or garden, attacking its flowers, but expiring in the very sweetness he would injure.  The inscription under BOILEAU’S portrait, which gives a preference to the French satirist over Juvenal and Horace, is known to have been written by himself.  Nor was BUTLER less proud of his own merits; for he has done ample justice to his “Hudibras,” and traced out, with great self-delight, its variety of excellences.  RICHARDSON, the novelist, exhibits one of the most striking instances of what is called literary vanity, the delight of an author in his works; he has pointed out all the beauties of his three great works, in various manners.[A] He always taxed a visitor by one of his long letters.  It was this intense self-delight which produced his voluminous labours.

[Footnote A:  I have observed them in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. ii. p. 64.]

There are certain authors whose very existence seems to require a high conception of their own talents; and who must, as some animals appear to do, furnish the means of life out of their own substance.  These men of genius open their career with peculiar tastes, or with a predilection for some great work of no immediate interest; in a word, with many unpopular dispositions.  Yet we see them magnanimous, though defeated, proceeding with the public feeling against them.  At length we view them ranking with their rivals.  Without having yielded up their peculiar tastes or their incorrigible viciousness, they have, however, heightened their individual excellences.  No human opinion can change their self-opinion.  Alive to the consciousness of their powers, their pursuits are placed above impediment, and their great views can suffer no contraction; possunt quia posse videntur.  Such was the language Lord BACON once applied to himself when addressing a king.  “I know,” said the great philosopher, “that I am censured of some conceit of my ability or worth; but I pray your majesty impute it to desire—­possunt quia posse videntur.”  These men of genius bear a charmed mail on their breast; “hopeless, not heartless,” may be often the motto of their ensign; and if they do not always possess reputation, they still look onwards for fame; for these do not necessarily accompany each other.

An author is more sensible of his own merits, as he also is of his labour, which is invisible to all others, while he is unquestionably much less sensible to his defects than most of his readers.  The author not only comprehends his merits better, because they have passed through a long process in his mind, but he is familiar with every part, while the reader has but a vague notion of the whole.  Why does an excellent work, by repetition, rise in interest?  Because in obtaining this gradual intimacy with an author, we appear to recover half the genius which we had lost on a first perusal.  The work of genius too is associated, in the mind of the author, with much more than it contains; and the true supplement, which he