Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/104

The happiness of writing an autobiography which is going to be published and read is a simple and comprehensible emotion. Before books were invented, men carved on stone something of a vainglorious nature about themselves, and expected their subjects, or their neighbours, to decipher it. But there is a deeper and subtler gratification in writing an autobiography which seeks no immediate public, and contents itself with the expression of a profound and indulged egotism. Marie Bashkirtseff has been reproached for making the world her father confessor; but the reproach seems hardly justified in view of the fact that the "Journal," although "meant to be read," was never thrust by its author upon readers, and was not published until six years after her death. She was, although barely out of girlhood, as complex as Mrs. Asquith is simple and robust. She possessed, moreover, gen-