There is a Highland proverb which says, that if
the best man's faults were written on his forehead he would pull
his bonnet over his brow. "There is no man," said Voltaire, "who
has not something hateful in him--no man who has not some of the
wild beast in him. But there are few who will honestly tell us
how they manage their wild beast." Rousseau pretended to unbosom
himself in his 'Confessions;' but it is manifest that he held back
far more than he revealed. Even Chamfort, one of the last men to
fear what his contemporaries might think or say of him, once
observed:- "It seems to me impossible, in the actual state of
society, for any man to exhibit his secret heart, the details of
his character as known to himself, and, above all, his weaknesses
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.
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