My Life As An Author

I have often been asked to prepare an autobiography, but my objections to the task have ever been many and various. To one urgent appeal I sent this sonnet of refusal, which explains itself:--

"You bid me write the story of my life,

And draw what secrets in my memory dwell

From the dried fountains of her failing well,

With commonplaces mixt of peace and strife,

And such small facts, with good or evil rife,

As happen to us all: I have no tale

Of thrilling force or enterprise to tell,--

Nothing the blood to fire, the cheek to pale:

My life is in my books: the record there,

A truthful photograph, is all I choose

To give the world of self; nor will excuse

Mine own or others' failures: glad to spare

From blame of mine, or praise, both friends and foes,

Leaving unwritten what God only knows."

In fact I always rejected the proposal (warned by recent volumes of pestilential reminiscences) and would none of it; not only from its apparent vainglory as to the inevitable extenuation of one's own faults and failures in life, and the equally certain amplification of self-registered virtues and successes,--but even still more from the mischief it might occasion from a petty record of commonplace troubles and trials, due to the "changes and chances of this mortal life," to the casual mention or omission of friends or foes, to the influence of circumstances and surroundings, and to other revelations—hether pleasant or the reverse--of matters merely personal, and therefore more of a private than a public character.