e. They must also for
the most part be dead, so that their susceptibilities may not be wounded
by a too free allusion to their doings. Further, the anecdotes told of
them must not be to their disadvantage in any way which would wound the
susceptibilities of the living. These mortifying restrictions are, for
all those who respect them, a deathblow to the most entertaining,
perhaps the most instructive, part of what the memoir-writer has to
tell. During the last ten years of his life the late Lord Wemyss amused
himself by writing memoirs of his own distinguished activities, and on
repeated occasions, when I stayed with him for a week in Scotland, he
asked me to run my eye over a number of chapters with a view to seeing
if any passages which might give offense had been left in them. A
certain number of such had been already struck out by himself, but I
very soon found that a considerable number remained. "God bless my
soul!" he exclaimed when I pointed them out to him. "You are perfectly
right. Let me have a blue pencil instantly." Lady P----, a witty woman
of the widest European experience, attempted a similar task. She, too,
asked me to look at what she had written, deploring the fact that all
the most amusing parts had passed through the fire to the Moloch of an
almost excessive caution. Here again I pointed out to the writer
passages which had escaped the sacrifice, and which the living would
certainly, even if not justifiably, resent--which they would, indeed,
resent in exact proportion to their accuracy.

An example of the results which may be achieved by a memoir-writer who
neglects this caution is provided by Augustus Hare. Hare was a man
possessed of many accomplishments. Like Hamilton Aide, he was a very
remarkable artist. He was also a great teller of stories, and a master
in the craft of improving whatever truth there might be in them. By
birth and otherwise he was well and widely connected, and was a familiar
figure in many of the best-known houses in England. He was an
indefatigable writer of memoirs, and of all such writers he was
incomparably the most intrepid. The possibility of offending others,
even though they might be his hosts and hostesses, had no terrors for
him. I was once staying at a country house in Sussex when a new book by
him appeared, and had just been sent down from Mudie's. I had twice seen
its back on a table, and meant to have looked at it in my bedroom before
dressing for dinner; but wh