pean reputation.

It is not difficult to discover some of the causes to which this great
man has owed a celebrity, which I cannot but think disproportioned to
his real claims on the admiration of mankind. In the first place, he
is an egotist. Egotism in conversation is universally abhorred. Lovers,
and, I believe, lovers alone, pardon it in each other. No services,
no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude,
admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to
listen to it from indicating their disgust and fatigue. The childless
uncle, the powerful patron can scarcely extort this compliance. We leave
the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than
hear the history of our companion. The chaplain bites his lips in the
presence of the archbishop. The midshipman yawns at the table of
the First Lord. Yet, from whatever cause, this practice, the pest of
conversation, gives to writing a zest which nothing else can impart.
Rousseau made the boldest experiment of this kind; and it fully
succeeded. In our own time Lord Byron, by a series of attempts of the
same nature, made himself the object of general interest and admiration.
Wordsworth wrote with egotism more intense, but less obvious; and he has
been rewarded with a sect of worshippers, comparatively small in number,
but far more enthusiastic in their devotion. It is needless to multiply
instances. Even now all the walks of literature are infested with
mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting
all the distortions of their intellects, and stripping the covering from
all the putrid sores of their feelings. Nor are there wanting many who
push their imitation of the beggars whom they resemble a step further,
and who find it easier to extort a pittance from the spectator, by
simulating deformity and debility from which they are exempt, than by
such honest labour as their health and strength enable them to perform.
In the meantime the credulous public pities and pampers a nuisance which
requires only the treadmill and the whip. This art, often successful
when employed by dunces, gives irresistible fascination to works which
possess intrinsic merit. We are always desirous to know something of
the character and situation of those whose writings we have perused
with pleasure. The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own
circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest,