of poor Pepys himself. The man who, like Goldsmith, is so running over with jealousy that he is forced to avow it openly, seems to be a sort of excuse to us for cherishing a less abundant stock of similar sentiment. This is one occult source of pleasure in reading autobiography. We have a delicate shade of conscious superiority in listening to the vicarious confession. 'I am sometimes troubled,' said Boswell, 'by a disposition to stinginess.' 'So am I,' replied Johnson, 'but I do not tell it.' That is our attitude in regard to the autobiographer. After all, we say to ourselves, this distinguished person is such a one as we are; and even more so, for he cannot keep it to himself. The conclusion is not quite fair, it may be, when applied to the case of a diarist like Pepys, who, poor man, meant only to confide his thoughts to his note-books. But it applies more or less to every genuine autobiographer—to every man, that is, who has deliberately written down a history of his own feelings and thoughts for the benefit of posterity. The prince of all autobiographers in this full sense of the word—the man who represents the genuine type in its fullest realisation—is undoubtedly Rousseau. The 'Confessions' may certainly be regarded as not only one of the most remarkable, but as in parts one of the most repulsive, books ever written. Yet, one must add, it is also one of the most fascinating. Rousseau starts by declaring that he is undertaking a task which has had no precedent, and will have no imitators—the task of showing a man in all the truth of nature, and that man himself. How far he is perfectly sincere in this, or in the declaration which immediately follows, that no one of his readers will be able to pronounce himself a better man than Jean Jacques Rousseau, is a question hardly to be answered. The avowal is at any rate characteristic of the true autobiographer. It reflects the subtle vanity which, taking now the guise of perfect sincerity, and now that of deep humility, encourages us to colour as highly as possible both our vices and our virtues as equally entitling us to the sympathies of mankind: that strange and Protean sensibility which we are puzzled to classify either as an excessive craving for admiration, or a mere morbid desire for self-abasement. Certainly in Rousseau it sometimes shows itself in a shamelessness which it is very hard to forgive unless we will admit the ambiguous and well-worn plea of partial insanity. The pleasure—always, it must be granted, a very questionable one—of recognising our own failings in our superiors, passes too often into sheer disgust or shuddering horror at the spectacle of genius grovelling in the mire. But Rousseau represents an abnormal development of all the qualities of his class; and this, the ugliest amongst the autobiographic instincts, is hardly developed out of proportion to the rest. And, therefore, if we cannot quite forgive, we are not altogether alienated. We read, for example, one