John Smith's autobiography is commonly
John Smith's design for an equestrian statue of himself,--very fine,
certainly, and as much like him as like Marcus Aurelius. Saint
Augustine, kneeling to confess, has an eye to the picturesque, and does
it in _pontificalibus_, resolved that Domina Grundy shall think all the
better of him. Rousseau cries, "I will bare my heart to you!" and,
throwing open his waistcoat, makes us the confidants of his dirty
linen. Montaigne, indeed, reports of himself with the impartiality of a
naturalist, and Boswell, in his letters to Temple, shows a maudlin
irretentiveness; but is not old Samuel Pepys, after all, the only man
who spoke to himself of himself with perfect simplicity, frankness, and
unconsciousness?--a creature unique as the dodo,--a solitary specimen,
to show that it was possible for Nature to indulge in so odd a whimsey!
An autobiography is good for nothing, unless the author tell us in it
precisely what he meant not to tell. A man who can say what he thinks
of another to his face is a disagreeable rarity; but one who could look
his own Ego straight in the eye, and pronounce unbiased judgment, were
worthy of Sir Thomas Browne's Museum.
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