...are best served by reading lives of people such as themselves. Johnson recommends that biographers pass "slightly over those performances and incidents,...greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies." These minute details of daily life, "invisible circumstances," Johnson calls them, "whether we read...

...Johnsons biographical ideal of Rambler, no. 6o (13 October 175o): "[T]he business of the biographer is to pass slightly over those performances and incidents...excel each other only by prudence and by virtue." Few of Garrick's "domestic privacies" emerge from Davies's book. Readers hear how Garrick handled malicious...

...dedicated. Introduction the business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those perfarmances and incidents, which produce vulgar greatness, to...and display the minute details of daily life, where exteriar appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and by virtue. —Samuel...

...by authors and readers who rejected 'vulgar greatness' in favour of 'domestic privacies, and . . . the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other by only prudence and by virtue'." For Johnson's contemporary, Andrew Kippis, editor of the Biographia...

...those performances and incidents, which produced vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily...excel each other only by prudence and by virtue." Johnson was not speaking only for himself; he relied on no less of an authority than Montaigne, who...

...those performances and incidents, which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily...excel each other only by prudence and by virtue." 4 In the case of the biography of an author—as Johnson himself, a major innovator of the form in...

...those performances and incidents, which produced vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily...excel each other only by prudence and by virtue." Johnson was not speaking only for himself; he relied on no less of an authority than Montaigne, who...

...usefulness of biography" for October 13, 1750, sixteen years before the moment Thrale records — "is often to pass slightly over those performances and...produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast...

...public history but to history as such. According to Samuel Johnson, "[T]he business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and...produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast...

...advantages of prejudice, and to gain attention by a celebrated name; but the business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and...produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast...