graphy is the result of the organ of form," and that we do not get the ideas of roughness and smoothness from the touch.-But I will end here, and turn to the amusing account of Dousterswivel in the Antiquary !' *

* It appears, I understand, from an ingenious paper published by Dr Combe of Edinburgh, that three heads have caused considerable uneasiness and consternation to a Society of Phrenologists in that city, viz., those of Sir Walter Scott, 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.

ESSAY XIII.

ON EGOTISM.

Ir is mentioned in the Life of Salvator Rosa, that on the occasion of an altar-piece 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 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 self-will (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 forestal 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 aerial 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 selfopinion, 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 been, the consciousness of the power with which he had to contend would have over-awed and struck Salvator dumb; so that the very familiarity of his approaches proved (as much as anything else) the immense distance 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 sole strength of their vanity and pre

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sumption, 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 selfconceit," ought to have taught him the greatest diffidence of 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 pre-supposes 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 homeliness 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 out 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 quali