his plate. There is no getting the start of some people. Do what you
will, they can do it better; meet with what success you may, their own
good opinion stands them in better stead, and runs before the applause
of the world. I once showed a person of this overweening turn (with no
small triumph, I confess) a letter of a very flattering description I
had received from the celebrated Count Stendhal, dated Rome. He returned
it with a smile of indifference, and said, he had had a letter from
Rome himself the day before, from his friend S----! I did not think this
'germane to the matter.' Godwin pretends I never wrote anything worth
a farthing but my 'Answers to Vetus,' and that I fail altogether when I
attempt to write an essay, or anything in a short compass.

What can one do in such cases? Shall I confess a weakness? The only
set-off I know to these rebuffs and mortifications is sometimes in an
accidental notice or involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. I
feel the force of Horace's _digito monstrari_--I like to be pointed out
in the street, or to hear people ask in Mr. Powell's court, _Which
is Mr. Hazlitt?_ This is to me a pleasing extension of one's personal
identity. Your name so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear: it
stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. It shows that other people
are curious to see you; that they think of you, and feel an interest in
you without your knowing it. This is a bolster to lean upon; a lining to
your poor, shivering, threadbare opinion of yourself. You want some such
cordial to exhausted spirits, and relief to the dreariness of abstract
speculation. You are something; and, from occupying a place in the
thoughts of others, think less contemptuously of yourself. You are the
better able to run the gauntlet of prejudice and vulgar abuse. It is
pleasant in this way to have your opinion quoted against yourself, and
your own sayings repeated to you as good things. I was once talking to
an intelligent man in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight's performance
of Filch. 'Ah!' he said, 'little Simmons was the fellow to play that
character.' He added, 'There was a most excellent remark made upon his
acting it in the _Examiner_ (I think it was)--_That he looked as if
he had the gallows in one eye and a pretty girl in the other._' I said
nothing, but was in remarkably good humour the rest of the evening. I
have seldom been in a company where fives-playing has been talked of but