Note 160 — Front matter (continued 3)
Reading edition
No one can anticipate the suffrages of posterity. Every man in judging of himself is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set off and confirm it. He must be indifferent to his own merits before he can feel a confidence in them. Besides, every one must be sensible of a thousand weaknesses and deficiencies in himself, whereas genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.—Hazlitt.