do it better; meet with what success you may, their own good opinion stands them in better stead, and runs before the applause of the world. I once showed a person of this overweening turn (with no small triumph, I confess) a letter of a very flattering description I had received from the celebrated Count Stendhal, dated Rome. He returned it with a smile of indifference, and said, he had had a letter from Rome himself the day before, from his friend S{{{1}}}— — —! I did not think this “germane to the matter.” Go— — —dwi— — —n pretends I never wrote anything worth a farthing but my answers to Vetus, and that I fail altogether when I attempt to write an essay, or anything in a short compass.
What can one do in such cases? Shall I confess a weakness? The only set-off I know to these rebuffs and mortifications is sometimes in an accidental notice or involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. I feel the force of Horace’s digito monstrari—I like to be pointed out in the street, or to hear people ask in Mr. Powell’s court, Which is Mr. Hazlitt? This is to me a pleasing extension of one’s personal identity. Your name so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear: it stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. It shows that other people are curious to see you; that they think of you,
