Personal Recollections Abridged, Chiefly in Parts Pertaining to Political and Other Controversies Prevalent at the Time in Great Britain

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LETTER I.

CHILDHOOD.

I have given my best consideration to the arguments by which you support the demand for a few notices of events connected with my personal recollections of the past. That which has chiefly influenced me is the consideration, urged on what I know to be just and reasonable grounds, that when it has pleased God to bring any one before the public in the capacity of an author, that person becomes in some sense public property; having abandoned the privacy from which no one ought to be forced, but which any body may relinquish; and courted the observation of the world at large. Such individuals are talked of during life, and after death become the subject, I may say the prey, of that spirit which reigned in Athens of old, and from which no child of Adam is wholly free—the desire to hear and to tell some new thing. No sooner has the person withdrawn from this mortal stage, than the pen of biography is prepared to record, and a host of curious expectants are marshalled to receive, some fragments at least of private history. I wish I could dissent from your remark, that even godliness itself is too often sought to be made a gain of in such cases. Writers who are themselves wholly unenlightened by spiritual knowledge, and uninfluenced by spiritual feeling, will take up as a good speculation what must to them be a mystery, and wrong the subject of their memorial while they injure the cause in which he labored. Even among those of better understanding in the ways of truth, we do not often meet sound judgment, calm discretion, and refined delicacy, combined with affection for the departed and zeal for the gospel. Private journals are sought out, confidential letters raked together, and a most unseemly exposure made alike of the dead and the living.

This I have always seen and lamented; and being aware that my turn would probably come to be thus exhibited, I have abstained from preserving even the slightest memoranda of events, thoughts, or feelings, that could be laid hold on as a private journal: and I have most distinctly intimated to all those friends who possess any letters of mine, that I shall regard it as a gross breach of confidence, a dishonorable, base, and mercenary proceeding on their part, if ever they permit a sentence addressed by me to them to pass into other hands. Indeed, to such an extent have I felt this, that for many years past I have kept some friends under a solemn pledge, that immediately after my death, they will proclaim my having so guarded my correspondence, in order, if possible, to shame the individuals from a course with regard to me which I have never been inveigled into with regard to others. Looking on epistolary communications as a trust not to be betrayed, I have invariably refused to deliver to the biographers of my departed friends any letters of theirs that I might possess: the first application for them has always been the signal for committing the whole budget to the flames.

This you know; and you say that the very precautions I have used will leave my memory more completely at the mercy of ill-judging or ill- informed survivors, who, in the absence of more authentic information, may draw on their own invention, and do me injustice....