Chapter II: Preface

Some men write their lives to save themselves from _ennui_, careless of the amount they inflict on their readers.

Others write their personal history, lest some kind friend should survive them, and, in showing off his own talent, unwittingly show them up.

Others, again, write their own life from a different motive—from fear that the vampires of literature might make it their prey.

I have frequently had applications to write my life, both from my countrymen and from foreigners. Some caterers for the public offered to pay me for it. Others required that I should pay them for its insertion; others offered to insert it without charge. One proposed to give me a quarter of a column gratis, and as many additional lines of eloge as I chose to write and pay for at ten-pence per line. To many of these I sent a list of my works, with the remark that they formed the best life of an author; but nobody cared to insert them.

I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work.

The remarkable circumstances attending those Calculating Machines, on which I have spent so large a portion of my life, make me wish to place on record some account of their past history. As, however, such a work would be utterly uninteresting to the greater part of my countrymen, I thought it might be rendered less unpalatable by relating some of my experience amongst various classes of society, widely differing from each other, in which I have occasionally mixed.

This volume does not aspire to the name of an autobiography. It relates a variety of isolated circumstances in which I have taken part—some of them arranged in the order of time, and others grouped together in separate chapters, from similarity of subject.

The selection has been made in some cases from the importance of the matter. In others, from the celebrity of the persons concerned; whilst several of them furnish interesting illustrations of human character.

CONTENTS.

I. • My Ancestors • 1

II. • Childhood • 7

III. • Boyhood • 17

IV. • Cambridge • 25

V. • Difference Engine No. 1 • 41

VI. • Statement relative to the Difference
Engine, drawn up by the late Sir H. Nicolas
from the Author’s Papers • 68

VII. • Difference Engine No. 2 • 97

VIII. • Of the Analytical Engine • 112

IX. • Of the Mechanical Notation • 142

X. • The Exhibition of 1862 • 147

XI. • The late Prince Consort • 168

XII. • Recollections of the Duke of
Wellington • 173

XIII. • Recollections of Wollaston, Davy,
and Rogers • 186

XIV. • Recollections of Laplace, Biot, and
Humboldt • 195

XV. • Experience by Water • 205

XVI. • Experience by Fire • 213

XVII. • Experience amongst Workmen • 228

XVIII. • Picking Locks and Deciphering • 233

XIX. • Experience in St. Giles’s • 242

XX. • Theatrical Experience • 251

XXI. • Electioneering Experience • 259

XXII. • Scene from a New After-Piece • 276

XXIII. • Experience at Courts • 292

XXIV. • Experience at Courts • 298

XXV. • Railways • 313

XXVI. • Street Nuisances • 337

XXVII. • Wit • 363

XXVIII. • Hints for Travellers • 371

XXIX. • Miracles • 387

XXX. • Religion • 396

XXXI. • A Vision • 406

XXXII. • Various Reminiscences • 421

XXXIII. • The Author’s Contributions to
Human Knowledge • 430

XXXIV. • The Author’s further Contributions
to Human Knowledge • 441

XXXV. • Results of Science • 473

XXXVI. • Agreeable Recollections • 482

Appendix • 487

PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A PHILOSOPHER.