I have been told was raised to him in his lifetime, exceeds all panegyric; it places him alone in nature, as the first and the last interpreter of her works.  He said of the great geniuses of modern ages, that “there were not more than five; Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and Myself.”  With this spirit he conceived and terminated his great works, and sat in patient meditation at his desk for half a century, till all Europe, even in a state of war, bowed to the modern Pliny.

[Footnote A:  See it versified in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i. p. 431.]

Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rousseau purely national; for men of genius in all ages have expressed a consciousness of the internal force of genius.  No one felt this self-exultation more potent than our HOBBES; who has indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, asserted that there may be nothing more just than self-commendation.[A] There is a curious passage in the “Purgatorio” of DANTE, where, describing the transitory nature of literary fame, and the variableness of human opinion, the poet alludes with confidence to his own future greatness.  Of two authors of the name of Guido, the one having eclipsed the other, the poet writes:—­

  Cosi ha tolto l’uno all’altro Guido
  La gloria della lingua; e forse e nato
  Chi l’uno e l’altro caccera di nido.

  Thus has one Guido from the other snatch’d
  The letter’d pride; and he perhaps is born
  Who shall drive either from their nest.[B]

[Footnote A:  See “Quarrels of Authors,” p. 471.]

[Footnote B:  Cary.]

DE THOU, one of the most noble-minded of historians, in the Memoirs of his own life, composed in the third person, has surprised and somewhat puzzled the critics, by that frequent distribution of self-commendation which they knew not how to reconcile with the modesty and gravity with which the President was so amply endowed.  After his great and solemn labour, amidst the injustice of his persecutors, this eminent man had sufficient experience of his real worth to assert it.  KEPLER, amidst his sublime discoveries, looks down like a superior being on other men.  He breaks forth in glory and daring egotism:  “I dare insult mankind by confessing that I am he who has turned science to advantage.  If I am pardoned, I shall rejoice; if blamed, I shall endure.  The die is cast; I have written this book, and whether it be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is of no consequence; it may well wait for a reader during one century, when God himself during six thousand years has not sent an observer like myself.”  He truly predicts that “his discoveries would be verified in succeeding ages,” and prefers his own glory to the possession of the electorate of Saxony.  It was this solitary majesty, this futurity of their genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of Bacon, of Newton, and of Montesquieu; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and Corneille; and of Michael Angelo.  Such men anticipate their contemporaries; they know they are creators, long before they are hailed as such by the tardy consent of the public.  These men stand on Pisgah heights, and for them the sun shines on a land which none can view but themselves.