The autobiographies are the best biographies. No doubt, self-love and
some cowardly sensitiveness will operate on a man in speaking of his
own doings; but all such drawbacks will still leave his narrative far
more trustworthy, as regards the truth of character, than that of any
other man: and this is more emphatically the case in proportion to
the genius of the writer; for genius is naturally bold and true, the
antipodes of anything like hypocrisy, and prone to speak out,--if it
were but in defiance of hatred or misrepresentation, even though the
better and more philosophic spirit were wanting. We should have
better and more instructive autobiographies, if distinguished men
were not deterred by the self-denying ordinance so generally
accepted, that it is not becoming in any one to speak frankly of
himself or his own convictions. We have no longer any of the strong,
wayward egotists,--the St. Augustines, the Montaignes, the Rousseaus,
the Mirabeaus, the Byrons; even the Cobbetts have died out. But the
Carlyles and the Emersons preserve amongst us still the evidences of
a stronger time.
There are two sorts of biographies, which may be described, in a
rough way, as biographies of thought and biographies of action.
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