It had been intended that General Charles Grey, the Queen's Private Secretary, should write the Prince's Life, and a first volume was in course of being prepared, which dealt with the early years and marriage of the Prince. The General soon found that he had neither the leisure nor the strength to carry out the work, and I was aware that the question how this was to be done had closely occupied Her Majesty's thoughts. I was, however, taken greatly by surprise when a letter from Helps reached me in my holiday retreat in North Wales, in which he told me that the Queen had approved of a suggestion he had made, that I should be asked to undertake the task. With his letter he sent for my perusal, through Miss Alice Helps, who was then staying with us, a memorandum giving an outline of his ideas how the work should be carried out. "It will be a very great thing to do," the memorandum said, "covering many of the most secret transactions of the reign. General Grey's book is merely the life of the Prince as a child, and up to his marriage. It now becomes part of the history of England, and also of foreign States. A special duty will be to judge what documents shall be published, taking it for granted that such a work cannot long be kept secret.... The more I see of the Prince's doings and sayings, the more I am struck with their largeness and extent." The memorandum goes on to offer assistance (which, as it turned out, I never used) in looking up and selecting materials and in furnishing political information, ending with the assurance, that "after seeing me, Her Majesty would be most confidential, and would trust everything to me. H. M. would much like Mr Martin to undertake the work, and he would find no difficulty in getting her to assent to any of his wishes in regard to it." Reflection satisfied me that, as the event proved, Mr Helps had not fully appreciated either the greatness of the scale on which a biography, that would in fact be a history, must be constructed, or the amount of time and labour which it would demand. Much honoured as I felt by the proposal, I shrank from the task; and in the full sense of my own unfitness for it, and in the hope that it would not be further pressed upon me, I replied to Mr Helps as follows:-- _"27th August 1866._