Milton’s preference of _Paradise Regained_ to _Paradise Lost_ has often been instanced as an example of the false judgments writers form of their works. As a matter of fact, however, this opinion attributed to Milton is overstated. As has recently been pointed out by Mr Mark Pattison, all we know about the matter is, that Milton ‘could not bear to hear with patience’ that it was inferior to _Paradise Lost_. Of a writer who formed the most exaggerated and erroneous notions about the merits of his works, no better example could be given than Southey. He was indeed, as Macaulay remarked in his Diary, arrogant beyond any man in literary history; for his self-conceit was proof against the severest admonitions, and the utter failure of one of his books only confirmed him in his belief of its excellence. When William Taylor asked him who was to read his massive quartos on Brazil, he replied: ‘That one day he should by other means have made such a reputation that it would be thought a matter of course to read them.’ About _Kehama_, he wrote: ‘I was perfectly aware that I was planting acorns while my contemporaries were planting Turkey beans. The oak will grow; and though I may never sit under its shade, my children will.’ To one of his contemporaries, he writes in 1805: ‘No further news of the sale of _Madoc_. The reviews will probably hurt it for a while; that is all they can do. Unquestionably the poem will stand and flourish. I am perfectly satisfied with the execution—now, eight months after its publication, in my cool judgment. William Taylor has said it is the best English poem that has left the press since _Paradise Lost_. Indeed, this is not exaggerated praise, for there is no competition.’ On another occasion Southey writes: ‘_Thalaba_ is finished. You will, I trust, find the Paradise a rich poetical picture, a proof that I can employ magnificence and luxury of language when I think them in place. One overwhelming propensity has formed my destiny, and marred all prospects of rank or wealth; but it has made me happy, and it will make me immortal.’ In a letter written in 1815, he modestly remarks that nothing could be more absurd than thinking of comparing any of his pieces with _Paradise Lost_; but that with Tasso, with Virgil, with Homer, there might be fair grounds of comparison! Nor did he think more meanly of himself as an historian, for he predicted that he would stand above Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon; nay, he went even further, and challenged comparison with the Father of History. ‘I have flattered myself,’ he says, ‘that my _History of Brazil_ might in more points than one be compared to Herodotus, and will hereafter stand in the same relation to the history of that large portion of the new world as his History does to that of the old.’