No one need hesitate to speak his mind of King John, let him be ever so strong a stickler for the privileges of majesty.

But there are degrees of distance, and the throne of which we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed when unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat there within our own memory.

There would seem to each of us to be a personal affront were a departed relative delineated with all those faults by which we must own that even our near relatives have been made imperfect.

It is a general conviction as to this which so frequently turns the biography of those recently dead into mere eulogy.

The fictitious charity which is enjoined by the _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_ banishes truth.