PREFACE.
any doubtful point, which Mr. Prior had before suggested or
made. The specific and sole offence was the use in my
narrative of matter which a previous biographer had used,
which he assumed to have discovered, and the repetition
of which he would prohibit to all who came after him.
The question broadly raised was, whether any man who
may have published a biography, contributing to it certain
facts as the result of his own research, can from that
instant lay claim to the entire beneficial interest in those
facts, nay, can appropriate to himself the subject of the
biography, and warn off every other person as a trespasser
from the ground so seized.
Now, upon the reason or common sense of such a
proposition, I should be ashamed to waste a word.
Taking for granted the claim of discovery to the full
extent asserted, the claim to any exclusive use of such
discovery is sheer folly. No man can hold a patent in
biography or in history except by a mastery of execution
unapproached by competitors. He only may hope to
have possessed himself of a subject, who has exhausted
it; or to have established his originality in dealing with
facts, who has so happily disposed and applied them as
to preclude the chances of more successful treatment by
any subsequent writer. But between me and my accuser
in this particular case a really practical question ^uas
raised under cover of the extravagant and impossible
one. The substance of Mr. Prior's pretensions as a
discoverer in connection with Goldsmith came in issue;
and the answer could only be, that these had been
enormously exaggerated It became necessary to point
out that to even a small fraction of the matter assumed to