The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-01-30

Judge Chase's Biogrspher and Friend.
It will be remembered that Immediately
after the death OF the late Chief Justice Chase
an effort was made by some of the dead jurists
family to prevent the preparation of his me-
moirs by Judge Warden, q Cincinnati lawyer,
then living at Washington. Some under
standing had been arrived at between the
Chief Justice and Mr. Warden in regard to these
memoirs, and the work was being done under
the Chief Justices personal ~lirection and
supervision. During his lifetime Mr.. Chase
had kept complete diary of his thoughts and
acts, ''unfaithful many times to the life he
seemed to lead in the eyes of the public" This
diary, containing many things which the
family and the Chief Justices best friends
would be anxious to suppress, was left at the
death of Judge Chase in the possession of
Judge Warden. The reason given for asking
Judge Warden to desist from task so delicate
as writing life of the late Chief Justice Was
the allegation that Warden was not qualified
to become the biographer of his friend. Upon
general principles we should doubt the
qualifications of a mere lawyer to be-
come the historian of statesman's
career; but while we should not have
hazarded an opinion upon Judge Warden's
fitness or unftness on this ground, letter.
confessedly inspired by Warden, published in
Western paper, determines the question
beyond cavil. The reasons of Mrs. Senator
Sprague's opposition to Warden, az related in
this epistle, are singularly puerile, and show,
besides, the extreme puerility of Judge
Chase's would-be biographer and friend in as
signing them as the reasons of Mrs Sprague's
action. They are that this diary shows that
Mrs. Sprague investigated the Chase family
tree by the aid of some professor of heraldry
only to find the search end in tailor's goose
and cordwainer's lapstone, and that Mr.. Chase
loved his first wife better than his second one,
the mother of Mrs. Sprague. These two incl
dents are to be important features in Warden's
life of Chase. But the letter writer goes
further, and, speaking of Mrs. Sprague,
says:-"She knew, too, that Judge Warden, if
left to himself, would paint Mr.. Ohase's por-
trait faithfully from the studies Chase himself
had jotted down in his journals, for she knew
men from whose hand a character comes forth
clear, sharp, and, may be- cruel some
times, in the fidelity Of delineation.
She knew that in the literary statue of
her father which Warden would chisel out
with his pen there would be but little toning
of whatever angularities nature may have left
in moulding him, be they either unsightly
excrescences or inharmonious hollows But,
above all, she knew that her own relations
with her illustrious father, as far as they were
of public character or had to do with his
career as a public man, would be brought out
in the same clear light and limned with the
same unrelenting fidelity to truth" And so
it appears that biography of Chase is to be
constructed after the pattern Of the recent life
of Lincoln No greater disgust has been Gre
ated in a long time than in the treatment Of
memory by men without quaifca-
tons for writing his history, who were anxious
to link their names with his. It seems that
Judge Warden is ambitious to do the Same
thing with the memory of Chase, and to write
q life of his friend with as little ''toning' of
the great mans irregularities" as was found
in the Black 'Life of Lin
coln." This sort of literary assassination
must be discouraged, or the memory of de-
ceased public men will be in greater danger
from their friendly biographers than from the
attacks of their lifelong political foes.