. . .ry to say, was devoted to novels, but not those of a trashy sort. I read all of Bulwer's then published, Cooper's, Marryat's, Scott's, Washington Irving's works, Lever's, and many others that I do not now remember."

Grant was not a shining light in his school days, nor indeed in his life until the Civil War, and at first sight he is not a striking example of a great man influenced by books. Yet who can deny that the fruit of that early reading is to be found in his "Memoirs," in which a man of action, unused to writing, and called upon to narrate great events, discovers an easy adequate style? There is a dangerous kind of conjecture in which many biographers indulge when they try to relate logically the scattered events of a man's life. A conjectured relation is set down as a proved or unquestioned relation. I have said something about this in [Footnote: See John Macy's Guide to Reading, Chapter VIII.] writing on biography, and I do not wish to violate my own teac. . . Read More