But the good bishop lived in an age when a man
might write books and yet be permitted to keep his private existence
to himself; in the pre-Boswellian [2] epoch, when the germ of the
photographer lay concealed in the distant future, and the interviewer
who pervades our age was an unforeseen, indeed unimaginable, birth of
time.
At present, the most convinced believer in the aphorism "Bene qui
latuit, bene vixit,"[3] is not always able to act up to it. An
importunate person informs him that his portrait is about to be
published and will be accompanied by a biography which the importunate
person proposes to write. The sufferer knows what that means; either he
undertakes to revise the "biography" or he does not. In the former case,
he makes himself responsible; in the latter, he allows the publication
of a mass of more or less fulsome inaccuracies for which he will be
held responsible by those who are familiar with the prevalent art of
self-advertisement. On the whole, it may be better to get over the
"burlesque of being employed in this manner" and do the thing himself.
It was by reflections of this kind that, some years ago, I was led to
write and permit the publication of the subjoined sketch.
I was born about eight o'clock in the morning on the 4th of May, 1825,
at Ealing, which was, at that time, as quiet a little country village as
could be found within a half-a-dozen miles of Hyde Park Corner.
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