Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Robert Walsh
| Monticello Apr. 5. 23. |
do not think a biography should be written, or at least not published, during the life of the person the subject of it. it is impossible that the writer’s delicacy should permit him to speak as freely of the faults or errors of a living, as of a dead character. there is still however a better reason. the letters of a person, especially of one whose business has been chiefly transacted by letters, form the only full and genuine journal of his life; and few can let them go out of their own hands while they live. a life written after these hoards become opened to investigation must supercede any previous one