I can enumerate in my memory distinctly half-a-dozen little-known men whom I have known, and could with time recall far many more, compared to whose lives my uneventful and calm career has been as that of the mole before the eagle's. Yet not one of their lives will ever be written, which is certainly a pity. The practice of writing real autobiographies is rapidly ceasing in this our age, when it is bad form to be egoistic or to talk about one's self, and we are almost shocked in revising those chronicled in the _Causeries de Lundi_ of Sainte-Beuve. Nowadays we have good gossipy reminiscences of _other_ people, in which the writer remains as unseen as the operator of a Punch exhibition in his _schwassel_ box, while he displays his puppets. I find no fault with this--_a chacun sa maniere_. But it is very natural under such influences that men whose own lives are full of and inspired with their _own_ deeds will not write them on the model of Benvenuto Cellini. One of the greatest generals of modern times, Lord Napier of Magdala, told me that he believed I was the only person to whom he had ever fully narrated his experiences of the siege of Lucknow. He seemed to be surprised at having so forgotten himself. In ancient Viking days the hero made his debut in every society with a "_Me voici_, _mes enfants_! Listen if you want to be astonished!" and proceeded to tell how he had smashed the heads of kings, and mashed the hearts of maidens, and done great deeds all round. It was bad form--and yet we should never have known much about Regner Lodbrog but for such a canticle. If I, in this work, have not quite effaced myself, as good taste demands, let it be remembered that if I had, at the time of writing, distinctly felt that it would be printed as put down, there would, most certainly, have been much less of "me" visible, and the dead- levelled work would have escaped much possible shot of censure. It was a little in a spirit of defiant reaction that I resolved to let it be published as it is, and risk the chances. As Uncle Toby declared that, after all, a mother must in some kind of a way be a relation to her own child, so it still appears to me that to write an autobiography the author must say _something_ about himself; but it is a great and very popular _tour de force_ to quite avoid doing this, and all art of late years has run to merely skilfully overcoming difficulties and avoiding interesting _motives_ or subjects. It may be, therefore, that in days to come, my book will be regarded with some interest, as a curious relic of a barbarous age, and written in a style long passed away-- "When they sat with ghosts on a stormy shore, And spoke in a tongue which men speak no more; Living in wild and wondrous ways, In the ancient giant and goblin days."