are not known even to his most intimate friends, still less to the
stranger who so often undertakes the biography. The reader of an
autobiography has this additional advantage, that the writer must be
unconsciously revealing himself all along, merely by his way of telling
things.

With regard to the great question of frankness and reserve, I hold that
the reader has a fair claim to hear the truth, as a biography is not
avowedly a romance, but at the same time that it is right to maintain a
certain reserve. My rule shall be to say nothing that can hurt the
living, and the memory of the dead shall be dealt with as tenderly as
may be compatible with a truthful account of the influences that have
impelled me in one direction or another.

I have all the more kindly feelings towards the dead, that when these
pages appear I shall be one of themselves, and therefore unable to
defend my own memory as they are unable to defend theirs.

The notion of being a dead man is not entirely displeasing to me. If the
dead are defenceless, they have this compensating advantage, that nobody
can inflict upon them any sensible injury; and in beginning a book which
is not to see the light until I am lying comfortably in my grave, with
six feet of earth above me to deaden the noises of the upper world, I
feel quite a new kind of security, and write with a more complete
freedom from anxiety about the quality of the work than has been usual
at the beginning of other manuscripts.

Nevertheless, the clear and steady contemplation of death (I have been
looking the grim king in the face for the last hour) may produce a
paralyzing effect upon a man by making his life's work seem very small