AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



And when I consider, in one view, the many things .... which 

 I have upon my hands, I feel the burlesque of being employed in this 

 manner at my time of life. But, in another view, and taking in all 

 circumstances, these things, as trifling as they may appear, no less 

 than things of greater importance, seem to be put upon me to do. . . . 

 — Bishop Butler to the Duchess of Somerset. 



The "many things" to which the Duchess's corre- 

 spondent here refers are the repairs and improvements of 

 the episcopal seat at Auckland. I doubt if the great apolo- 

 gist, greater in nothing than in the simple dignity of his 

 character, would have considered the writing an account of 

 himself as a thing which could be put upon him to do what- 

 ever circumstances might be taken in. But the good bishop 

 lived in an age when a man might write books and yet be 

 permitted to keep his private existence to himself; in the pre- 

 Boswellian epoch, when the germ of the photographer lay in 

 the womb of the distant future, and the interviewer who 

 pervades our age was an unforeseen, indeed, unimaginable, 

 birth of time. 



At present, the most convinced believer in the aphorism 

 " Bene qui latuit, bene vixit," is not always able to act up to 

 it. An importunate person informs him that his portrait is 

 about to be published and will be accompanied by a biog- 

 raphy which the importunate person proposes to write. The 

 sufferer knows what that means; either he undertakes to 

 revise the "biography" or he does not. In the former case. 



