幸せ+ INTRODUCTION. ERHAPS there is nothing the public enjoys so thoroughly as getting behind the scenes. Το sit on the front benches and admire the net result of genius is tame work as compared with the exciting sensation of penetrating into the green-room, and seeing with your own eyes how commonplace after all are the materials by which the most striking effects have been obtained. And this craving to get behind the work at the man who made it, to pry into the most hidden recesses of his life and character, to analyse his motives, to dissect his emotions, and condemn him to a kind of moral vivisection, seems ever on the increase. This appetite, which savours of the morbid, may, however, be due to healthier causes; partly to the influence of the scientific method on all modern thought, and partly to the levelling tendency of democracy in literature-a tendency which must be considered of dubious value till democracy itself shall be educated by the best thought of the best minds of all ages. Be that as it may, no books now meet with more popular favour than the lives and letters of eminent men and women. Of these there is therefore an inexhaustible supply, and the satisfaction which arises from this sort of reading, although it frequently ministers to mere vulgar curiosity and love of scandal, may, on the other hand, foster a more comprehensive sympathy by initiating the reader into the struggles and privations more or less the portion of all who do something towards increasing the intellectual or moral wealth of the world. |