Biography & Autobiography Books

I. USES OF GREAT MEN. It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet. Nature seems to exist... more...

BY THE RIVER. IT did not take us younger ones long to get acquainted with our new home, and to love it. To live beside a river had been to me a child's dream of romance. Rivers, as I pictured them, came down from the mountains, and were born in the clouds. They were bordered by green meadows, and graceful trees leaned over to gaze into their bright mirrors. Our shallow tidal creek was the only... more...

CHAPTER I. The family of Daniel Boone—His grandfather emigrates to America, and settles in Bucks County, Pennsylvania—Family of Daniel Boone's father—Account of Exeter, the birth-place of Boone—Birth of Daniel Boone—Religion of his family—Boone's boyhood—Goes to school—Anecdote—Summary termination of his schooling. The immediate ancestors and near relations of the American... more...

What it is that has kept urging me to write down these recollections of Edward Gamaliel Janeway, the physician, would indeed be rather hard to define, but the desire to record a little something of what I had personally come to know of this unusual man made itself felt very shortly after his death, now over five years ago. Since that time this feeling—steadily growing—seems irresistibly to have... more...

CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD IN reading biographies I always skip the genealogical details. To be born obscure and to die famous has been described as the acme of human felicity. However that may be, whether fame has anything to do with happiness or no, it is a man himself, and not his ancestors, whose life deserves, if it does deserve, to be written. Such was Froude's own opinion, and it is the opinion of... more...

                          DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS.                                DECEMBER                                  1666 December 1st. Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning. At home to dinner, and then abroad walking to the Old Swan, and in my way I did see a cellar in Tower Streete in a very... more...

PREFACE. By prescription, which often has the force of law, a book should have both a Preface and an Introduction: the first relating to the writer; the second to the things written. I may well dispense with the latter, for what is here written the humblest capacity can understand; and it would be cruel to detain him long on the porch who is anxious to enter the building. But, dear reader, a word with... more...

PREFACE Some excuse seems to be needed for venturing at this time to publish biographical sketches of the men of the Victorian era. Several have been written by men, like Lord Morley and Lord Bryce, having first-hand knowledge of their subjects, others by the best critics of the next generation, such as Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Clutton-Brock. With their critical ability I am not able to compete; but they... more...

CHAPTER I. Peculiar interest attached to his Life—His Birth—His early studies—His passion for Mathematics—His work on the Hydrostatic Balance—Appointed Lecturer on Mathematics at Pisa—His antipathy to the Philosophy of Aristotle—His contentions with the Aristotelians—Chosen professor of Mathematics in Padua—Adopts the Copernican system, but still teaches the Ptolemaic doctrine—His... more...

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU THE MAN TO WHOM EXPRESSION WAS TRAVAIL From the "Confessions of Rousseau." It is strange to hear that those critics who spoke of Rousseau's "incomparable gift of expression," of his "easy, natural style," were ludicrously incorrect in their allusions. From his "Confessions" we learn that he had no gift of clear, fluent expression; that he was... more...