is fond of looking at a print from an old picture
in the room, without teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret
himself to death with trying to be what he is not, or to do what he
cannot. He hardly knows what he is capable of, and is not in the least
concerned whether he shall ever make a figure in the world. He feels
the truth of the lines--

"The man whose eye is ever on himself,
Doth look on one, the least of nature's works;
One who might move the wise man to that scorn
Which wisdom holds unlawful ever"--

he looks out of himself at the wide extended prospect of nature, and
takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general humanity.
He is free as air, and independent as the wind. Woe be to him when he
first begins to think what others say of him. While a man is contented
with himself and his own resources, all is well. When he undertakes to
play a part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more
about him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where
he will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and
disappointment. I can speak a little to this point. For many years of
my life I did nothing but think. I had nothing else to do but solve
some knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, or look at the sky,
or wander by the pebbled sea-side--

"To see the children sporting on the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."

I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to consider
whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give a sophistical
answer to a question--there was no printer's devil waiting for me. I
used to write a page or two perhaps in half a year; and remember
laughing heartily at the celebrated experimentalist Nicholson, who
told me that in twenty years he had written as much as would make
three hundred octavo volumes. If I was not a great author, I could
read with ever fresh delight, "never ending, still beginning," and had
no occasion to write a criticism when I had done. If I could not paint
like Claude, I could admire "the witchery of the soft blue sky" as I
walked out, and was satisfied with the pleasure it gave me. If I was
dull, it gave me little concern: if I was lively, I indulged my
spirits. I wished well to the world, and believed as favourably of it
as I could. I was like a stranger in a foreign land, at which I looked
with wonder, curiosity, and delight, without expecting to be an object
of attenti