"Whoever," said he, "hath anything fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons are extremely bold." As in portraiture, so in biography, there must be light and shade.
The portrait-painter does not pose his sitter so as to bring out his deformities; nor does the biographer give undue prominence to the defects of the character he portrays.

Not many men are so outspoken as Cromwell was when he sat to Cooper for his miniature: "Paint me as I am," said he, "warts and all." Yet, if we would have a faithful likeness of faces and characters, they must be painted as they are.

"Biography," said Sir Walter Scott, "the most interesting of every species of composition, loses all its interest with me when the shades and lights of the principal characters are not accurately and faithfully detailed.
I can no more sympathise with a mere eulogist, than I can with a ranting hero on the stage." [197] Addison liked to know as much as possible about the person and character of his authors, inasmuch as it increased the pleasure and satisfaction which he derived from the perusal of their books.

What was their history, their experience, their temper and disposition?
Did their lives resemble their books?
They thought nobly--did they act nobly?
"Should we not delight," says Sir Egerton Brydges, "to have the frank story of the lives and feelings of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Campbell, Rogers, Moore, and Wilson, related by themselves ?--with whom they lived early; how their bent took a decided course; their likes and dislikes; their difficulties and obstacles; their tastes, their passions; the rocks they were conscious of having split upon; their regrets, their complacencies, and their self-justifications ?" [198] When Mason was reproached for publishing the private letters of Gray, he answered, "Would you always have my friends appear in full-dress ?" Johnson was of opinion that to write a man's life truly, it is necessary that the biographer should have personally known him.

But this condition has been wanting in some of the best writers of biographies extant.