fl On Personal Identity. [JAN. 



applause which he received, and on which he lived, was more adapted to 

 his genius and taste. If Garrick had agreed to be Shakspeare, he would 

 have made it a previous condition that he was to be a better player. He 

 would have insisted on taking some higher part than Polonins or the 

 Grave-digger. Ben Jonson and his companions at the Mermaid would 

 not have known their old friend Will in his new disguise. The modern 

 Roscius would have scouted the halting player. He would have shrunk 

 from the parts of the inspired poet. If others were unlike us, we feel it 

 as a presumption and an impertinence to usurp their place ; if they were 

 like us, it seems a work of supererogation. We are not to be cozened 

 out of our existence for nothing. It has been ingeniously urged, as an 

 objection to having been Milton, that " then we should not have had the 

 pleasure of reading Paradise Lost." Perhaps I should incline to draw 

 lots with Pope, but that he was deformed, and did not sufficiently relish 

 Milton and Shakspeare. As it is, we can enjoy his verses and their's too. 

 Why, having these, need we ever be dissatisfied with ourselves ? Gold- 

 smith is a person whom I considerably affect, notwithstanding his blun- 

 ders and his misfortunes. The author of the Vicar of Wakefield, and of 

 Retaliation, is one whose temper must have had something eminently 

 amiable, delightful, gay, and happy in it. 



' ' A certain tender bloom his fame o'erspreads." 



But then I could never make up my mind to his preferring Rowe and 

 Dryden to the worthies of the Elizabethan age ; nor could I, in like man- 

 ner, forgive Sir Joshua whom I number among those whose existence 

 was marked with a white stone, and on whose tomb might be inscribed 

 " Thrice Fortunate !" his treating Nicholas Poussin with contempt. 

 Differences in matters of taste and opinion are points of honour " stuff 

 o* the conscience " stumbling-blocks not to be got over. Others, we 

 easily grant, may have more wit, learning, imagination, riches, strength, 

 beauty, which we should be glad to borrow of them ; but that they have 

 sounder or better views of things, or that we should act wisely in chang- 

 ing in this respect, is what we can by no means persuade ourselves. We 

 may not be the lucky possessors of what is best or most desirable ; but 

 our notion of what is best and most desirable we will give up to no man 

 by choice or compulsion ; and unless others (the greatest wits or brightest 

 geniuses) can come into our way of thinking, we must humbly beg 

 leave to remain as we are. A Calvinistic preacher would not relinquish 

 a single point of faith to be the Pope of Rome ; nor would a strict Uni- 

 tarian acknowledge the mystery of the Holy Trinity to have painted 

 Raphael's Assembly of the Just. In the range of ideal excellence, we are 

 distracted by variety and repelled by differences: the imagination is 

 fickle and fastidious, and requires a combination of all possible qualifi- 

 cations, which never met. Habit alone is blind and tenacious of the 

 most homely advantages; and after running the tempting round of 

 nature, fame, and fortune, we wrap ourselves up in our familiar recol- 

 lections and humble pretensions as the lark, after long fluttering 011 

 sunny wing, sinks into its lowly bed ! 



We can have no very importunate craving, nor very great confidence, 

 in wishing to change characters, except with those with whom we are 

 intimately acquainted by their works ; and having these by us (which is 

 all we know or covet in them), what would we have more ? We can have 



