BY C. L. R. SASTRY, B. Sc.

There is a good case for writing one’s own life-history: it would be an eye-opener to many. Every man should be compelled to tell his life's story. It does not matter if he tells it ill. Literary craftsmanship is not necessary. It is well, of course, if it is present; but one may dispense with it. An illiterate man is not a bad one to recite his experiences, to tell the bead-roll of the pains and pleasures that fell to his lot in his sojourn through life. Sometimes it draws an additional charm of its own by being rough-and-ready and unalloyed with the doubtful virtue of skilful narration. There is more truth in it, at any rate: there is no glossing over discreditable events: there is no attempt to tell a fine tale, with the first person singular always in the forefront: there is no sifting and arranging of material under glittering heads: everything is natural, just as it occurred, with the good and the bad cheek-by-jowl, and, if anything, the bad preponderating. There is a notion that most men's lives are dull and, therefore, are not worth going over with the reader: there is dullness enough in them to weigh the whole universe under. The notion is a wrong one. Life is not full of joy, it is true, and success does not lead on to success in a neverending chain; happiness is only for the few and all men are not born equal; but when the worst has been said, "when all the wine has been drunk and but the lees remain," even then all is not over, a substratum of liveliness is left, and this, added to a little philosophy, makes all the difference, and none is bereft of hope till the very last breath of his life. The lives of the unfortunate, the apparently insignificant, are in fact much more interesting than those of the obviously successful. Ill-luck is not without its own relish. After all, there is no picturesqueness in a straight and level road: the beauty belongs to the winding path. Variety is the spice of life; and the unexpected is not less its charm. A successful man's life should be told as well as that of an unsuccessful man; a bad man's no less than a good one's. All are equally full of instruction. And, after all, who knows but that the so-called useless man of today may not be the idol of that final and most impartial judge of real merit–posterity? Have we not heard instances of such a thing having happened before? And what is there to prevent its happening hereafter?

Autobiography need not be in a set-form: it need not be confined to a single vehicle of expression; it can reveal itself, like Providence, in a variety of ways. There is scope for personal touches even in fiction; and, though they may not be complete, they are enough to satisfy the curiosity of the reader and supply him with material to form a reasonable judgment of the author. After all, whatever a man's external accomplishments may be, it is his inner self that gives the key to his real estimate. The two are not separate entities but run into each other imperceptibly; it is as if they were tethered in neighbouring stalls and a kick would, at any time, bring down the partition. Even in the most public acts, one's inner life is reflected. I do not mean, however, that a man's public life should be judged by his private life; what is suggested is that where his outward self alone is not sufficient to explain his actions, recourse should be had to his inner life, whenever and wherever this can be reasonably probed, to supply the data. It is just here where autobiography becomes useful, where it bears a revealing light. A man's history, in the best of circumstances, cannot be all in all: the most it can do is to supplement what otherwise may be but a meagre estimate.

In a man's letters also we can pierce through the veil of his being: it is here, if anywhere, that he drops off the dress-coat of conventional life and appears en deshabille: he is here himself, with all his vices and virtues in bold relief. He cares not for any audience, for applause from the pit and stalls, nor does he appeal to the gallery in a last desperate attempt at mock-shows and make-believe. He is not talking at posterity. He is communing with an intimate, a friend in his retreat to whom he may whisper "solitude is sweet." It is a case of mind opening on to mind and heart talking to heart. There are no intimacies so private that he does not divulge to his friend: he is curiously frank and is in his most natural vein: his soul, he shows, is still a child by the sea, picking up shells; in fine, he is in his most primeval and aboriginal element. Most men, when the outer layer of affectation is removed, are simple at heart: their souls are fair,

It is because they are not often allowed to be free, or when they are free they are so woefully misunderstood, that they appear so complex: and habit makes them inured to this their prison-house, where the key is turned upon the free play of their buoyant spirits: they even appear comfortable in such a restricted environment, like

There is yet another way of pulling aside the curtain just a little and exhibiting the rare show of a man's private and inner life. A man, unless he is born dumb, reveals himself, be it never so slightly, in conversation- "that great international congress," as Stevenson calls it.

"In short" (says he) "the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in the world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures, It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our education, finds and fosters our friendship, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health."

For perfect conversation the company must be limited. It must be conducted only among intimates. If authenticated reports of some men's conversation could be had, they would shed a flood of light upon their real selves. Dr. Johnson, for example, is known more by reports of his conversation, faithfully conveyed through the medium of Boswell's admiring pen, than by all his books put together. Good talkers are unfortunately rare, and even of these we know not all. Hazlitt was an excellent talker, and so was Charles Lamb. We know the latter more and love him the better because of reports of his talks and personal characteristics that have come down to us from his friends. It is an irreparable misfortune that we have not been rewarded by similar reports of Hazlitt’s powers: Hazlitt that was as fine, if not a finer, talker than Lamb himself. Hazlitt both loved good talk and was an excellent hand at the game himself. His brilliant descriptions of his friends’ conversational abilities are unforgettable;

"Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on subjects of poetry (his own out of the question)–Coleridge well on every subject and Godwin on none. Mrs. Montague’s conversation is as fine-cut as her features and I like to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. What she says leaves a flavour, like fine green tea. Hunt’s is like champagne and Northcote’s like anchory sandwiches. Haydon’s is like a game at trap-ball, Lamb's like snap-dragon; and my own (if I do not mistake the matter) is not much unlike a game at nine-pins."

Hazlitt was one of the most irremediably unfortunate people that ever existed: he was not judged fairly in his life-time, and even now, people are loth to give him his due. The conjecture is not highly fanciful that if portraits of the man as he revealed himself in conversation to his favourite friends, among whom Lamb was foremost, had come down to us, the world would have been less harsh in his estimate of him.

After all, a man is known by his small actions no less than by his great ones: he is the sum of all that he is daily and not merely what he is at rare and inspired moments. He must be judged not only by the peaks of his achievements but also by the depths of his degradation; and the truth, no doubt, would lie somewhere in the middle. There is a good deal to be said for keeping a private journal and for recording passing thoughts. Pepys did a great thing when he gave posterity his personal diary of many volumes. Many of us could do the same, or nearly the same, if we too kept a diary and recorded assiduously all that we did every day of our lives. Exaggeration notwithstanding, there is something in the idea, after all. Life, at best, is very short: most of us are not known even while we live. As Hazlitt says:

"It is not surprising that we are forgotten so soon after we quit this mortal stage; we are scarcely noticed while we are in it. It is not merely that our names are not known in China; they have hardly been heard of in the next street."

We are here today and are no more the next; but the great wheels of the world will ever roll on. Why not, then, take stock of the present and make it imperishable? Is it not a pity that by far the greater part of our existence should be lost in what Sir Thomas Browne calls "the uncomfortable night of nothing?" Mr. H. W. Nevinson, in the preface to his autobiography, which he calls Changes and Chances, gives his excuse for it in the following beautiful words:

"It is nearly incredible that all the vital experiences of today will by tomorrow have become a blank of nonentity, like the sums a child washes from a slate, irrevocable as the million ages before man made himself. It seems an extravagant waste, a lamentable squandering. And so a book of memories like this becomes an attempt to clutch at transient time before it whirls into oblivion. It is a fond endeavour to retard that hurrying chariot, to grasp the vanishing shadow, and with Faust to cry to the moment: Verweile doch, au bist so schon. Or, if the moment be not fair but grisly, still one would not have it blotted out for ever."

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