The biographical novel which sought, with much graphic painting to delineate England in the time of King John. I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections to the task have ever been many and various. Biography, where honest and true, is no doubt one of the most fascinating and instructive phases of literature; but it requires a higher Intelligence than any (however intimate) friend of a man to do it fairly and fully; so many matters of character and circumstance must ever be to him unknown, and therefore will be by him unrecorded.