When Lackington was about forty-five years of age, and had made a considerable fortune in the bookselling trade, he wrote and published a singular book, in which he narrated the principal events in his life, under the form of "Letters to a Friend." This book bears the title "Memoirs and Confessions," and is certainly one of the most remarkable autobiographies ever presented to the world. What portion of its contents may be referred to by the term "memoirs" as distinguished from "confessions" it is impossible to say, but certain it is that there are many things in the book which its author would have done well to blot as soon as they were written, and of which he was no doubt heartily sorry and ashamed in after-life. Among the worst of these were his strictures and reflections on the Wesleyan Methodists, to whom he had belonged in early life, and from whom he had received no small benefit, temporal as well as spiritual. When the second edition of his memoirs came to be printed in 1803, his character had undergone a happy change. He then saw things in a different light, and made full and complete acknowledgment of the faults which marked the first edition; expressed in very decided albeit very conventional terms his faith in Christian truth, and his debt of obligation to the religious people whom he had so sadly maligned. But words were not enough to satisfy his ardent, thorough-going nature. His benefactions to the Wesleyan Society were very considerable, and he seemed toward the close of his life to have found great satisfaction in making the best use of the ample means at his disposal. With all his faults he was an estimable man, honest, truthful, and generous. He was never ashamed of his lowly birth and humble apprenticeship, nor turned his back on his poor relations, but ever sought them out and helped them when he had the power to do so. His success in business was owing to his shrewd common-sense, his rare insight into character, his good judgment as to the public taste and requirements, his capital method of assorting and classifying his stock and strict keeping of accounts, his courageous yet prudent purchases, and his strict adherence to a few sound maxims of economy and thrift. None but a man of original and uncommon powers of mind could have launched out on new speculations and adventures as Lackington did with the same uniform and certain success, and none but a man of good sense and lofty feeling would have been proof against the ill effects which so often attend on success. There is a touch of vanity in his memoirs, it is true, but it is not the vanity of a man who is vain and does not know it; he is quite conscious of his egotism, and indulges in it with thorough good-humor as a hearty joke. He was rather fond of display, kept a town-house and a country-house when he could afford it, and set up a "chariot," as the phrase went in those days, and liveried servants.