On Egotism.

It is mentioned in the Life of Salvator Rosa, that on the occasion of an altarpiece of his being exhibited at Rome, in the triumph of the moment he compared himself to Michael Angelo, and spoke against Raphael, calling him hard, dry, &c. Both these were fatal symptoms for the uneasiness and consternation to a Society of Phrenologists in that city, viz., those of Sir Walter Scott, of the Duke of Wellington, and of Marshal Blucher. The first, contrary to the expectation of these learned persons, wants the organ of imagination; the second the organ of combination; and the last possesses the organ of fancy. This, I confess, as to the two first, appears to me a needless alarm. It would incline me (more than anything I have yet heard) to an opinion that there is something like an art of divination in the science. I had long ago formed and been hardy enough to express a conviction that Sir Walter's forte is a sort of traditional literature (whatever he accumulates or scatters through his pages, he leaves as he finds it, with very few marks of the master-mind upon it)— and as to the second person mentioned, he has just those powers of combination which belong to a man who leads a bulldog in a string, and lets the animal loose upon his prey at the proper moment. With regard to Prince Blucher, if he had not "fancy in himself, he was the cause of it in others," for he turned the heads of many people, who "fancied" his campaigns were the precursors of the Millennium. I have at different times seen these three puzzling heads, and I should say that the Poet looks like a gentlemanfarmer, the Prince like a corporal on guard, or the lieutenant of a pressgang, the Duke like nothing or nobody. You look at the head of the first with admiration of its capacity and solid contents, at the last with wonder at what it can contain (any more than a drumhead), at the man of "fancy" or of "the fancy" with disgust at the grossness and brutality which he did not affect to conceal. These, however, are slight physiognomical observations taken at random: but I should be happy to have my "squandering glances" in any degree confirmed by the profounder science and more accurate investigations of northern genius! [Dr. Combe afterwards published a volume on the subject, called A System of Phrenology; it has been often reprinted.]

ultimate success of the work: the picture was in fact afterwards severely censured, so as to cause him much uneasiness; and he passed a great part of his life in quarrelling with the world for admiring his landscapes, which were truly excellent, and for not admiring his historical pieces, which were full of defects. Salvator wanted self-knowledge, and that respect for others which is both a cause and consequence of it. Like many more, he mistook the violent and irritable workings of selfwill (in a wrong direction) for the impulse of genius, and his insensibility to the vast superiority of others for a proof of his equality with them.

In the first place, nothing augurs worse for any one's pretensions to the highest rank of excellence than his making free with those of others. He who boldly and unreservedly places himself on a level with the mighty dead, shows a want of sentiment-the only thing that can ensure immortality to his own works. When we forestall the judgment of posterity, it is because we are not confident of it. A mind that brings all others into a line with its own naked or assumed merits, that sees all objects in the foreground as it were, that does not regard the lofty monuments of genius through the atmosphere of fame, is coarse, crude, and repulsive as a picture without aërial perspective. Time, like distance, spreads a haze and a glory round all things. Not to perceive this is to want a sense, is to be without imagination. Yet there are those who strut in their own self-opinion, and deck themselves out in the plumes of fancied self-importance as if they were crowned with laurel by Apollo's own hand. There was nothing in common between Salvator and Michael Angelo: if there had, the consciousness of the power with which he had to contend would have overawed and struck him dumb; so that the very familiarity of his approaches proved (as much as anything else) the immense distance placed between them. Painters alone

seem to have a trick of putting themselves on an equal footing with the greatest of their predecessors, of advancing, on the strength of their vanity and presumption, to the highest seats in the temple of fame, of talking of themselves and Raphael and Michael Angelo in the same breath! What should we think of a poet who should publish to the world, or give a broad hint in private, that he conceived himself fully on a par with Homer, or Milton, or Shakespeare? It would be too much for a friend to say so of him. But artists suffer their friends to puff them in the true "King Cambyses' vein " without blushing. Is it that they are often men without a liberal education, who have no notion of anything that does not come under their immediate observation, and who accordingly prefer the living to the dead, and themselves to all the rest of the world? Or that there is something in the nature of the profession itself, fixing the view on a particular point of time, and not linking the present either with the past or future?

Again, Salvator's disregard for Raphael, instead of inspiring him with anything like "vain and self-conceit," ought to have taught him the greatest diffidence in himself. Instead of anticipating a triumph over Raphael from this circumstance, he might have foreseen in it the sure source of his mortification and defeat. The public looked to find in his pictures what he did not see in Raphael, and were necessarily disappointed. He could hardly be expected to produce that which when produced and set before him, he did not feel or understand. The genius for a particular thing does not imply taste in general or for other things, but it assuredly presupposes a taste or feeling for that particular thing. Salvator was so much offended with the dryness, hardness, &c. of Raphael, only because he was not struck, that is, did not sympathise with the divine mind within. If he had, he would have bowed as at a shrine, in spite of the homeli

ness or finicalness of the covering. Let no man build himself a spurious self-esteem on his contempt or indifference for acknowledged excellence. He will in the end

pay dear for a momentary delusion: for the world will sooner or later discover those deficiencies in him which render him insensible to all merits but his own.

Of all modes of acquiring distinction and, as it were, "getting the start of the majestic world," the most absurd as well as disgusting is that of setting aside the claims of others in the lump, and holding out our own particular excellence or pursuit as the only one worth attending to. We thus set ourselves up as the standard of perfection, and treat everything else that diverges from that standard as beneath our notice. At this rate, a contempt for anything and a superiority to it are synonymous. It is a cheap and a short way of showing that we possess all excellence within ourselves, to deny the use or merit of all those qualifications that do not belong to us. According to such a mode of computation, it would appear that our value is to be estimated not by the number of acquirements that we do possess, but of those in which we are deficient and to which we are insensible :-so that we can at any time supply the place of wisdom and skill by a due proportion of ignorance, affectation, and conceit. If so, the dullest fellow, with impudence enough to despise what he does not understand, will always be the brightest genius and the greatest man. If stupidity is to be a substitute for taste, knowledge, and genius, any one may dogmatise and play the critic on this ground. We may easily make a monopoly of talent, if the torpedo-touch of our callous and wilful indifference is to neutralise all other pretensions. We have only to deny the advantages of others to make them our own: illiberality will carve out the way to pre-eminence much better than toil or study or quickness of parts; and by narrowing our views and divesting ourselves at last of common feeling and

humanity, we may arrogate every valuable accomplishment to ourselves, and exalt ourselves vastly above our fellow-mortals! That is, in other words, we have only to shut our eyes, in order to blot the sun out of heaven, and to annihilate whatever gives light or heat to the world, if it does not emanate from one single source, by spreading the cloud of our own envy, spleen, malice, want of comprehension, and prejudice over it. Yet how many are there who act upon this theory in good earnest, grow more bigoted to it every day, and not only become the dupes of it themselves, but by dint of gravity, by bullying and browbeating, succeed in making converts of others!

A man is a political economist. Good: but this is no reason he should think there is nothing else in the world, or that everything else is good for nothing. Let us suppose that this is the most important subject, and that being his favourite study, he is the best judge of that point, still it is not the only one-why, then, treat every other question or pursuit with disdain as insignificant and mean, or endeavour to put others who have devoted their whole time to it out of conceit with that on which they depend for their amusement or (perhaps) subsistence? I see neither the wit, wisdom, nor good-nature of this mode of proceeding. Let him fill his library with books on this one particular subject, yet other persons are not bound to follow his example, and exclude every other topic from theirs-let him write, let him talk, let him think on nothing else, but let him not impose the same pedantic humour as a duty or a mark of taste on others— let him ride the high horse, and drag his heavy load of mechanical knowledge along the iron railway of the master-science, but let him not move out of it to taunt or jostle those who are jogging quietly along upon their several hobbies, who "owe him no allegiance," and care not one jot for his opinion. Yet we could forgive such a person, if he made it his boast that he had read Don