But in this case there is no such responsibility.  None of the persons concerned have any objection to the publication of these records, and as for the writer himself he was entirely free from any desire for a fastidious seclusion.  His life was a secluded one enough, and he felt strongly that a man has a right to his own personal privacy.  But his own words sufficiently prove, if proof were needed, that he felt that to deny the right of others to participate in thoughts and experiences, which might uplift or help a mourner or a sufferer, was a selfish form of individualism with which he had no sympathy whatever.  He felt, and I have heard him say, that one has no right to withhold from others any reflections which can console and sustain, and he held it to be the supreme duty of a man to ease, if he could, the burden of another.  He knew that there is no sympathy in the world so effective as the sharing of similar experiences, as the power of assuring a sufferer that another has indeed trodden the same dark path and emerged into the light of Heaven.  I will even venture to say that he deliberately intended that his records should be so used, for purposes of alleviation and consolation, and the bequest that he made of his papers to myself, entrusting them to my absolute discretion, makes it clear to me that I have divined his wishes in the matter.  I think, indeed, that his only doubt was a natural diffidence as to whether the record had sufficient importance to justify its publication.  In any case, my own duty in the matter is to me absolutely clear.

But I think that it will be as well for me to sketch a brief outline of my friend’s life and character.  I would have preferred to have done this, if it had been possible, by allowing him to speak for himself.  But the earlier Diaries which exist are nothing but the briefest chronicle of events.  He put his earlier confessions into his books, but he was in many ways more interesting than his books, and so I will try and draw a portrait of him as he appeared to one of his earliest friends.  I knew him first as an undergraduate, and our friendship was unbroken after that.  The Diary, written as it is under the shadow of a series of calamities, gives an impression of almost wilful sadness which is far from the truth.  The requisite contrast can only be attained by representing him as he appeared to those who knew him.

He was the son of a moderately wealthy country solicitor, and was brought up on normal lines.  His mother died while he was a boy.  He had one brother, younger than himself, and a sister who was younger still.  He went to a leading public school, where he was in no way distinguished either in work or athletics.  I gathered, when I first knew him, that he had been regarded as a clever, quiet, good-natured, simple-minded boy, with a considerable charm of manner, but decidedly retiring.  He was not expected to distinguish himself in any way, and he did not seem to have any particular