and his vices, to even his best friend."

An autobiography may be true so far as it goes; but in
communicating only part of the truth, it may convey an impression
that is really false. It may be a disguise--sometimes it is an
apology--exhibiting not so much what a man really was, as what he
would have liked to be. A portrait in profile may be correct, but
who knows whether some scar on the off-cheek, or some squint in
the eye that is not seen, might not have entirely altered the
expression of the face if brought into sight? Scott, Moore,
Southey, all began autobiographies, but the task of continuing
them was doubtless felt to be too difficult as well as delicate,
and they were abandoned.

French literature is especially rich in a class of biographic
memoirs, of which we have few counterparts in English. We refer
to their MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR, such as those of Sully, De Comines,
Lauzun, De Retz, De Thou, Rochefoucalt, &c., in which we have
recorded an immense mass of minute and circumstantial information
relative to many great personages of history. They are full of
anecdotes illustrative of life and character, and of details which
might be called frivolous, but that they throw a flood of light on
the social habits and general civilisation of the periods to which
they relate. The MEMOIRES of Saint-Simon are something more: they
are marvellous dissections of character, and constitute the most
extraordinary collection of anatomical biography that has ever
been brought together.

Saint-Simon might almost be regarded in the light of a posthumous
court-spy of Louis the Fourteenth. He was possessed by a passion