Excerpt from Representative Men of Connecticut: 1861-1894
Thus the boy who finds it so difficult to master the task. Assigned him by his teacher, and thinks that learning is such arduous work, will be encouraged to persevere by the example of Dr. Adam Clarke, the eminent scholar and commentator who, while a boy, was the butt and jest of his school mates, because of his dullness and inability to, comprehend the simplest-latin forms, and yet before his death was the master of all the oriental and classical languages. In like manner the youth of slim purse, and perhaps discouraged at the outlook, as he reads the story of the lives of the self-made men in the following pages, and finds they attained. Their present height with no more vantage ground than he possesses, will take courage and strive to reach like success.
Both History and Biography are valuable adjuncts in the history of the race. Each has its province, which, if not absolutely distinct, is still outlined with sufficient precision for practical purposes. History deals with the more general facts, is large in outline, stretches over great space and a long time, records the action of great masses, as states and nations, or the dealing of nation with nation. If it busies itself with individuals, it is only or chiefly in their relation to larger numbers, to communities or commonwealths. It is continuous, unbroken - or if divided into parts, then only for convenience, to abridge the whole into proportions commensurate to the time to be devoted to it, or to expand the account of single peoples by a minuter detail of their corporate action. History is thus comprehensive, general, national. It deals less with individual character than with universal laws, and with actions peculiar to men in their united capacity. But the province of Biography is much humbler, much less comprehensive, yet scarcely less important. It records individual actions, not alone in their relation to the commonwealth, but in their relations to other individuals. In its more complete form it may record, in extenso, the dealings of man with man, or of a man with a commonwealth. The point Of view is entirely different in Biography from that of History. In the latter the individual is unimportant, except in his influence on the state and nation. His personal purity and greatness have no existence for History apart from their bearing on public affairs. But in Biography the individual is all important. The facts of his life are the objects of our study, and secondarily the motives which underlie them.
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