am in England, M. Coquelin in France,
his contemporaries--each had his _metier_. They were perfect in their
art and unalike in their art. No comparison between them can be justly
drawn. I was witness to the rise of all three of them, and have followed
them in their greatest parts throughout their most brilliant and eminent
and successful careers, and can say of each as of Mr. Jefferson:

_More than King can no man be--Whether he
rule in Cyprus or in Dreams._

There shall be Kings of Thule after kings are gone. The actor dies and
leaves no copy; his deeds are writ in water, only his name survives upon
tradition's tongue, and yet, from Betterton and Garrick to Irving, from
Macklin and Quin to Wyndham and Jefferson, how few!

Chapter the Twenty-Fourth

The Writing of Memoirs--Some Characteristics of Carl Shurz--Sam
Bowles--Horace White and the Mugwumps

I

Talleyrand was so impressed by the world-compelling character of the
memoirs he had prepared for posterity that he fixed an interdict of more
than fifty years upon the date set for their publication, and when at
last the bulky tomes made their appearance, they excited no especial
interest--certainly created no sensation--and lie for the most part
dusty upon the shelves of the libraries that contain them. For a
different reason, Henry Ward Beecher put a time limit upon the volume,
or volumes, which will tell us, among other things, all about one of the
greatest scandals of modern times; and yet how few people now recall
it or care anything about the dramatis personae and the actual facts!
Metternich, next after Napoleon and Talleyrand, was an important figure
in a stirring epoch. He, too, indicted an autobiography, which is
equally neglected among the books that are sometimes quoted and
extolled, but rarely read. Rousseau, the half insane, and Barras, the
wholly vicious, have twenty readers where Talleyrand and Metternich have
one.

From this point of view, the writing of memoirs, excepting those of
the trivial French School or gossiping letters and diaries of the
Pepys-Walpole variety, would seem an unprofitable task for a great man's
undertaking. Boswell certainly did for Johnson what the thunderous old
doctor could not have done for himself. Nevertheless, from the days
of Caesar to the days of Sherman and Lee, the captains of military and
senatorial and literary industry have regaled themselves, if they have
not edified the public, by t