"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.
French literature is especially rich in a class of biographic memoirs, of which we have few counterparts in English.