More­over, I, on my side, re­quire of ev­ery writer, first or last, a sim­ple and sin­cere ac­count of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such ac­count as he would send to his kin­dred from a dis­tant land; for if he has lived sin­cerely, it must have been in a dis­tant land to me.