Terribly Intimate Portraits

"I HAVE endeavoured in writing and compiling this book, to emphasize not only actual deeds and historical facts, but to aspire to an even higher goal-to conjure to life for a few brief moments the "Souls" of my subjects, stark in all their deathless beauty. What task could be nobler than to delve in these vivid famous lives and bring to light, perhaps, some hitherto undiscovered motive-some delicate and radiant action which so far has escaped the common historian and lain unplucked like a w...