An author is more sensible of his own merits, as he also is of his labour, which is invisible to all others, while he is unquestionably much less sensible to his defects than most of his readers. The author not only comprehends his merits better, because they have passed through a long process in his mind, but he is familiar with every part, while the reader has but a vague notion of the whole. Why does an excellent work, by repetition, rise in interest? Because in obtaining this gradual intimacy with an author, we appear to recover half the genius which we had lost on a first perusal. The work of genius too is associated, in the mind of the author, with much more than it contains; and the true supplement, which he only can give, has not always accompanied the work itself. We find great men often greater than the books they write. Ask the man of genius if he have written all that he wished to have written? Has he satisfied himself in this work, for which you accuse his pride? Has he dared what required intrepidity to achieve? Has he evaded difficulties which he should have overcome? The mind of the reader has the limits of a mere recipient, while that of the author, even after his work, is teeming with creation. "On many occasions, my soul seems to know more than it can say, and to be endowed with a mind by itself, far superior to the mind I really have," said MARIVAUX, with equal truth and happiness. With these explanations of what are called the vanity and egotism of Genius, be it remembered, that the sense of their own sufficiency is assumed by men at their own risk. The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire. It is indeed otherwise with his unlucky brethren, with whom an illusion of literary vanity may end in the aberrations of harmless madness; as it happened to PERCIVAL STOCKDALE. After a parallel between himself and Charles XII. of Sweden, he concludes that "some parts will be to _his_ advantage, and some to _mine_;" but in regard to fame, the main object between himself and Charles XII., Percival imagined that "his own will not probably take its fixed and immovable station, and shine with its expanded and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb." After this the reader, who may never have heard of the name of Percival Stockdale, must be told that there exist his own "Memoirs of his Life and Writings."[A] The memoirs of a scribbler who saw the prospects of life close on him while he imagined that his contemporaries were unjust, are instructive to literary men. To correct, and to be corrected, should be their daily practice, that they may be taught not only to exult in themselves, but to fear themselves. [Footnote A: I have sketched a character of PERCIVAL STOCKDALE, in "Calamities of Authors" (pp. 218--224); it was taken _ad vivum_.]