with the suppression of the former the
latter would often become almost unintelligible.

I like the biographies of such friends of mine as Dean Stanley,
Charles Kingsley, and Baron Bunsen. But even these are deficient in
those shadows which would but help to bring out all the more clearly
the bright points in their character. We should remember the words of
Dr. Wendell Holmes: "We all want to draw perfect ideals, and all the
coin that comes from Nature's mint is more or less clipped, filed,
'sweated,' or bruised, and bent and worn, even if it was pure metal
when stamped, which is more than we can claim, I suppose, for anything
human." True, very true; and what would the departed himself say to
such biographies as are now but too common,--most flattering pictures
no doubt, but pictures without one spot or wrinkle? In Germany it was
formerly not an uncommon thing for the author of a book to write a
self-review (Selbst-Kritik), and these were generally far better than
reviews written by friends or enemies. For who knows the strong and
weak points of a book so well as the author? True; but a whole life is
more difficult to review and to criticize than a single book.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that an autobiography has many
advantages, and it might be well if every man of note, nay, every man
who has something to say for himself that he wishes posterity to know,
should say it himself. This would in time form a wonderful archive for
psychological study. Something of the kind has been done already at
Berlin in preserving private correspondences. Of course it is
difficult to keep such archives within reasonable limits, but here
again I am not afraid of self-laudation so much as of self-depreciation.

Professor Jowett, who did not write his own biography, was quite
right in saying that there is great danger of an autobiography being
rather self-depreciatory; there is certainly something so nauseous in
self-praise that most people would shrink far more from self-praise
than from self-blame. There may be some kind of subtle self-admiration
even in the fault-finding of an outspoken autobiographer; but who can
dive into those deepest depths of the human soul? To me it seems that
if an honest man takes himself by the neck, and shakes himself, he can
do it far better than anybody else, and the castigation, if well
deserved, comes certainly with a far better grace from himself than if
administered by others.

Few men, I believ