The biographer should sternly confine himself to his functions as introducer; and should give no more discussion than is clearly necessary for making the book an independent whole. A little analysis of motive may be necessary here and there; when, for example, your hero has put his hand in somebody"s pocket and you have to demonstrate that his conduct was due to sheer absence of mind. But you must always remember that a single concrete fact, or a saying into which a man has put his whole soul, is worth pages of psychological analysis. We may argue till Doomsday about Swift"s character, his single phrase about "dying like a poisoned rat in a hole" tells us more than all the commentators. The book should be the man himself speaking or acting, and nothing but the man. It should be such a portrait as reveals the essence of character; and the writer who gives anything that does not tell upon the general effect is like the portrait-painter who allows the chairs and tables, or even the coat and cravat, to distract attention from the face. The really significant anecdote is often all that survives of a life; and such anecdotes must be made to tell properly, instead of being hidden away in a wilderness of the commonplace; they should be a focus of interest, instead of a fallible extract for a book of miscellanies. How much would be lost of Johnson if we suppress the incident of the penance at Uttoxter! It is such incidents that in books, as often in life, suddenly reveal to us whole regions of sentiment but never rise to the surface in the ordinary routine of our day.