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Hauff’s book consists of a series of papers, which are but loosely connected. In certain passages we hear nothing of the autobiographer. The Suavian writer apparently could digest the Diabolical only in homeopathic doses. His Satan, moreover, is a very youthful and quite harmless devil. He is nothing but a personified echo of the author’s student-days.
An autobiographer, too, exposes himself to the charge of egotism, but I must run the risk of that, endeavouring to avoid the scathing criticism of him who wrote: "The egotist . . . . . . . Whose I's and Me's are scattered in his talk, Thick as the pebbles on a gravel walk."
With material of this sort at hand, the autobiographer sets to work to construct a fair and gracious monument, being easily persuaded that it would be a barbarous act to mar its symmetry by the introduction of loathly and misshapen blocks like those which Cardan, had he been the artist, would have chosen first of all.
He must start with the assumption that people want to hear about him and to hear it from himself. Further, 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 autobiographer, "invitus," addressing a reader, "invitum," the game is up.
So long as she uses words correctly, she should be granted the privilege of using them freely, and not be expected to confine herself to a vocabulary true to her lack of sight and hearing. In her style, as in what she writes about, we must concede to the artist what we deny to the autobiographer.
The ingenious old playwright's memoirs are full of gossip concerning that poor old Venice, which is now no more; and the worthy autobiographer, Casanova, also gives much information about things that had best not be known.
And here our autobiographer abruptly turns aside from the incidents of his own story to sketch the antecedents, existing condition and character of the politics and politicians of the time of his first entry into public life.
The autobiographer cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth, though he may tell nothing but the truth, and the Recording Angel never lets his book go out of his own hands. As for myself, I would say to my friends, in the Oriental phrase, "Live forever!" Yes, live forever, and I, at least, shall not have to wrong your memories by my imperfect record and unsatisfying commentary.
The blow on the head, dealt to him by some French soldier at the sack of Brescia in 1512, may have made him a stutterer, but it assuredly did not muddle his wits; nevertheless, as the result of this knock, or for some other cause, he grew up into a churlish, uncouth, and ill-mannered man, and, if the report given of him by Papadopoli at the end of his history be worthy of credit, one not to be entirely trusted as an autobiographer in the account he himself gives of his early days in the preface to one of his works.
'He has declared, adds the complacent autobiographer, 'his resolution to persevere on the next vacancy. All this time his great work was slowly advancing.