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_.] It is hard to refuse these men of genius that _aura vitalis_, of which they are so apt to be liberal to others.

Are they not accused of the meanest adulations?
When a young writer experiences the notice of a person of some eminence, he has expressed himself in language which transcends that of mortality.