Memoirs of a working man

Thomas Carter

Sujets

• Working class

Informations

• Publié par: les_archives_du_savoir
• Nombre de lectures: 24
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

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^^^mLIBRARYUCSBME M I R S
A WORKING MAN.
IF I ONE SOUL IMPROVE, I HAVE LIVED VAIN.NOT IN
LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT & Co., LUDGATE STREET.
1845.Street.and Son*. StamfordLondon ; Printedby William Clowes:
INTRODUCTION.
BY THE EDITOR OF THE WEEKLY VOLUME.
The celebrated Gibbon, in the introductory por-
'of his Memoirs,' speakingtion own of the auto-
—
biographies of various men of letters, says " Such
portraits are often the most interesting, and some-
times the only interesting part of their writings
and, they be sincere^ we seldom complain of theif
minuteness or prolixity of their personal memo-
rials." This, no doubt, is perfectly true with re-
gard to the self-executed portraits of men of any
literary eminence. But shall we feel an equal
interest in the "personal memorials" of a man of
humble station, unknown to the world—who may.
indeed, have had as strong aspirations after know-
ledge as the most illustrious author of his age, as——
Vl INTRODUCTION.
much satisfaction in its acquirement, but who has
walked humbly obscurely—whothrough life and
has laboured with his own hands to earn his daily
bread—who has endured the bitterest poverty
who has been prostrated, for years, by chronic
sickness—whose earliest lot was toil and indigence
—and whose accumulations for the days when the
small rewards of toil shall be no more are of the
'very scantiest amount ? Such a man is the Work-
'ing Man ' whose Memoirs ' are now presented to
^the believe that thesereader. We Memoirs,' in
their own degree, will interest as much as any other
of the kind which deal not with striking adven-
tures, but present a clear reflection of the mind of
sincere. trulythe writer, which is Gibbon says
" The public are always curious to know the men
who have left behind them any image of their
minds The student of every class may
derive a lesson or an example from the lives most
similar When Gibbon wrote histo his own.^^
* present to his viewMemoirs,' it was scarcely that
every class students would be a term of farof
wider application half a century after his own day
than when the love of books was a rare distinction.
of his contemporaries wrote the life ofa Stay-One
who had himself a competent Greekmaker^ made