2 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



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 biography 

 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, he makes himself re- 

 sponsible ; in the latter, he allows the publication 

 of a mass of more or less fulsome inaccuracies 

 for which he will be held responsible by those 

 who are familiar with the prevalent art of 

 self-advertisement. On the whole, it may be 

 better to get over the " burlesque of being 

 employed in this manner" and do the thing 

 himselfc 



It was by reflections of this kind that, some years 

 ago, I was led to write and permit the publication 

 of the subjoined sketch. 



I was born about eight o'clock in the morning 

 on the 4th of May, 1825, at Baling, which M 

 that time, as quiet a little country village as could 

 be found within half-a-dozen miles of Hyde Park 

 Corner. Now it is a suburb of London with, I be- 

 lieve, 30,000 inhabitants. My father was one of 

 the masters in a large semi-public school which at 



