Egotistical sublime is John Keats's phrase for a kind of poetry that turns grand subjects back toward the poet's own mind and personality. He used it mainly to criticize Wordsworth, whose verse Keats felt often made the speaker's private feelings seem larger than the subject itself. The phrase now usually suggests self-dramatizing or self-centered poetic seriousness.
Example
Keats might have seen the poem as an example of the egotistical sublime:
The mountains rise, but still I stand
at the center of their silver light,
my thoughts larger than the storming land,
my heart the measure of the height.