AN ESSAY ON MYSELF.

CONCEIT, or vanity, or pride, or whatever you may call that flattering illusion in which we always see a pleasing picture of ourselves, is often the cause that impedes our improvement in fortune and in knowledge. This is the phantom called hope, which seduces us from the right road, suspends our energies in idle expectation, and, vanishing at last, deserts us in disappointment. The moment we enter on any pursuit, before we have examined its practicability, or the means of its accomplishment, or deliberated its consequences, dear self is seen, in fancy's flattering mirror, moving onward, without obstacle or interruption, to the desired goal. How different will the trial prove! disappointment at every step; crosses at every turning-with what chagrin must we not acknowledge our shortsightedness and folly? And how foolish is it then to waste and fret ourselves in peevish exclamations against fortune! or if the object of our desires be, haply, of easy attainment, how cold and disgusting will the fruition be, compared with the voluptuous dreams of fancy? This is the disease of the mind, which dims its vision, stupifies its apprehension, and renders it insensible to the surrounding world, totally occupied as it is, and absorbed in the dazzling contemplation of self, and stunned with the perpetual buz of self-applause. Our opinions only are just and true; all others are dull, insipid, wrong, and widely erroneous. Our opinions, puffed up from their native littleness to a vain and empty magnitude, are the little world in which we live all outside is the reign of chaos, and noisy nothingness; is pride, arrogance, ignorance, error, impertinence, nonsense, and all those other odious attributes of those who are wiser than us, or equally foolish some other way; of which dear self is alone immaculate. This, which I am describing, which I name self-conceit, seems to me to be an excessive degree of self-love, that instinct of self-preservation, which, rational and refined, emboldens and digni fies the front of conscious worth, which supports that just consequence, and even demeanour, which win esteem, and command respect; which, in the warm and tender, yet noble and manly, feeling of generous resentment, preserves our honour and our fame untarnished by calumny, repels from our personal equality, right, and independence, every infringement. Almost every virtue has its cognate vice: such is this; and, like other vices, its blind inordinate operation frustrates the end for which nature implanted the parents

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passion, or instinct, which, operating vigorously, and in due relation to the system, is a virtue. Self-love is the principle of self-preservation. Self-conceit renders us not worth preserving; it prevents the expansion and vigorous growth of our faculties, by extending us on the couch of all-sufficiency; or it damps and chills the active spirit of emulation, by withholding us from every trial and exertion, lest we appear not so fine, so perfect, so amiable, so admirable in the eyes of others, as we are in our own conceit. Thus it hampers us into a dwarfish, contracted, contemptible growth and figure; it cripples our faculties, and impoverishes our minds; and our portion must be irksome inanity, debility, spleen, and despair. Is not this the evil that leads to despair, that fatal, deadly despair that convulses the suicide with madness, and draws his dagger? Poor weak man, the world thought not of him as highly as he did of himself.Fortune did not take him by the hand, nor pick the pebbles from his path, nor turn the torrent which, though flowing there since the flood, chances unfortunately in his way, contemplating the distant prospect of his hopes, glittering with all the magic painture of a visionary fancy. The wreath of victory is there displayed; power invites us to her throne, opulence flows around, and all the smiling blandishments of pleasure chide our tardy acceptance of their offered embrace; he sees not the intervening mountains, till he stumbles, and strikes his head against them. What can he do then? crossed, and disappointed, and confused, he sees not the winding and gently ascending path, much less the steps and holds by which he may adventurously, but laboriously, gain the summit; he sits down to contemplate his greatness in misfortune. For a time, he strives to scorn the world, that thinks not of him; but, alas! he soon begins to despise himself; the conflict of his shame and pride drives him to madness. These are the bad, sometimes fatal, effects of contracting our thoughts too much about ourselves, of indulging in an indolent self-complacence, and of abandoning ourselves to the slumbering delirium of hope, while the substantial good, attainable only by circumspect attention and persevering industry, escapes us for ever. No good, indeed, can arise from so unnatural a contraction of our thoughts, or from the idle operation of dressing ourselves up the toy and puppet of our own vanity.

Let us view the reverse.-Behold the man of reason, vigilantly marking what passes around him; carefully distinguishing the useful and the permanent from the trifling and the transitory, and accurately drawing the image of futurity from the comparison of the present with the past: he will wisely direct his wishes to objects

productive of real substantial good, and proceed gradually to their completion; not sauntering at his ease, as if what he wanted was to meet him, whichever way he turned himself; nor yet throwing himself headlong, as if, by a mere blind effort, to conquer every difficulty. Having promptly decided on the object which prudence points out, he grasps it, however distant, in his thoughts, and pursues it steadily, without wavering or hesitation: his mind, free and circumspect, perceives instantly whatever affects the success of his project: totally abstracted from himself, he regards that alone which he has already deliberately chosen on its merits, unseduced by the gaudy plumage and fascinating illusions of fancy, superior to the fickle impulse of caprice. This is the liberal emancipated disposition of the mind, which promotes the man of business, and leads the philosopher to the depths of science. It is equally free from arrogant presumption and timid pusillanimous restraint. It sets self at a distance, and, by an unbiassed reflection and unsullied consciousness, enables us to estimate our own abilities, and to adapt our undertakings thereto. By this abstraction, the idea of that which we wish to acquire, or to avoid, or on which we speak, entirely occupies our mind; we are free from the perturbations of a too solicitous hope or fear; and our faculties, unrestrained and unembarrassed, can exert themselves with their fullest effect. Was it not by this intuitive versatility, and excursive enlargement of the mental powers, that Locke so acutely discerned the subtle elements of his own mind, and collected the rays of universal knowledge, on a subject hitherto unexplored. How ineffable that quality and faculty of the mind that received and reflected its own image to the conscious sense! How finished, how purified, how lucid! How different from that effervescence whence nothing but vapor and inflated ebullition can arise: by this expansiveness and exquisite ductility of thought, it was that Newton's boundless mind surveyed the universe, viewed it on every side, and displayed, in stupendous order and systematic wisdom, the mysterious confusion of the starry firmament, till then the object of superstitious amazement and fantastic conjecture.— The familiar effect of gravitation escaped not his notice, but served as a clue to lead him through the planetary labyrinth. Through this opening he discovered, in intellectual light, the secrets of creation, and the labours of Omnipotence. By this attentive reasoning of an exalted mind, the astonished world was taught the inconceivable magnitude and rapidity of bodies, infinite in number, and immense in distance-intelligible only in the conclusions of science.

By such exertions, of a very few individual minds, ignorance has been considerably dissipated, error corrected, and multitudes have gained a strong hold in the knowledge of truth, whence they may laugh at and despise the fraudful machinery of despotism and superstition, to which before they had been victims. It is melancholy, then, to reflect that those whose faculties are confined to mere brutal labour, and those who abuse them, or waste them in vanity and idleness, constitute a vast majority of mankind; who enjoy not the happiness of which they are capable; who add no impulse to the progressive condition (certainly characteristic) of man, but retard it with the stubborn and adverse tide of prejudice, or muddy the clear stream of science, on which it floats, with impudent imposture, and shameful credulity. But when this reflection comes home to ourselves, it becomes painful and mortifying. How have we spent our time? what use have we made of the powers of our body and mind? If the answer be, "we have done nothing;" where shall our pride find a refuge? It has none to find. We must feel ourselves a burthen, a nuisance on the earth, and shrink into annihilation, from the abhorred consciousness of being nothing, or from the guilty pangs of remorse, which is by much the commoner case. From that, however, I am free, but I feel the intolerable weight of insignificance: I am nothing, and have no one to accuse but myself: I have loitered in the trammels of indolence; I have followed the delusions of hope; I conceited myself perfect, and, alas! I find myself nothing; I deplore the numbers who are like me, but will not be warned by my voice; though, if their ears were not stopped, it would find a faithful echo in their hearts. I am conscious of powers which I neglected to exercise, and I hate myself for my stupidity and folly. I have been as a smouldering fire, that burns and wastes within, while all around is smoke-but the mind of man is a radiant and immortal flame. Happiness is virtue, and virtue is the fulfilling the end of our creation. Happy, then, is the man who has tried his genius, obeyed its impulse, and brought his faculties into useful and benevolent action; whose reason has subdued his fancy, and reduced it to the impressions of reality, and form of truth. Happy is the man who knows himself, who reasons on his circumstances, governs his desires by his wants, his ambition by his abilities. This is dull, tedious repetition, some careless reader will say, and has been the cant of ages; but I speak it from feeling, and he, perhaps, will feel, at length, in stings more painful than intrusive advice, that the man of reason and virtuous exertion alone is happy-that he alone enjoys

himself. Free from vanity and pride, from envy and anger, and all the vicious passions that, rolling beneath his virtuous pre-eminence, too often involve the erring nations of the earth in calamity and wretchedness, happiness, allayed only by pity, will dwell in his heart; tranquil, celestial, unfading joy, even in the transient obscuration of death, will illuminate his countenance. With this contemplation, I endeavour to console myself for the loss of that which cannot be recalled, and to turn from the reprobation of myself to the contemplation of the revered few, who, having at the same time vindicated our nature, and convicted our delinquency, returned to their God without a duty unperformed. Few indeed they were; but numerous are they who walk in the train of folly. How few guided by truth! how few taught by experience, or taught only to diversify their errors! Will men never be wise? will they never cease to be each other's dupes and deceivers?-both equal victims of the deceit. Shall the maledictions and miseries of ages, yet groaning, and weeping blood, never exterminate from this earth the infernal lust of power? Shall the diffused light of knowledge never detect and defeat the snares and machinations of the wicked, who aspire to be above their equals, who murder millions in sport, and spare the survivors, that they may enjoy their slavery; and, alas! the slaves of prejudice destroy each other at the signal of their tyrants. The malignant mind may satiate itself with this view of human weakness and misery, and may strive to stifle the reproaches of conscience with accusations of nature; but I find no excuse for myself in the failings of others, which ought to have awakened me to a more guarded conduct. I pity them, I condemn myself, and sigh for the reformation of mankind. The hope of a meliorated condition is founded in the conviction that our miseries are the offspring of our vices and folly. Let us listen to the voice of nature, and obey the dictates of reason, and we shall be happy. But when shall men look on one another as brothers, and be, as one family, united in peace? When shall the stagnant and morbid pool of slavery, and the billowy commotion of wayward licentiousness, purify and calm, in the clear, unruffled surface of equality, stirred only by the spirit of emulation, and the genial breath of freedom? The numberless miseries of man, the bloody scourge of war, the daring venality of moral principle, and the triumph of corruption, wound the honest feeling, and force these exclamations of abhorrence: but exclamation or lazy prayer will not cure either public or private distress. The exertion of reason, and the application of our faculties, is the provi