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Excerpt from Roman Autobiography: Particularly Augustine's Confessions As no book perfectly conceals the traits of its writer, there is an indefinite sense in which all literature may be said to be autobiographical. Diaries, journals and letters at once occur as strongly marked examples. It is a short step from these to tales of adventure and travel, to histories of campaigns written by generals who led them, to biographies revealing the describer quite as clearly as the person he describes, and only another step to meditations and lyric verse, while a last step may bring us to books in general, inasmuch as in some degree, no matter how faint, they all mirror the traits of their composers. Yet all literature, though in this general sense autobiographical, is not autobiography, which is but a small part of literature. While we may not be able to frame a perfect definition that shall include autobiographies only, we are none the less assured that autobiography is a distinct thing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.