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 

 correspondent here refers are the repairs and 

 improvements of the episcopal seat at Auckland. 

 I doubt if the great apologist, 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 

 whatever circumstances might be taken in. But 

 the giod 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 photo- 

 grapher lay in the womb of the distant future, and 



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