Even should a French artist fail, he is not disconcerted—there is something else he excels in: ‘for one unkind and cruel fair, another still consoles him.’ He studies in a more graceful posture, or pays greater attention to his dress; or he has a friend, who has _beaucoup du talent_, and conceit enough for them both. His self-love has always a salvo, and comes upon its legs again, like a cat or a monkey. Not so with Bruin the Bear. If an Englishman (God help the mark!) fails in one thing, it is all over with him; he is enraged at the mention of any thing else he can do, and at every consolation offered him on that score; he banishes all other thoughts, but of his disappointment and discomfiture, from his breast—neither eats nor sleeps (it is well if he does not swallow down double ‘potations, pottle-deep,’ to drown remembrance)—will not own, even to himself, any other thing in which he takes an interest or feels a pride; and is in the horrors till he recovers his good opinion of himself in the only point on which he now sets a value, and for which his anxiety and disorder of mind incapacitate him as effectually as if he were drunk with strong liquor instead of spleen and passion. I have here drawn the character of an Englishman, I am sure; for it is a portrait of myself, and, I am sorry to add, an unexaggerated one. I intend these Essays as studies of human nature; and as, in the prosecution of this design, I do not spare others, I see no reason why I should spare myself. I lately tried to make a copy of a portrait by Titian (after several years’ want of practice), with a view to give a friend in England some notion of the picture, which is equally remarkable and fine. I failed, and floundered on for some days, as might be expected. I must say the effect on me was painful and excessive. My sky was suddenly overcast. Every thing seemed of the colour of the paints I used. Nature in my eyes became dark and gloomy. I had no sense or feeling left, but of the unforeseen want of power, and of the tormenting struggle to do what I could not. I was ashamed ever to have written or spoken on art: it seemed a piece of vanity and affectation in me to do so—all whose reasonings and refinements on the subject ended in an execrable daub. Why did I think of attempting such a thing without weighing the consequences of exposing my presumption and incapacity so unnecessarily? It was blotting from my mind, covering with a thick veil all that I remembered of these pictures formerly—my hopes when young, my regrets since, one of the few consolations of my life and of my declining years. I was even afraid to walk out of an evening by the barrier of Neuilly, or to recall the yearnings and associations that once hung upon the beatings of my heart. All was turned to bitterness and gall. To feel any thing but the consciousness of my own helplessness and folly, appeared a want of sincerity, a mockery, and an insult to my mortified pride! The only