write it really as it was. A man's peculiarities, and even his
vices, should be mentioned, because they mark his character." But
there is always this difficulty,--that while minute details of
conduct, favourable or otherwise, can best be given from personal
knowledge, they cannot always be published, out of regard for the
living; and when the time arrives when they may at length be told,
they are then no longer remembered. Johnson himself expressed
this reluctance to tell all he knew of those poets who had been
his contemporaries, saying that he felt as if "walking upon ashes
under which the fire was not extinguished."

For this reason, amongst others, we rarely obtain an unvarnished
picture of character from the near relatives of distinguished men;
and, interesting though all autobiography is, still less can we
expect it from the men themselves. In writing his own memoirs, a
man will not tell all that he knows about himself. Augustine was
a rare exception, but few there are who will, as he did in his
'Confessions,' lay bare their innate viciousness, deceitfulness,
and selfishness. There is a Highland proverb which says, that if
the best man's faults were written on his forehead he would pull
his bonnet over his brow. "There is no man," said Voltaire, "who
has not something hateful in him--no man who has not some of the
wild beast in him. But there are few who will honestly tell us
how they manage their wild beast." Rousseau pretended to unbosom
himself in his 'Confessions;' but it is manifest that he held back
far more than he revealed. Even Chamfort, one of the last men to
fear what his contemporaries might think or say of him, once
observed:- "It seems to me impossible, in the actual state of
society, for any man to exhibit his secret heart, the details of
his character as known to himself, and, above all, his weaknesses