our books any more than we do on the stage.  The lives of kings may be written a hundred times, but to no purpose; we shall never have another Suetonius.

The excellence of Plutarch consists in these very details which we are no longer permitted to describe.  With inimitable grace he paints the great man in little things; and he is so happy in the choice of his instances that a word, a smile, a gesture, will often suffice to indicate the nature of his hero.  With a jest Hannibal cheers his frightened soldiers, and leads them laughing to the battle which will lay Italy at his feet; Agesilaus riding on a stick makes me love the conqueror of the great king; Caesar passing through a poor village and chatting with his friends unconsciously betrays the traitor who professed that he only wished to be Pompey’s equal.  Alexander swallows a draught without a word—­it is the finest moment in his life; Aristides writes his own name on the shell and so justifies his title; Philopoemen, his mantle laid aside, chops firewood in the kitchen of his host.  This is the true art of portraiture.  Our disposition does not show itself in our features, nor our character in our great deeds; it is trifles that show what we really are.  What is done in public is either too commonplace or too artificial, and our modern authors are almost too grand to tell us anything else.

M. de Turenne was undoubtedly one of the greatest men of the last century.  They have had the courage to make his life interesting by the little details which make us know and love him; but how many details have they felt obliged to omit which might have made us know and love him better still?  I will only quote one which I have on good authority, one which Plutarch would never have omitted, and one which Ramsai would never have inserted had he been acquainted with it.

On a hot summer’s day Viscount Turenne in a little white vest and nightcap was standing at the window of his antechamber; one of his men came up and, misled by the dress, took him for one of the kitchen lads whom he knew.  He crept up behind him and smacked him with no light hand.  The man he struck turned round hastily.  The valet saw it was his master and trembled at the sight of his face.  He fell on his knees in desperation.  “Sir, I thought it was George.”  “Well, even if it was George,” exclaimed Turenne rubbing the injured part, “you need not have struck so hard.”  You do not dare to say this, you miserable writers!  Remain for ever without