A distinguished biographer of our time, Sir Harold Nicholson, once remarked of his art, "Biography is always a collaboration between the author and his subject; always there must be the reflection of one temperament in the mirror of another." Nothing so well illustrates the truth of this principle than the "collaboration" over half a lifetime between Dumas Malone and his subject, Thomas Jefferson. In his liberal and humane values, in his graciousness and sensibility, in the methodical discipline of fact, the touch of philosophy, the felicity of style, the dominant sense of order, form, and proportion given to his life and work, above all in his ability to conduct himself as a democrat while practicing the manners of a highly civilized human being—in all this, and more, Dumas has sensitively reflected the mind and temperament of Mr. Jefferson.

The danger in such a collaboration, of course, is that the author will confuse himself with the subject, intruding his own prejudices and opinions, forcing his own personality into the book, until it becomes more autobiography than biography. But Dumas has always been much too good a scholar—and much too strong a person himself—to fall into that error. The collaboration was founded on a basic sympathy, a harmony of ideas and feelings; and it is the genius of the great biography we are saluting this evening as it is, indeed, of almost every other. Sympathy is properly an aid, not an obstacle, to understanding. It is necessary to full, fair, and faithful representation. No one, as far as I am aware, has ever described Dumas' work as a "warts and all" life of Jefferson. And it is not that, for which we are grateful. Neither