Hazlitt, indeed, was incapable of the superlative self-esteem here attributed to Wordsworth. His egotism is a curious variety of that Protean passion, compounded as skilfully as the melancholy of Jaques. It is not the fascinating and humorous egotism of Lamb, who disarms us beforehand by a smile at his own crotchets. Hazlitt is too serious to be playful. Nor is it like the amusing egotism of Boswell, combined with a vanity which evades our contempt, because it asks so frankly for sympathy. Hazlitt is too proud and too bitter. Neither is it the misanthropic egotism of Byron, which, through all its affectation, implies a certain aristocratic contempt of the world and its laws. Hazlitt has not the sweep and continuity of Byron's passion. His egotism--be it said without offence--is dashed with something of the feeling common amongst his dissenting friends. He feels the awkwardness which prevails amongst a clique branded by a certain social stigma, and despises himself for his awkwardness. He resents neglect and scorns to ask for patronage. His egotism is a touchy and wayward feeling which takes the mask of misanthropy. He is always meditating upon his own qualities, but not in the spirit of the conceited man who plumes himself upon his virtues, nor of the ascetic who broods over his vices. He prefers the apparently self-contradictory attitude (but human nature is illogical) of meditating with remorse upon his own virtues. What in others is complacency, becomes with him, ostensibly at least, self-reproach. He affects--but it is hard to say where the affectation begins--to be annoyed by the contemplation of his own merits. He is angry with the world for preferring commonplace to genius, and rewarding stupidity by success; but in form at least, he mocks at his own folly for expecting better things. If he is vain at bottom, his vanity shows itself indirectly by depreciating his neighbours. He is too proud to dwell upon his own virtues, but he has been convinced by impartial observation that the world at large is in a conspiracy against merit. Thus he manages to transform his self-consciousness into the semblance of proud humility, and extracts a bitter and rather morbid pleasure from dwelling upon his disappointments and failures. Half-a-dozen of his best Essays give expression to this mood, which is rather bitter than querulous. He enlarges cordially on the 'disadvantages of intellectual superiority.' An author--Hazlitt, to wit--is not allowed to relax into dulness; if he is brilliant he is not understood, and if he professes an interest in common things it is assumed that then he must be a fool. And yet in the midst of these grumblings he is forced to admit a touch of weakness, and tells us how it pleases him to hear a man ask in the Fives Court, 'Which is Mr. Hazlitt?' He, the most idiosyncratic of men, and most proud of it at bottom, declares how 'he hates his style to be known, as he hates all idiosyncrasy.' At the next moment he purrs with