THE autobiographer, or at any rate the writer of the
type of autobiography on which I am engaged, need not
apologise for being egotistical. If he is not that he is
nothing. He must start with the assumption that people
want to hear about him and to hear it from himself. Fur-
ther, he must be genuinely and actively interested in his
own life and therefore write about it willingly and with
zest. If you get anywhere near the position of an auto-
biographer, "invitus," addressing a reader, "invitum,"
the game is up.

It would, then, be an absurdity to pretend to avoid
egotism.

It would be almost as futile to apologise for being trivial.
All details of human life are interesting, or can be made
interesting, especially if they can be shown to be con-
tributory to the development of the subject on the
Anatomy-table. The elements that contributed to the
building up of the man under observation are sure to be
worth recording.

The autobiographer who is going to succeed with his
task must set down whatever he believes went to the mak-
ing of his mind and soul, and of that highly composite
product which constitutes a human being. Nothing is

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