Let me know a great variety of such instances that I may mark their
disagreements, but more especially their agreement about it. How did
they play the game? How did they fight the fight that I am to fight, and
how in any case did they lose or win? To these questions biography gives
the direct answer. Such is its importance over other literature. For
such reasons, doubtless, Johnson 'loved' it most. For such reasons
the book which has been most cherished and revered for well-nigh two
thousand years is a biography.
Biography, then, is the chief text-book in the art of living, and
preeminent in its kind is the Life of Johnson. Here is the instance of a
man who was born into a life stripped of all ornament and artificiality.
His equipment in mind and stature was Olympian, but the odds against
him were proportionate to his powers. Without fear or complaint, without
boast or noise, he fairly joined issue with the world and overcame it.
He scorned circumstance, and laid bare the unvarying realities of the
contest.
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