mboo manuscript, into the boat with him, and as
he floated down the Ganges, said to himself, 'If I live, this will live;
if I die, it will not be heard of.' What is fame to this feeling? The
babbling of an idiot! He brought the work home with him and twice had it
stereotyped. The first sketch he allowed was obscure, but the improved
copy he thought could not fail to strike. It did not succeed. The world,
as Goldsmith said of himself, made a point of taking no notice of it.
Ever since he has had nothing but disappointment and vexation,--the
greatest and most heart-breaking of all others--that of not being able
to make yourself understood. Mr. Fearn tells me there is a sensible
writer in the _Monthly Review_ who sees the thing in its proper
light, and says so. But I have heard of no other instance. There are,
notwithstanding, ideas in this work, neglected and ill-treated as it has
been, that lead to more curious and subtle speculations on some of the
most disputed and difficult points of the philosophy of the human mind
(such as _relation_, _abstraction_, etc.) than have been thrown out in
any work for the last sixty years, I mean since Hume; for since his time
there has been no metaphysician in this country worth the name. Yet
his _Treatise on Human Nature_, he tells us, 'fell still-born from the
press.' So it is that knowledge works its way, and reputation lingers
far behind it. But truth is better than opinion, I maintain it; and
as to the two stereotyped and unsold editions of the Essay on
Consciousness, I say, _Honi soit qui mal y pense!_'(1)--My Uncle Toby had
one idea in his head, that of his bowling-green, and another, that of
the Widow Wadman. Oh, spare them both! I will only add one more anecdote
in illustration of this theory of the mind's being occupied with one
idea, which is most frequently of a man's self. A celebrated lyrical
writer happened to drop into a small party where they had just got
the novel of _Rob Roy,_ by the author of _Waverley_. The motto in the
title-page was taken from a poem of his. This was a hint sufficient, a
word to the wise. He instantly went to the book-shelf in the next
room, took down the volume of his own poems, read the whole of that in
question aloud with manifest complacency, replaced it on the shelf, and
walked away, taking no more notice of Rob Roy than if there had been no
such person, nor of the new novel than if it had not been written by
its renowned author. There was no r