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Title: Painful reading
Review: Verbose, cumbersome, and hardly readable. Cleaves, like many authors of this period, must have felt compelled to overwrite this work so that it would appear "scholarly" to his contemporary readers. We have a new name for it in the 21st century: Bad. He repeatedly makes reference to characters not previously introduced. After page 200 or so he frequently lapses into what can best be described as listing, in no particular order, strings of otherwise unrelated facts. The only reason to read this book is that there are few if any complete biographies of Harrison's life available, so we must do with what we have. I can only hope that someone will produce a well written treatment of this very interesting figure in the future.
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