ions. We exercise a liberal criticism upon
ourselves, and put off the final decision to a late day. The field is
large and open. Hamlet exclaims, with a noble magnanimity, 'I count
myself indifferent honest, and yet I could accuse me of such things!'
If you could prove to a man that he is a knave, it would not make much
difference in his opinion, his self-love is stronger than his love of
virtue. Hypocrisy is generally used as a mask to deceive the world, not
to impose on ourselves: for once detect the delinquent in his knavery,
and he laughs in your face or glories in his iniquity. This at least
happens except where there is a contradiction in the character, and our
vices are involuntary and at variance with our convictions. One
great difficulty is to distinguish ostensible motives, or such as we
acknowledge to ourselves, from tacit or secret springs of action. A man
changes his opinion readily, he thinks it candour: it is levity of min
We are callous by custom to our defects or excellences, unless where
vanity steps in to exaggerate or extenuate them. I cannot conceive how
it is that people are in love with their own persons, or astonished at
their own performances, which are but a nine days' wonder to every one
else. In general it may be laid down that we are liable to this twofold
mistake in judging of our own talents: we, in the first place, nurse the
rickety bantling, we think much of that which has cost us much pains
and labour, and comes against the grain; and we also set little store by
what we do with most ease to ourselves, and therefore best. The works of
the greatest genius are produced almost unconsciously, with an ignorance
on the part of the persons themselves that they have done anything
extraordinary. Nature has done it for them. How little Shakespear seems
to have thought of himself or of his fame! Yet, if 'to know another
well were to know one's self,' he must have been acquainted with his
own pretensions and character, 'who knew all qualities with a learned
spirit.' His eye seems never to have been bent upon himself, but
outwards upon nature. A man who thinks highly of himself may almost set
it down that it is without reason. Milton, notwithstanding, appears to
have had a high opinion of himself, and to have made it good. He was
conscious of his powers, and great by design. Perhaps his tenaciousness,
on the score of his own merit, might arise from an early habit of
polemical writing, in which his pre