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.