Personal Recollections | Page 2

feelings, that could be laid hold on as a private journal: and I have most
distinctly intimated to all those friends who possess any letters of mine,
that I shall regard it as a gross breach of confidence, a dishonorable,
base, and mercenary proceeding on their part, if ever they permit a
sentence addressed by me to them to pass into other hands. Indeed, to
such an extent have I felt this, that for many years past I have kept
some friends under a solemn pledge, that immediately after my death,
they will proclaim my having so guarded my correspondence, in order,
if possible, to shame the individuals from a course with regard to me
which I have never been inveigled into with regard to others. Looking
on epistolary communications as a trust not to be betrayed, I have
invariably refused to deliver to the biographers of my departed friends
any letters of theirs that I might possess: the first application for them
has always been the signal for committing the whole budget to the
flames.
This you know; and you say that the very precautions I have used will
leave my memory more completely at the mercy of ill-judging or ill-
informed survivors, who, in the absence of more authentic information,
may draw on their own invention, and do me injustice. This is the plea
that has prevailed with me now: the uncertainty of mortal life, with the
apprehension that if suddenly removed I shall become the heroine of
some strange romance, founded probably on the facts of a life by no
means deficient in remarkable incidents, but mixed up with a great deal
of fiction; and the consciousness that others may be thereby wounded,
whom I would not wish to wound--have decided me to act upon your
suggestion, and to draw out a little sketch of such matters as can alone
concern the public in any way. Into private domestic History no person
possessed of a particle of delicacy can wish to intrude. It is melancholy
to witness the prying spirit that some are but too ready to cater to, for
filthy lucre's sake: and grievous to reflect that the boasted immunity
which makes the cottage of the English peasant, no less than the palace
of the English noble, a castle--which so fences his domestic hearth that
no man may set foot within his door without his consent, or proclaim
an untruth concerning him without being legally compelled to render
compensation, should be withdrawn from his grave. I cannot tell you
how I have blushed for the living, and kindled with resentment on

behalf of the dead, when contemplating the merciless desecration of
what may truly be called the sacredness of home, in some biographical
notices.
You may therefore expect to find in these sheets a record of that mental
and spiritual discipline by which it has pleased the Lord to prepare me
for the very humble, yet not very narrow, sphere of literary usefulness
in which it was his good purpose to bid me move; with whatever of
outward things, passing events, and individual personal adventure, as it
is called, may be needful to illustrate the progress. Of living
contemporaries I shall of course not speak: of the dead no further than
as I would myself be spoken of by them, had I gone first. Public events
I shall freely discuss, and hold back nothing that bears on spiritual
subjects. Nobody shall ever need to be at the trouble of posthumously
searching out and proclaiming my opinions on any topic whatever,
apart from personalities. I will not withhold, nor disguise, nor soften
them down; and if the charge of egotism be brought, let the accusers
lay their hands upon their hearts, and declare that they would not have
sanctioned another in performing for me, as a defunct writer, the office
which nobody can fulfil half so well, because nobody can do it half so
correctly, as myself.
To commence the task, in which I earnestly implore the Father of all
mercies and Teacher of all truth to guide me, to guard me from
misstatement, to preserve me from self-seeking, and to overrule it to
the glory of his great name, I must remind you that my birthplace was
Norwich; a fine old town, distinguished for its many antiquities, the
beauty of its situation on a rising ground, interspersed with a profusion
of rich gardens, and studded with churches to the number of thirty-five,
including a majestic cathedral. Many years have elapsed since I last
beheld it, and perhaps the march of modern improvement has so
changed its features, that were I now to dwell upon my recollections of
that cherished home, they would not be recognized. But I cannot forget
the early impressions produced on my mind by