red, the best
work on the subject yet written. With this feeling he emulated Cicero in
retirement or in action. "When I am dead, you will not soon meet with
another JOHN HUNTER," said the great anatomist to one of his garrulous
friends. An apology is formed by his biographer for relating the fact, but
the weakness is only in the apology. When HOGARTH was engaged in his work
of the _Marriage a-la-Mode_, he said to Reynolds, "I shall very soon
gratify the world with such a sight as they have never seen equalled."
--"One of his foibles," adds Northcote, "it is well known, was the
excessive high opinion he had of his own abilities." So pronounced
Northcote, who had not an atom of his genius. Was it a _foible_ in Hogarth
to cast the glove, when he always more than redeemed the pledge?
CORNEILLE has given a very noble full-length of the sublime egotism which
accompanied him through life;[A] but I doubt, if we had any such author in
the present day, whether he would dare to be so just to himself, and so
hardy to the public. The self-praise of BUFFON at least equalled his
genius; and the inscription beneath his statue in the library of the
Jardin des Plantes, which I have been told was raised to him in his
lifetime, exceeds all panegyric; it places him alone in nature, as the
first and the last interpreter of her works. He said of the great geniuses
of modern ages, that "there were not more than five; Newton, Bacon,
Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and Myself." With this spirit he conceived and
terminated his great works, and sat in patient meditation at his desk for
half a century, till all Europe, even in a state of war, bowed to the
modern Pliny.

[Footnote A: See it versified in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p.
431.]

Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rousseau purely national;
for men of genius in all ages have expressed a consciousness of the
internal force of genius. No one felt this self-exultation more potent
than our HOBBES; who has indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, asserted
that there may be nothing more just than self-commendation.[A] There is a
curious passage in the "Purgatorio" of DANTE, where, describing the
transitory nature of literary fame, and the variableness of human opinion,
the poet alludes with confidence to his own future greatness. Of two
authors of the name of Guido, the one having eclipsed the other, the poet
writes:--

Cosi ha tolto l'uno all'altro Guido
La gloria della lingu