Egotism in eminent characters is often amusing to us, but extremely undignified in them. It is almost always the betrayal of weakness,--the tongue of vanity. He who talks of himself, however humble the words, exposes a proud heart. Still, as Emerson says, "there are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists." Carlyle was an egotist of the first water, and so were many other famous authors. Demosthenes expressed his pleasure when even a fishwoman pointed him out in the streets of Athens. Margaret Fuller once wrote: "I have now met all the minds of this country worth meeting, and find none comparable to my own "! The admiration point is ours; the words evince most insufferable vanity. No wonder Emerson complained of her "mountainous me," or that Lowell called the whole of her being a "capital I." Even the gentle, undemonstrative Hawthorne was obliged to denounce her vanity; and yet Margaret was a woman full of kindly human instinct and of remarkable culture. Dickens was vain,[158] egotistical, and selfish,--traits which grew upon him as he advanced in years. Thackeray, in his frank, open way, acknowledged his delight at being recognized by street gamins as the author of "Vanity Fair." Hans Andersen, like Dante, confidently predicted his own future greatness. Kepler declared that "God has not sent in six thousand years an observer like myself." Buffon's vanity was proverbial and ridiculous; and yet the man was not ridiculous according to Pope's idea, that "every man has just so much vanity as he lacks understanding," for we all know that Buffon was a profound naturalist and scholar. "I am the greatest historian that ever lived," wrote Gibbon in his private diary; and Goethe said, "All I have had to do, I have done in kingly fashion." Albert Dürer, in reviewing his own work, wrote, "It cannot be better done." Though he had in his day many admirers, and has even some at the present time, we confess that his pictures have no attraction for us. However, he has unquestionable merit as an engraver, and was court painter to Charles V. Ruskin's conceit peeps out everywhere in his writings. Nothing could be more egotistical than Disraeli's (Beaconsfield) novels. George Sand boastfully betrays her own liaison with De Musset in her popular story of "Elle et Lui." "I shall be read," says Southey, "by posterity, if I am not read now,--read with Milton, and Virgil, and Dante, when poets whose works are now famous will only be known through a biographical dictionary."[159] Most of the eminent men among the ancients were superlatively conceited and vain. Plato quoted the oracle which pronounced him great; Cæsar frequently commends himself, and so does Cicero. Pliny puts himself on record as one of this class when he wrote to Venator: "The longer your letter was, so much the more agreeable I thought it, especially as it turned entirely upon my works. I am not surprised you should find a pleasure in them, since I