The Life of Edmund Kean (Volume 1) - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1835. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... The life of Edmund Kean Barry Cornwall 10 INTRODUCTION. The life of a player is, assuredly, not the most important thing in the world. Nevertheless, it may be made amusing, and even useful in its way, if the vivacity of the writer or the misdeeds of his hero are sufficiently great. In biography, luckily, the aristocratic value goes for nothing. It enlightens neither the author nor his subject. A writer may be as lively in a threadbare suit, as though he were hedged in by ermine. And whether his hero be old or young, rich or poor, a lord or a lacquey, need give him no anxiety whatever. It is enough if he be witty himself, or the cause of amusement to others. We do not presume to be wits ourselves. We acknowledge that we feel the weight of our undertaking. There are few tasks, indeed, in literature, more difficult we think, than the biography of a celebrated man. Independently of the acuteness necessary in ordinary cases to detect and explain the niceties of character, some judgment is required to determine the circle of events, amidst which he should be made to move; avoiding, on the one hand, too meagre an outline of personal history, as insufficient to show the extent of his influence; and forbearing, on the other, to diminish his due importance, by an accumulation of facts, to which he bears but a remote relation. The biographer, moreover, has few of those glittering materials to deal with, which go far to make up the splendour of the historian's work. He has necessarily fewer characters. and far less variety of circumstance to relieve and set off his labours. There is almost always a sameness in the events which he has to recount; for his hero is either a philosopher or a soldier, a statesman or a poet, or...