CXX. The most impertinent people are less so from design than from

inadvertence. I have known a person who could scarcely open his lips

without offending some one, merely because he harboured no malice in his

heart. A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humour

will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and

ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.

CXXI. It is great weakness to lay ourselves open to others, who are

reserved towards us. There is not only no equality in it, but we may be

pretty sure they will turn a confidence, which they are so little

disposed to imitate, against us.

CXXII. A man has no excuse for betraying the secrets of his friends,

unless he also divulges his own. He may then seem to be actuated not by

treachery, but indiscretion.

CXXIII. As we scorn them who scorn us, so the contempt of the world (not

seldom) makes men proud.

CXXIV. Even infamy may be oftentimes a source of secret

self-complacency. We smile at the impotence of public opinion, when we

can survive its worst censures.

CXXV. Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.

CXXVI. The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous,

the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and

unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.

CXXVII. We as often repent the good we have done as the ill.

CXXVIII. The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do, if he had

neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to

control him.

CXXIX. We like the expression of Raphael’s faces without an edict to

enforce it. I do not see why there should not be a taste in morals

formed on the same principle.

CXXX. Where a greater latitude is allowed in morals, the number of

examples of vice may increase, but so do those of virtue: at least, we

are surer of the sincerity of the latter. It is only the exceptions to

vice, that arise neither from ignorance nor hypocrisy, that are worth

counting.

CXXXI. The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of

vice; but it also suspends the finer motives to virtue.

CXXXII. No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others;

and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were

aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

CXXXIII. We are only justified in rejecting prejudices, when we can

explain the grounds of them; or when they are at war with nature, which

is the strongest prejudice of all.

CXXXIV. Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident,

ignorance, or authority. Natural prejudices are those which arise out of

the constitution of the human mind itself.

CXXXV. Nature is stronger than reason: for nature is, after all, the

text, reason but the comment. He is indeed a poor creature who does not

_feel_ the truth of more than he _knows_ or can explain satisfactorily

to others.

CXXXVI. The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach

rejects certain foods.

CXXXVII. The drawing a certain positive line in morals, beyond which a

single false step is irretrievable, makes virtue formal, and vice

desperate.

CXXXVIII. Most codes of morality proceed on a supposition of _Original

Sin_; as if the only object was to coerce the headstrong propensities to

vice, and there were no natural disposition to good in the mind, which

it was possible to improve, refine, and cultivate.

CXXXIX. This _negative_ system of virtue leads to a very low style of

moral sentiment. It is as if the highest excellence in a picture was to

avoid gross defects in drawing; or in writing, instances of bad grammar.

It ought surely to be our aim in virtue, as well as in other things, ‘to

snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.’

CXL. We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes

the only temptation.

CXLI. There is neither so much vice nor so much virtue in the world, as

it might appear at first sight that there is. Many people commit actions

that they hate, as they affect virtues that they laugh at, merely

because others do so.

CXLII. When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a

system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the

precipice from the mere dread of falling.

CXLIII. The maxim—_Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor_—has not

been fully explained. In general, it is taken for granted, that those

things that our reason disapproves, we give way to from passion. Nothing

like it. The course that persons in the situation of Medea pursue has

often as little to do with inclination as with judgment: but they are

led astray by some object of a disturbed imagination, that shocks their

feelings and staggers their belief; and they grasp the phantom to put an

end to this state of tormenting suspense, and to see whether it is human

or not.

CXLIV. Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.

CXLV. Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in

earnest ourselves.

CXLVI. A mere sanguine temperament often passes for genius and

patriotism.

CXLVII. Animal spirits are continually taken for wit and fancy; and the

want of them, for sense and judgment.

CXLVIII. In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of

others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of

displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.

CXLIX. Those who cannot miss an opportunity of saying a good thing or of

bringing in some fantastical opinion of their own, are not to be trusted

with the management of any great question.

CL. There are some public speakers who commit themselves and their party

by extravagances uttered in heat and through vanity, which they retract

in cold blood through cowardice and caution. They outrage propriety, and

trim to self-interest.

CLI. An honest man is respected by all parties. We forgive a hundred

rude or offensive things that are uttered from conviction or in the

conscientious discharge of a duty—never one, that proceeds from design

or with a view to raise the person who says it above us.

CLII. Truth from the mouth of an honest man, or severity from a

good-natured one, has a double effect.

CLIII. A person who does not endeavour to _seem_ more than he _is_, will

generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large

deductions for pretence and imposture, that no real merit will stand

against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a

certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to

fashion is necessary to decency.

CLIV. If we do not aspire to admiration, we shall fall into contempt. To

expect sheer, evenhanded justice from mankind, is folly. They take the

gross inventory of our pretensions; and not to have them overlooked

entirely, we must place them in a conspicuous point of view, as men

write their trades or fix a sign over the doors of their houses. Not to

conform to the established practice in either respect, is false delicacy

in the commerce of the world.

CLV. There has been a considerable change in dress and manners in the

course of a century or two, as well as in the signs and badges of

different professions. The streets are no longer encumbered with

numberless emblems of mechanical or other occupations, nor crowded with

the pomp and pageantry of dress, nor embroiled by the insolent airs

assumed by the different candidates for rank and precedence. Our

pretensions become less gross and obtrusive with the progress of

society, and as the means of communication become more refined and

general. The simplicity and even slovenliness of the modern beau form a

striking contrast to the dazzling finery and ostentatious formality of

the oldfashioned courtier; yet both are studied devices and symbols of

distinction. It would be a curious speculation to trace the various

modes of affectation in dress from the age of Elizabeth to the present

time, in connection with the caprices of fashion, and the march of

opinion; and to shew in what manner Sir Isaac Newton’s _Principia_ or

Rousseau’s Emilius have contributed to influence the gliding movements

and curtail the costume of a modern _dandy_!

CLVI. Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our

energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt

nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to

encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in

overcoming them. Where our will is our law, we eagerly set about the

first trifle we think of, and lay it aside for the next trifle that

presents itself, or that is suggested to us. The character of despotism

is apathy or levity—or the love of mischief, because the latter is easy

and suits its pride and wantonness.

CLVII. Affectation is as necessary to the mind, as dress is to the body.

CLVIII. Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting

contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach

to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the

two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise. A mere physical

being, or a pure spirit, can alone be satisfied with itself.

CLIX. Our approbation of others has a good deal of selfishness in it. We

like those who give us pleasure, however little they may wish for or

deserve our esteem in return. We prefer a person with vivacity and high

spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and

pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice, than of dullness

without it. We have no great objection to receive a man who is a villain

as our friend, if he has plausible exterior qualities; nay, we often

take a pride in our harmless familiarity with him, as we might in

keeping a tame panther; but we soon grow weary of the society of a

good-natured fool who puts our patience to the test, or of an awkward

clown who puts our pride to the blush.

CLX. We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness.

We judge less favourably of their characters, when any misfortune

happens to them; and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation,

improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.

CLXI. An heiress, with a large fortune and a moderate share of beauty,

easily rises into a reigning toast.

CLXII. One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some

glaring defect.

CLXIII. We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we

are dissatisfied with ourselves.

CLXIV. We are never so thoroughly tired of the company of any one else

as we sometimes are of our own.

CLXV. People outlive the interest, which, at different periods of their

lives, they take in themselves. When we forget old friends, it is a sign

we have forgotten ourselves; or despise our former ways and notions, as

much as we do their present ones.

CLXVI. We fancy ourselves superior to others, because we find that we

have improved; and at no time did we think ourselves inferior to them.

CLXVII. The notice of others is as necessary to us as the air we

breathe. If we cannot gain their good opinion, we change our battery,

and strive to provoke their hatred and contempt.

CLXVIII. Some malefactors, at the point of death, confess crimes of

which they have never been guilty, thus to raise our wonder and

indignation in the same proportion; or to shew their superiority to

vulgar prejudice, and brave that public opinion, of which they are the

victims.

CLXIX. Others make an ostentatious display of their penitence and

remorse, only to invite sympathy, and create a diversion in their own

minds from the subject of their impending punishment. So that we excite

a strong emotion in the breasts of others, we care little of what kind

it is, or by what means we produce it. We have equally the feeling of

power. The sense of insignificance or of being an object of perfect

indifference to others, is the only one that the mind never covets nor

willingly submits to.

CLXX. There are not wanting instances of those, who pass their whole

lives in endeavouring to make themselves ridiculous. They only tire of

their absurdities when others are tired of talking about and laughing at

them, so that they have become a stale jest.

CLXXI. People in the grasp of death wish all the evil they have done (as

well as all the good) to be known, not to make atonement by confession,

but to excite one more strong sensation before they die, and to leave

their interests and passions a legacy to posterity, when they themselves

are exempt from the consequences.

CLXXII. We talk little, if we do not talk about ourselves.

CLXXIII. We may give more offence by our silence than even by

impertinence.

CLXXIV. Obstinate silence implies either a mean opinion of ourselves or

a contempt of our company: and it is the more provoking, as others do

not know to which of these causes to attribute it, whether to humility

or pride.

CLXXV. Silence proceeds either from want of something to say, or from a

phlegmatic indifference which closes up our lips. The sea, or any other

striking object, suddenly bursting on a party of mutes in a stage-coach,

will occasion a general exclamation of surprise; and the ice being once

broken, they may probably be good company for the rest of the journey.

CLXXVI. We compliment ourselves on our national reserve and taciturnity

by abusing the loquacity and frivolity of the French.

CLXXVII. Nations, not being willing or able to correct their own errors,

justify them by the opposite errors of other nations.

CLXXVIII. We easily convert our own vices into virtues, the virtues of

others into vices.

CLXXIX. A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites

no interest in any. _Repose_ is as necessary in conversation as in a

picture.

CLXXX. The best kind of conversation is that which may be called

_thinking aloud_. I like very well to speak my mind on any subject (or

to hear another do so) and to go into the question according to the

degree of interest it naturally inspires, but not to have to get up a

thesis upon every topic. There are those, on the other hand, who seem

always to be practising on their audience, as if they mistook them for a

DEBATING-SOCIETY, or to hold a general retainer, by which they are bound

to explain every difficulty, and answer every objection that can be

started. This, in private society and among friends, is not desirable.

You thus lose the two great ends of conversation, which are to learn the

sentiments of others, and see what they think of yours. One of the best

talkers I ever knew had this defect—that he evidently seemed to be

considering less what he felt on any point than what might be said upon

it, and that he listened to you, not to weigh what you said, but to

reply to it, like counsel on the other side. This habit gave a brilliant

smoothness and polish to his general discourse, but, at the same time,

took from its solidity and prominence: it reduced it to a tissue of

lively, fluent, ingenious _commonplaces_, (for original genuine,

observations are like ‘minute drops from off the eaves,’ and not an

incessant shower) and, though his talent in this way was carried to the

very extreme of cleverness, yet I think it seldom, if ever, went beyond

it.

CLXXXI. Intellectual excellence can seldom be a source of much

satisfaction to the possessor. In a gross period, or in vulgar society,

it is not understood; and among those who are refined enough to

appreciate its value, it ceases to be a distinction.

CLXXXII. There is, I think, an essential difference of character in

mankind, between those who wish _to do_, and those who wish to _have_

certain things. I observe persons expressing a great desire to possess

fine horses, hounds, dress, equipage, &c. and an envy of those who have

them. I myself have no such feeling, nor the least ambition to shine,

except by doing something better than others. I have the love of power,

but not of property. I should like to be able to outstrip a greyhound in

speed; but I should be ashamed to take any merit to myself from

possessing the fleetest greyhound in the world. I cannot transfer my

personal identity from myself to what I merely call _mine_. The

generality of mankind are contented to be estimated by what they

possess, instead of what they are.

CLXXXIII. Buonaparte observes, that the diplomatists of the new school

were no match for those brought up under the ancient _regime_. The

reason probably is, that the modern style of intellect inclines to

abstract reasoning and general propositions, and pays less attention to

individual character, interests, and circumstances. The moderns have,

therefore, less tact in watching the designs of others, and less

closeness in hiding their own. They perhaps have a greater knowledge of

things, but less of the world. They calculate the force of an argument,

and rely on its success, moving _in vacuo_, without sufficiently

allowing for the resistance of opinion and prejudice.

CLXXXIV. The most comprehensive reasoners are not always the deepest or

nicest observers. They are apt to take things for granted too much, as

parts of a system. Lord Egmont, in a speech in Parliament, in the year

1750, has the following remarkable observations on this subject. ‘It is

not common-sense, but downright madness, to follow general principles in

this wild manner without limitation or reserve; and give me leave to say

one thing, which I hope will be long remembered, and well thought upon

by all those who hear me—that those gentlemen who plume themselves thus

upon their open and extensive understandings, are in fact, the men of

the narrowest principles in the kingdom. For what is a narrow mind? It

is a mind that sees any proposition in one single contracted point of

view, unable to complicate any subject with the circumstances, or

considerations, that are or may or ought to be combined with it. And

pray, what is that understanding which looks upon the question of

_naturalization_ only in this general view, that naturalization is an

increase of the people, and the increase of the people is the riches of

the nation? Never admitting the least reflection, what the people are

whom you let in upon us; how, in the present bad regulation of the

police, they are to be employed or maintained; how their principles,

opinions, or practice may influence the religion or politics of the

state, or what operation their admission may have upon the peace and

tranquillity of the country. Is not such a genius equally contemptible

and narrow with that of the poorest mortal upon earth, who grovels for

his whole life within the verge of the opposite extreme?’

CLXXXV. In an Englishman, a diversity of profession and pursuit (as the

having been a soldier, a valet, a player, &c.) implies a dissipation and

dissoluteness of character, and a fitness for nothing. In a Frenchman,

it only shews a natural vivacity of disposition, and a fitness for

everything.

CLXXXVI. Impudence, like everything else, has its limits. Let a man be

ever so hardened and unblushing, there is a point at which his courage

is sure to fail him; and not being able to carry off the matter with his

usual air of confidence, he becomes more completely confused and awkward

than any one else would in the same circumstances.

CLXXXVII. Half the miseries of human life proceed from our not

perceiving the incompatibility of different attainments, and

consequently aiming at too much. We make ourselves wretched in vainly

aspiring after advantages we are deprived of; and do not consider that

if we had these advantages, it would be quite impossible for us to

retain those which we actually do possess, and which, after all, if it

were put to the question, we would not consent to part with for the sake

of any others.

CLXXXVIII. If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated

without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to

those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

CLXXXIX. Surly natures have more pleasure in disobliging others than in

serving themselves.

CXC. People in general consult their prevailing humour or ruling passion

(whatever it may be) much more than their interest.

CXCI. One of the painters (Teniers,) has represented monkeys with a

monk’s cloak and cowl. This has a ludicrous effect enough. To a superior

race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and

virtue must seem equally ridiculous.

CXCII. When we speak ill of people behind their backs, and are civil to

them to their faces, we may be accused of insincerity. But the

contradiction is less owing to insincerity than to the change of

circumstances. We think well of them while we are with them; and in

their absence recollect the ill we durst not hint at or acknowledge to

ourselves in their presence.

CXCIII. Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a

person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict

him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him _to his face_. A lie boldly

uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.

CXCIV. A man’s reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the

mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The

throwing out malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain,

which no after-reputation can wipe out. To create an unfavourable

impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be _true_,

but that they _have been said_. The imagination is of so delicate a

texture, that even words wound it.

CXCV. A nickname is a mode of insinuating a prejudice against another

under some general designation, which, as it offers no proof, admits of

no reply.

CXCVI. It does not render the person less contemptible or ridiculous in

vulgar opinion, because it may be harmless in itself, or even downright

nonsense. By repeating it incessantly, and leaving out every other

characteristic of the individual, whom we wish to make a bye-word of, it

seems as if he were an abstraction of insignificance.

CXCVII. Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our

efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

CXCVIII. There are many who talk on from ignorance, rather than from

knowledge; and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of

conversation.

CXCIX. Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another

in an untruth: it strikes at the root of our confidence ever after.

CC. In estimating the value of an acquaintance or even friend, we give a

preference to intellectual or convivial over moral qualities. The truth

is, that in our habitual intercourse with others, we much oftener

require to be amused than assisted. We consider less, therefore, what a

person with whom we are intimate is ready to do for us in critical

emergencies, than what he has to say on ordinary occasions. We dispense

with his services, if he only saves us from _ennui_. In civilised

society, words are of as much importance as things.

CCI. We cultivate the society of those who are above us in station, and

beneath us in capacity. The one we do from choice, the other from

necessity. Our interest dictates our submission to the first; our vanity

is flattered by the homage of the last.

CCII. A man of talents, who shrinks from a collision with his equals or

superiors, will soon sink below himself. We improve by trying our

strength with others, not by shewing it off. A person who shuts himself

up in a little circle of dependants and admirers for fear of losing

ground in his own opinion by jostling with the world at large, may

continue to be gaped at by fools, but will forfeit the respect of sober

and sensible men.

CCIII. There are others, who entertaining a high opinion of themselves,

and not being able (for want of plausible qualities) to gather a circle

of butterflies round them, retire into solitude, and there worship the

ECHOES and themselves. They gain this advantage by it—the ECHOES do not

contradict them. But it is a question, whether by dwelling always on

their own virtues and merits, unmolested, they increase the stock. They,

indeed, pamper their ruling vices, and pile them mountain-high; and

looking down on the world from the elevation of their retreat, idly

fancy that the world has nothing to do but to look up to them with

wondering eyes.

CCIV. It is a false principle, that because we are entirely occupied

with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The

contrary inference is the fair one.

CCV. It is better to desire than to enjoy—to love than to be loved.

CCVI. Every one would rather be Raphael than Hogarth. Without entering

into the question of the talent required for their different works, or

the pleasure derived from them, we prefer that which confers dignity on

human nature to that which degrades it. We would wish to _do_ what we

would wish to _be_. And, moreover, it is most difficult to do what it is

most difficult to be.

CCVII. A selfish feeling requires less moral capacity than a benevolent

one: a selfish expression requires less intellectual capacity to execute

it than a benevolent one; for in expression, and all that relates to it,

the intellectual is the reflection of the moral. Raphael’s figures are

sustained by _ideas_: Hogarth’s are distorted by mechanical habits and

instincts. It is elevation of thought that gives grandeur and delicacy

of expression to passion. The expansion and refinement of the soul are

seen in the face as in a mirror. An enlargement of purpose gives a

corresponding enlargement of form. The _mind_, as it were, acts over the

whole body, and animates it equally; while petty and local interests

seize on particular parts, and distract it by contrary and mean

expressions. Now, if mental expression has this superior grandeur and

grace, we can account at once for the superiority of Raphael. For there

is no doubt, that it is more difficult to give a whole continuously and

proportionably than to give the parts separate and disjointed, or to

diffuse the same subtle but powerful expression over a large mass than

to caricature it in a single part or feature. The actions in Raphael are

like a branch of a tree swept by the surging blast; those in Hogarth

like straws whirled and twitched about in the gusts and eddies of

passion. I do not mean to say that goodness alone constitutes greatness,

but mental power does. Hogarth’s Good Apprentice is insipid: Raphael has

clothed Elymas the Sorcerer with all the dignity and grandeur of vice.

Selfish characters and passions borrow greatness from the range of

imagination, and strength of purpose; and besides, have an advantage in

natural force and interest.

CCVIII. We find persons who are actuated in all their tastes and

feelings by a spirit of contradiction. They like nothing that other

people do, and have a natural aversion to whatever is agreeable in

itself. They read books that no one else reads; and are delighted with

passages that no one understands but themselves. They only arrive at

beauties through faults and difficulties; and all their conceptions are

brought to light by a sort of Cæsarean process. This is either an

affectation of singularity; or a morbid taste, that can relish nothing

that is obvious and simple.

CCIX. An unaccountable spirit of contradiction is sometimes carried into

men’s behaviour and actions. They never do anything from a direct

motive, or in a straightforward manner. They get rid of all sorts of

obligations, and rush on destruction without the shadow of an excuse.

They take a perverse delight in acting not only contrary to reason, but

in opposition to their own inclinations and passions, and are for ever

in a state of cross-purposes with themselves.

CCX. There are some persons who never decide from deliberate motives at

all, but are the mere creatures of impulse.

CCXI. Insignificant people are a necessary relief in society. Such

characters are extremely agreeable, and even favourites, if they appear

satisfied with the part they have to perform.

CCXII. Little men seldom seem conscious of their diminutive size; or

make up for it by the erectness of their persons, or a peculiarly dapper

air and manner.

CCXIII. Any one is to be pitied, who has just sense enough to perceive

his deficiencies.

CCXIV. I had rather be deformed than a dwarf and well-made. The one may

be attributed to accident; the other looks like a deliberate insult on

the part of nature.

CCXV. Personal deformity, in the well-disposed, produces a fine placid

expression of countenance; in the ill-tempered and peevish, a keen,

sarcastic one.

CCXVI. People say ill-natured things without design, but not without

having a pleasure in them.

CCXVII. A person who blunders upon system, has a secret motive for what

he does, unknown to himself.

CCXVIII. If any one by his general conduct contrives to part friends, he

may not be aware that such is the tendency of his actions, but assuredly

it is their motive. He has more pleasure in seeing others cold and

distant, than cordial and intimate.

CCXIX. A person who constantly meddles to no purpose, means to do harm,

and is not sorry to find he has succeeded.

CCXX. Cunning is natural to mankind. It is the sense of our weakness,

and an attempt to effect by concealment what we cannot do openly and by

force.

CCXXI. In love we never think of moral qualities, and scarcely of

intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone (with beauty) excite

love.

CCXXII. There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much

lower than an ideot; and an ideot has some advantages over a wise man.

CCXXIII. Comparisons are odious, because they reduce every one to a

standard he ought not to be tried by, or leave us in possession only of

those claims which we can set up, to the entire exclusion of others. By

striking off the common qualities, the remainder of excellence is

brought down to a contemptible fraction. A man may be six feet high, and

only an inch taller than another. In comparisons, this difference of an

inch is the only thing thought of or ever brought into question. The

greatest genius or virtue soon dwindles into nothing by such a mode of

computation.

CCXXIV. It is a fine remark of Rousseau’s, that the best of us differ

from others in fewer particulars than we agree with them in. The

difference between a tall and a short man is only a few inches, whereas

they are both several feet high. So a wise or learned man knows many

things, of which the vulgar are ignorant; but there is a still greater

number of things, the knowledge of which they share in common with him.

CCXXV. I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a

knave as well.

CCXXVI. Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is

a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by

which we are as much liable to be foiled, as by the greatest ability or

courage.

CCXXVII. We can only be degraded in a contest with low natures. The

advantages that others obtain over us are fair and honourable to both

parties.

CCXXVIII. Reflection makes men cowards. There is no object that can be

put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of

passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.

CCXXIX. The youth is better than the old age of friendship.

CCXXX. In the course of a long acquaintance we have repeated all our

good things, and discussed all our favourite topics several times over,

so that our conversation becomes a mockery of social intercourse. We

might as well talk to ourselves. The soil of friendship is worn out with

constant use. Habit may still attach us to each other, but we feel

ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might be compared to old married

people without the tie of children.

CCXXXI. We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people. Use may

in part reconcile us to our own tediousness, but we do not adopt that of

others on the same paternal principle. We may be willing to tell a story

twice, never to hear one more than once.

CCXXXII. If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them: if we

are constantly with them, we despise them.

CCXXXIII. There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself;

we cannot force it any more than love.

CCXXXIV. The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.

CCXXXV. To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two

greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.

CCXXXVI. It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is returned: it

ought to make us prouder that we can love her for herself alone, without

the aid of any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of love.

CCXXXVII. An English officer who had been engaged in an intrigue in

Italy, going home one night, stumbled over a man fast asleep on the

stairs. It was a bravo who had been hired to assassinate him. Such, in

this man, was the force of conscience!

CCXXXVIII. An eminent artist having succeeded in a picture which drew

crowds to admire it, received a letter from a shuffling old relation in

these terms, ‘Dear Cousin, now you may draw good bills with a

vengeance.’ Such is the force of habit! This man only wished to be a

Raphael that he might carry on his old trade of drawing bills.

CCXXXIX. Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join

the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death

by them.

CCXL. To think the worst of others, and to do the best we can ourselves,

is a safe rule, but a hard one to practise.

CCXLI. To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the

highest wisdom and virtue.

CCXLII. We may hate and love the same person, nay even at the same

moment.

CCXLIII. We never hate those whom we have once loved, merely because

they have injured us. ‘We may kill those of whom we are jealous,’ says

Fielding, ‘but we do not hate them.’ We are enraged at their conduct and

at ourselves as the objects of it, but this does not alter our passion

for them. The reason is, we loved them without their loving us; we do

not hate them because they hate us. Love may turn to indifference with

possession, but is irritated by disappointment.

CCXLIV. Revenge against the object of our love is madness. No one would

kill the woman he loves, but that he thinks he can bring her to life

afterwards. Her death seems to him as momentary as his own rash act.

_See Othello._—‘My wife! I have no wife,’ &c. He stabbed not at her

life, but at her falsehood; he thought to kill the wanton, and preserve

the wife.

CCXLV. We revenge in haste and passion: we repent at leisure and from

reflection.

CCXLVI. By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we

get rid of a present uneasiness, and incur lasting remorse. With the

accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the

injury we have done them, even more than they do.

CCXLVII. I think men formerly were more jealous of their rivals in

love—they are now more jealous of their mistresses, and lay the blame on

them. That is, we formerly thought more of the mere possession of the

person, which the removal of a favoured lover prevented, and we now

think more of a woman’s affections, which may still follow him to the

tomb. To kill a rival is to kill a fool; but the Goddess of our idolatry

may be a sacrifice worthy of the Gods. Hackman did not think of shooting

Lord Sandwich, but Miss Ray.

CCXLVIII. Many people in reasoning on the passions make a continual

appeal to common sense. But passion is without common sense, and we must

frequently discard the one in speaking of the other.

CCXLIX. It is provoking to hear people at their ease talking reason to

others in a state of violent suffering. If you can remove their

suffering by speaking a word, do so; and then they will be in a state to

hear calm reason.

CCL. There is nothing that I so hate as I do to hear a common-place set

up against a feeling of truth and nature.

CCLI. People try to reconcile you to a disappointment in love, by asking

why you should cherish a passion for an object that has proved itself

worthless. Had you known this before, you would not have encouraged the

passion; but that having been once formed, knowledge does not destroy

it. If we have drank poison, finding it out does not prevent its being

in our veins: so passion leaves its poison in the mind! It is the nature

of all passion and of all habitual affection; we throw ourselves upon it

at a venture, but we cannot return by choice. If it is a wife that has

proved unworthy, men compassionate the loss, because there is a tie,

they say, which we cannot get rid of. But has the heart no ties? Or if

it is a child, they understand it. But is not true love a child? Or when

another has become a part of ourselves, ‘where we must live or have no

life at all,’ can we tear them from us in an instant?—No: these bargains

are for life; and that for which our souls have sighed for years, cannot

be forgotten with a breath, and without a pang.

CCLII. Besides, it is uncertainty and suspense that chiefly irritate

jealousy to madness. When we know our fate, we become gradually

reconciled to it, and try to forget a useless sorrow.

CCLIII. It is wonderful how often we see and hear of Shakspeare’s plays

without being annoyed with it. Were it any other writer, we should be

sick to death of the very name. But his volumes are like that of nature,

we can turn to them again and again:

‘Age cannot wither, nor custom stale

His infinite variety.’

CCLIV. The contempt of a wanton for a man who is determined to think her

virtuous, is perhaps the strongest of all others. He officiously reminds

her of what she ought to be; and she avenges the galling sense of lost

character on the fool who still believes in it.

CCLV. To find that a woman whom we loved has forfeited her character, is

the same thing as to learn that she is dead.

CCLVI. The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The

repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

CCLVII. Once a renegado, and always a renegado.

CCLVIII. By speaking truth to the really beautiful, we learn to flatter

other women.

CCLIX. There is a kind of ugliness which is not disagreeable to women.

It is that which is connected with the expression of strong but bad

passions, and implies spirit and power.

CCLX. People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of

them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice

to leave us no resource but in itself.

CCLXI. Our consciousness of injustice makes us add to the injury. By

aggravating a wrong, we seem to ourselves to justify it. The repetition

of the blow inflames our passion and deadens reflection.

CCLXII. In confessing the greatest offences, a criminal gives himself

credit for his candour. You and he seem to have come to an amicable

understanding on his character at last.

CCLXIII. A barefaced profligacy often succeeds to an overstrained

preciseness in morals. People in a less licentious age carefully conceal

the vices they have; as they afterwards, with an air of philosophic

freedom, set up for those they have not.

CCLXIV. It is a sign that real religion is in a state of decay, when

passages in compliment to it are applauded at the theatre. Morals and

sentiment fall within the province of the stage; but religion, except

where it is considered as a beautiful fiction which ought to be treated

with lenity, does not depend upon our suffrages.

CCLXV. There are persons to whom success gives no satisfaction, unless

it is accompanied with dishonesty. Such people willingly ruin themselves

in order to ruin others.

CCLXVI. Habitual liars invent falsehoods, not to gain any end or even to

deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice

and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.

CCLXVII. A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a

fool of some other person.

CCLXVIII. Fontenelle said, ‘If his hand were full of truths, he would

not open his fingers to let them out.’ Was this a satire on truth or on

mankind?

CCLXIX. The best kind of conversation is that which is made up of

observations, reflections, and anecdotes. A string of stories without

application is as tiresome as a long-winded argument.

CCLXX. The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at

others. They are safe from reprisals, and have no hope of rising in

their own esteem, but by lowering their neighbours. The severest critics

are always those, who have either never attempted, or who have failed in

original composition.

CCLXXI. More remarks are made upon any one’s dress, looks, &c. in

walking twenty yards along the streets of Edinburgh, or other provincial

towns, than in passing from one end of London to the other.

CCLXXII. There is less impertinence and more independence in London than

in any other place in the kingdom.

CCLXXIII. A man who meets thousands of people in a day who never saw or

heard of him before, if he thinks at all, soon learns to think little of

himself. London is the place where a man of sense is soonest cured of

his coxcombry, or where a fool may indulge his vanity with impunity, by

giving himself what airs he pleases. A valet and a lord are there nearly

on a level. Among a million of men, we do not count the units, for we

have not time.

CCLXXIV. There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy;

and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a

compliment to it.

CCLXXV. It does not follow that a man is a hypocrite, because his

actions give the lie to his words. If he at one time seems a saint, and

at other times a sinner, he possibly is both in reality, as well as in

appearance. A person may be fond of vice and of virtue too; and practise

one or the other, according to the temptation of the moment. A priest

may be pious, and a sot or bigot. A woman may be modest, and a rake at

heart. A poet may admire the beauties of nature, and be envious of those

of other writers. A moralist may act contrary to his own precepts, and

yet be sincere in recommending them to others. These are indeed

contradictions, but they arise out of the contradictory qualities in our

nature. A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in

what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in

opposite things.

CCLXXVI. The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it. To

recommend certain things is worse than to practise them. There may be an

excuse for the last in the frailty of passion; but the former can arise

from nothing but an utter depravity of disposition. Any one may yield to

temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and aspiration after virtue; but

he who maintains vice in theory, has not even the idea or capacity for

virtue in his mind. Men err: fiends only make a mock at goodness.

CCLXXVII. The passions make antitheses and subtle distinctions, finer

than any pen.

CCLXXVIII. I used to think that men were governed by their passions more

than by their interest or reason, till I heard the contrary maintained

in Scotland, _viz._ that the _main-chance_ is the great object in life,

and the proof given of it was, that every man in the street where we

were talking, however he might have a particular _hobby_, minded his

business as the principal thing, and endeavoured to make both ends meet

at the end of the year. This was a shrewd argument, and it was Scotch. I

could only answer it in my own mind by turning to different persons

among my acquaintance who have been ruined with their eyes open by some

whim or fancy. One, for instance, married a girl of the town: a second

divorced his wife to marry a wench at a lodging-house, who refused him,

and whose cruelty and charms are the torment of his own life, and that

of all his friends: a third drank himself to death: a fourth is the dupe

and victim of quack advertisements: a fifth is the slave of his wife’s

ill-humour: a sixth quarrels with all his friends without any motive: a

seventh lies on to the end of the chapter, and to his own ruin, &c. It

is true none of these are Scotchmen; and yet they live in houses, rather

than in the open air, and follow some trade or vocation to avoid

starving outright. If this is what is meant by a calculation of

consequences, the doctrine may hold true; but it does not infringe upon

the main point. It affects the husk, the shell, but not the kernel of

our dispositions. The pleasure or torment of our lives is in the pursuit

of some favourite passion or perverse humour.

‘Within our bosoms reigns another lord,

_Passion_, sole judge and umpire of itself.’

CCLXXIX. There are few things more contemptible than the conversation of

men of the town. It is made up of the technicalities and cant of all

professions, without the spirit or knowledge of any. It is flashy and

vapid, and is like the rinsings of different liquors at a night-cellar,

instead of a bottle of fine old port. It is without clearness or body,

and a heap of affectation.

CCLXXX. The conversation of players is either dull or bad. They are

tempted to say gay or fine things from the habit of uttering them with

applause on the stage, and unable to do it from the habit of repeating

what is set down for them by rote. A good comic actor, if he is a

sensible man, will generally be silent in company. It is not his

profession to invent _bon mots_, but to deliver them; and he will scorn

to produce a theatrical effect by grimace and mere vivacity. A great

tragic actress should be a _mute_, except on the stage. She cannot raise

the tone of common conversation to that of tragedy, and any other must

be quite insipid to her. Repose is necessary to her. She who died the

night before in Cleopatra, ought not to revive till she appears again as

Cassandra or Aspasia. In the intervals of her great characters, her own

should be a blank, or an unforced, unstudied part.

CCLXXXI. To marry an actress for the admiration she excites on the

stage, is to imitate the man who bought PUNCH.

CCLXXXII. To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or

even if he did, you would find fault with him as a pedant. We should

_read_ authors, and not converse with them.

CCLXXXIII. Extremes meet. Excessive refinement is often combined with

equal grossness. They act as a relief to each other, and please by

contrast.

CCLXXXIV. The seeds of many of our vices are sown in our blood: others

we owe to the bile or a fit of indigestion. A sane mind is generally the

effect of a sane body.

CCLXXXV. Health and good temper are the two greatest blessings in life.

In all the rest, men are equal, or find an equivalent.

CCLXXXVI. Poverty, labour, and calamity are not without their luxuries;

which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate, in vain seek for.

CCLXXXVII. Good and ill seem as necessary to human life as light and

shade are to a picture. We grow weary of uniform success, and pleasure

soon surfeits. Pain makes ease delightful; hunger relishes the homeliest

food, fatigue turns the hardest bed to down; and the difficulty and

uncertainty of pursuit in all cases enhance the value of possession. The

wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest

yearnings after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy. If

the schemes of Utopians could be realised, the tone of society would be

changed from what it is, into a sort of insipid high life. There could

be no fine tragedies written; nor would there be any pleasure in seeing

them. We tend to this conclusion already with the progress of

civilisation.

CCLXXXVIII. The pleasure derived from tragedy is to be accounted for in

this way, that, by painting the extremes of human calamity, it by

contrast kindles the affections, and raises the most intense imagination

and desire of the contrary good.

CCLXXXIX. The question respecting dramatic illusion has not been fairly

stated. There are different degrees and kinds of belief. The point is

not whether we do or do not believe what we see to be a positive

reality, but how far and in what manner we believe in it. We do not say

every moment to ourselves, ‘This is real:’ but neither do we say every

moment, ‘This is not real.’ The involuntary impression steals upon us

till we recollect ourselves. The appearance of reality, in fact, is the

reality, so long and in as far as we are not conscious of the

contradictory circumstances that disprove it. The belief in a well-acted

tragedy never amounts to what the witnessing the actual scene would

prove, and never sinks into a mere phantasmagoria. Its power of

affecting us is not, however, taken away, even if we abstract the

feeling of identity; for it still suggests a stronger idea of what the

reality _would be_, just as a picture reminds us more powerfully of the

person for whom it is intended, though we are conscious it is not the

same.

CCXC. We have more faith in a well-written romance, while we are reading

it, than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the

one case, more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of

the facts in the other.

CCXCI. It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one

is at a play. We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is

wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.

CCXCII. Great natural advantages are seldom combined with great acquired

ones, because they render the labour required to attain the last

superfluous and irksome. It is only necessary to be admired; and if we

are admired for the graces of our persons, we shall not be at much pains

to adorn our minds. If Pope had been a beautiful youth, he would not

have written The Rape of the Lock.[22] A beautiful woman, who has only

to shew herself to be admired, and is famous by nature, will be in no

danger of becoming a _bluestocking_, to attract notice by her learning,

or to hide her defects.

CCXCIII. Those people who are always _improving_, never become great.

Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and

which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigour, and

not by patient, wary steps.

CCXCIV. The late Mr Opie remarked, that an artist often put his best

thoughts into his first works. His earliest efforts were the result of

the study of all his former life, whereas his later and more mature

performances (though perhaps more skilful and finished) contained only

the gleanings of his after-observation and experience.

CCXCV. The effort necessary to overcome difficulty urges the student on

to excellence. When he can once do well with ease, he grows

comparatively careless and indifferent, and makes no farther advances to

perfection.

CCXCVI. When a man can do better than every one else in the same walk,

he does not make any very painful exertions to outdo himself. The

progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition

ends.

CCXCVII. We are rarely taught by our own experience; and much less do we

put faith in that of others.

CCXCVIII. We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced,

because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young, and

placed in the same situations as ourselves.

CCXCIX. We are egotists in morals as well as in other things. Every man

is determined to judge for himself as to his conduct in life, and finds

out what he ought to have done, when it is too late to do it. For this

reason, the world has to begin again with each successive generation.

CCC. We should be inclined to pay more attention to the wisdom of the

old, if they shewed greater indulgence to the follies of the young.

CCCI. The best lesson we can learn from witnessing the folly of mankind

is not to irritate ourselves against it.

CCCII. If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for

speculation.

CCCIII. In judging of individuals, we always allow something to

_character_; for even when this is not agreeable or praiseworthy, it

affords exercise for our sagacity, and baffles the harshness of our

censure.

CCCIV. There are persons to whom we never think of applying the ordinary

rules of judging. They form a class by themselves and are curiosities in

morals, like nondescripts in natural history. We forgive whatever they

do or say, for the singularity of the thing, and because it excites

attention. A man who has been hanged, is not the worse subject for

dissection; and a man who deserves to be hanged, may be a very amusing

companion or topic of discourse.

CCCV. Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary

rules of morality.

CCCVI. No man ever owned to the title of a _murderer_, a _tyrant_, &c.

because, however notorious the facts might be, the epithet is

accompanied with a reference to motives and marks of opprobrium in

common language and in the feelings of others, which he does not

acknowledge in his own mind.

CCCVII. There are some things, the _idea_ of which alone is a clear gain

to the human mind. Let people rail at virtue, at genius and friendship

as long as they will—the very _names_ of these disputed qualities are

better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm

even the most angry abuse of them.

CCCVIII. If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be

lost to the world.

CCCIX. Were good and evil ever so nearly balanced in reality, yet

imagination would add a casting-weight to the favourable scale, by

anticipating the bright side of what is to come, and throwing a pleasing

melancholy on the past.

CCCX. Women, when left to themselves, talk chiefly about their dress:

they think more about their lovers than they talk about them.

CCCXI. With women, the great business of life is love; and they

generally make a mistake in it. They consult neither the heart nor the

head, but are led away by mere humour and fancy. If instead of a

companion for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance or

to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation would be right.

They tie their true-lover’s knots with idle, thoughtless haste, while

the institutions of society render it indissoluble.

CCCXII. When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human

life, the proper answer to them would be that there is hardly any one

who at some time or other _has not been in love_. If we consider the

high abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its voluptuous

refinement, even in the meanest breast, how sacred and how sweet it is,

this alone may reconcile us to the lot of humanity. That drop of balm

turns the bitter cup to a delicious nectar—

‘And vindicates the ways of God to man.’

CCCXIII. It is impossible to love entirely, without being loved again.

Otherwise, the fable of Pygmalion would have no meaning. Let any one be

ever so much enamoured of a woman who does not requite his passion, and

let him consider what he feels when he finds her scorn or indifference

turning to mutual regard, the thrill, the glow of rapture, the melting

of two hearts into one, the creation of another self in her—and he will

own that he was before only half in love!

CCCXIV. Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively)

seldom wrong. They judge instinctively of what falls under their

immediate observation or experience, and do not trouble themselves about

remote or doubtful consequences. If they make no profound discoveries,

they do not involve themselves in gross absurdities. It is only by the

help of reason and logical inference, according to Hobbes, that ‘man

becomes excellently wise, or excellently foolish.’[23]

CCCXV. Women are less cramped by circumstances or education than men.

They are more the creatures of nature and impulse, and less cast in the

mould of habit or prejudice. If a young man and woman in common life are

seen walking out together on a holiday, the girl has the advantage in

point of air and dress. She has a greater aptitude in catching external

accomplishments and the manners of her superiors, and is less depressed

by a painful consciousness of her situation in life. A Quaker girl is

often as sensible and conversable as any other woman: while a Quaker man

is a bundle of quaint opinions and conceit. Women are not spoiled by

education and an affectation of superior wisdom. They take their chance

for wit and shrewdness, and pick up their advantages, according to their

opportunities and turn of mind. Their faculties (such as they are) shoot

out freely and gracefully, like the slender trees in a forest; and are

not clipped and cut down, as the understandings of men are, into uncouth

shapes and distorted fancies, like yew-trees in an old-fashioned garden.

Women in short resemble self-taught men, with more pliancy and delicacy

of feeling.

CCCXVI. Women have as little imagination as they have reason. They are

pure egotists. They cannot go out of themselves. There is no instance of

a woman having done anything great in poetry or philosophy. They can act

tragedy, because this depends very much on the physical expression of

the passions—they can sing, for they have flexible throats and nice

ears—they can write romances about love—and talk for ever about nothing.

CCCXVII. Women are not philosophers or poets, patriots, moralists, or

politicians—they are simply women.

CCCXVIII. Women have a quicker sense of the ridiculous than men, because

they judge from immediate impressions, and do not wait for the

explanation that may be given of them.

CCCXIX. English Women have nothing to say on general subjects: French

Women talk equally well on them or any other. This may be obviously

accounted for from the circumstance that the two sexes associate much

more together in France than they do with us, so that the tone of

conversation in the women has become masculine, and that of the men

effeminate. The tone of apathy and indifference in France to the

weightier interests of reason and humanity is ascribable to the same

cause. Women have no speculative faculty or fortitude of mind, and

wherever they exercise a continual and paramount sway, all must be soon

laughed out of countenance, but the immediately intelligible and

agreeable—but the shewy in religion, the lax in morals, and the

superficial in philosophy.

CCCXX. The texture of women’s minds, as well as of their bodies, is

softer than that of men’s: but they have not the same strength of nerve,

of understanding, or of moral purpose.

CCCXXI. In France knowledge circulates quickly from the mere

communicativeness of the national disposition. Whatever is once

discovered, be it good or bad, is made no secret of; but is spread

quickly through all ranks and classes of society. Thought then runs

along the surface of the mind like an electrical fluid; while the

English understanding is a _non-conductor_ to it, and damps it with its

_torpedo_ touch.

CCCXXII. The French are fond of reading as well as of talking. You may

constantly see girls tending an apple-stall in the coldest day in

winter, and reading Voltaire or Racine. Such a thing was never known in

London as a barrow-woman reading Shakespear. Yet we talk of our

widespread civilisation, and ample provisions for the education of the

poor.

CCCXXIII. In comparing notes with the French, we cannot boast even of

our superior conceit; for in that too they have the advantage of us.

CCCXXIV. It is curious that the French, with all their vivacity and love

of external splendour, should tolerate nothing but their prosing,

didactic style of tragedy on the stage; and that with all their flutter

and levity they should combine the most laborious patience and minute

finishing in works of art. A French student will take several weeks to

complete a chalk drawing from a head of Leonardo da Vinci, which a dull,

plodding Englishman would strike off in as many hours.

CCCXXV. The Dutch perhaps finished their landscapes so carefully,

because there was a want of romantic and striking objects in them, so

that they could only be made interesting by the accuracy of the details.

CCCXXVI. An awkward Englishman has an advantage in going abroad. Instead

of having his deficiency more remarked, it is less so; for all

Englishmen are thought awkward alike. Any slip in politeness or

abruptness of address is attributed to an ignorance of foreign manners,

and you escape under the cover of the national character. Your behaviour

is no more criticised than your accent. They consider the barbarism of

either as a compliment to their own superior refinement.

CCCXXVII. The difference between minuteness and subtlety or refinement

seems to be this—that the one relates to the parts, and the other to the

whole. Thus, the accumulation of a number of distinct particulars in a

work, as the threads of a gold-laced buttonhole, or the hairs on the

chin in a portrait of Denner’s, is minute or high finishing: the giving

the gradations of tone in a sky of Claude’s from azure to gold, where

the distinction at each step is imperceptible, but the whole effect is

striking and grand, and can only be seized upon by the eye and taste, is

true refinement and delicacy.

CCCXXVIII. The _forte_ of the French is a certain facility and grace of

execution. The Germans, who are the opposite to them, are full of throes

and labour, and do everything by an overstrained and violent effort.

CCCXXIX. The conversation of a pedantic Scotchman is like a canal with a

great number of _locks_ in it.

CCCXXX. The most learned are often the most narrowminded men.

CCCXXXI. The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their

ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not

understand.

CCCXXXII. Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality

and narrowness of our own views. The English laugh at foreigners,

because, from their insular situation, they are unacquainted with the

manners and customs of the rest of the world.

CCCXXXIII. The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but

his own tastes and prejudices.

CCCXXXIV. The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an

Englishman seems to be this—the one thinks everything right that is

French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English. The

Frenchman is satisfied with his own country; the Englishman is

determined to pick a quarrel with every other.

CCCXXXV. The national precedence between the English and Scotch may be

settled by this, that the Scotch are always asserting their superiority

over the English, while the English never say a word about their

superiority over the Scotch. The first have got together a great number

of facts and arguments in their own favour; the last never trouble their

heads about the matter, but have taken the point for granted as

self-evident.

CCCXXXVI. The great characteristic of the Scotch is that of all

semi-barbarous people,—namely, a hard defiance of other nations.

CCCXXXVII. Those who are tenacious on the score of their faults shew

that they have no virtues to bring as a set-off against them.

CCCXXXVIII. An Englishman in Scotland seems to be travelling in a

conquered country, from the suspicion and precautions he has to

encounter; and this is really the history of the case.

CCCXXXIX. We learn a great deal from coming into contact and collision

with individuals of other nations. The contrast of character and

feeling—the different points of view from which they see things—is an

admirable test of the truth or reasonableness of our opinions. Among

ourselves we take a number of things for granted, which, as soon as we

find ourselves among strangers, we are called upon to account for. With

those who think and feel differently from our habitual tone, we must

have a reason for the faith that is in us, or we shall not come off very

triumphantly. By this comparing of notes, by being questioned and

cross-examined, we discover how far we have taken up certain notions on

good grounds, or barely on trust. We also learn how much of our best

knowledge is built on a sort of acquired instinct, and how little we can

analyse those things that seem to most of us self-evident. He is no mean

philosopher who can give a reason for one half of what he thinks. It by

no means follows that our tastes or judgments are wrong, because we may

be at fault in an argument. A Scotchman and a Frenchman would differ

equally from an Englishman, but would run into contrary extremes. He

might not be able to make good his ground against the levity of the one

or the pertinacity of the other, and yet he might be right, for they

cannot both be so. By visiting different countries and conversing with

their inhabitants, we strike a balance between opposite prejudices, and

have an average of truth and nature left.

CCCXL. Strength of character as well as strength of understanding is one

of the guides that point the way to truth. By seeing the bias and

prejudices of others marked in a strong and decided manner, we are led

to detect our own—from laughing at their absurdities we begin to suspect

the soundness of our own conclusions, which we find to be just the

reverse of them. When I was in Scotland some time ago, I learnt most

from the person, whose opinions were, not most right (as I conceive) but

most Scotch. In this case, as in playing a game at bowls, you have only

to allow for a certain bias in order to hit the Jack: or, as in an

algebraic equation, you deduct so much for national character and

prejudice, which is a known or given quantity, and what remains is the

truth.

CCCXLI. We learn little from mere captious controversy, or the collision

of opinions, unless where there is this collision of character to

account for the difference, and remind one, by implication, where one’s

own weakness lies. In the latter case, it is a shrewd presumption that

inasmuch as others are wrong, so are we: for the widest breach in

argument is made by mutual prejudice.

CCCXLII. There are certain moulds of national character in which all our

opinions and feelings must be cast, or they are spurious and vitiated. A

Frenchman and an Englishman, a Scotchman and an Irishman, seldom reason

alike on any two points consecutively. It is vain to think of

reconciling these antipathies: they are something in the juices and the

blood. It is not possible for a Frenchman to admire Shakspeare, except

out of mere affectation: nor is it at all necessary that he should,

while he has authors of his own to admire. But then his not admiring

Shakspeare is no reason why we should not. The harm is not in the

natural variety of tastes and dispositions, but in setting up an

artificial standard of uniformity, which makes us dissatisfied with our

own opinions, unless we can make them universal, or impose them as a law

upon the world at large.

CCCXLIII. I had rather be a lord than a king. A lord is a private

gentleman of the first class, amenable only to himself. A king is a

servant of the public, dependent on opinion, a subject for history, and

liable to be ‘baited with the rabble’s curse.’ Such a situation is no

sinecure. Kings indeed were gentlemen, when their subjects were vassals,

and the world (instead of a stage on which they have to perform a

difficult and stubborn part) was a deer-park through which they ranged

at pleasure. But the case is altered of late, and it is better and has

more of the sense of personal dignity in it to come into possession of a

large old family estate and ‘ancestral’ groves, than to have a kingdom

to govern—or to lose.

CCCXLIV. The affectation of gentility by people without birth or fortune

is a very idle species of vanity. For those who are in middle or humble

life to aspire to be always seen in the company of the great is like the

ambition of a dwarf who should hire himself as an attendant to wait upon

a giant. But we find great numbers of this class—whose pride or vanity

seems to be sufficiently gratified by the admiration of the finery or

superiority of others, without any farther object. There are sycophants

who take a pride in being seen in the train of a great man, as there are

fops who delight to follow in the train of a beautiful woman (from a

mere impulse of admiration and excitement of the imagination) without

the smallest personal pretensions of their own.

CCCXLV. There is a double aristocracy of rank and letters, which is

hardly to be endured—_monstrum ingens, biforme_. A lord, who is a poet

as well, regards the House of Peers with contempt, as a set of dull

fellows; and he considers his brother authors as a Grub-street crew. A

king is hardly good enough for him to touch: a mere man of genius is no

better than a worm. He alone is all-accomplished. Such people should be

_sent to Coventry_; and they generally are so, through their

insufferable pride and self-sufficiency.

CCCXLVI. The great are fond of patronising men of genius, when they are

remarkable for personal insignificance, so that they can dandle them

like parroquets or lapdogs, or when they are distinguished by some

awkwardness which they can laugh at, or some meanness which they can

despise. They do not wish to encourage or shew their respect for wisdom

or virtue, but to witness the defects or ridiculous circumstances

accompanying these, that they may have an excuse for treating all

sterling pretensions with supercilious indifference. They seek at best

to be amused, not to be instructed. Truth is the greatest impertinence a

man can be guilty of in polite company; and players and buffoons are the

_beau ideal_ of men of wit and talents.

CCCXLVII. We do not see nature merely from looking at it. We fancy that

we see the whole of any object that is before us, because we know no

more of it than what we see. The rest escapes us, as a matter of course;

and we easily conclude that the idea in our minds and the image in

nature are one and the same. But in fact we only see a very small part

of nature, and make an imperfect abstraction of the infinite number of

particulars, which are always to be found in it as well as we can. Some

do this with more or less accuracy than others, according to habit or

natural genius. A painter, for instance, who has been working on a face

for several days, still finds out something new in it which he did not

notice before, and which he endeavours to give in order to make his copy

more perfect, which shews how little an ordinary and unpractised eye can

be supposed to comprehend the whole at a single glance. A young artist,

when he first begins to study from nature, soon makes an end of his

sketch, because he sees only a general outline and certain gross

distinctions and masses. As he proceeds, a new field opens to him;

differences crowd upon differences; and as his perceptions grow more

refined, he could employ whole days in working upon a single part,

without satisfying himself at last. No painter, after a life devoted to

the art and the greatest care and length of time given to a single study

of a head or other object, ever succeeded in it to his wish, or did not

leave something still to be done. The greatest artists that have ever

appeared are those who have been able to employ some one view or aspect

of nature, and no more. Thus Titian was famous for colouring; Raphael

for drawing; Correggio for the gradations, Rembrandt for the extremes of

light and shade. The combined genius and powers of observation of all

the great artists in the world would not be sufficient to convey the

whole of what is contained in any one object in nature; and yet the most

vulgar spectator thinks he sees the whole of what is before him, at once

and without any trouble at all.

CCCXLVIII. A copy is never so good as an original. This would not be the

case indeed, if great painters were in the habit of copying bad

pictures; but as the contrary practice holds, it follows that the

excellent parts of a fine picture must lose in the imitation, and the

indifferent parts will not be proportionally improved by anything

substituted at a venture for them.

CCCXLIX. The greatest painters are those who have combined the finest

general effect with the highest degree of delicacy and correctness of

detail. It is a mistake that the introduction of the parts interferes or

is incompatible with the effect of the whole. Both are to be found in

nature. The most finished works of the most renowned artists are also

the best.

CCCL. We are not weaned from a misplaced attachment by (at last)

discovering the unworthiness of the object. The character of a woman is

one thing; her graces and attractions another; and these last acquire

even an additional charm and piquancy from the disappointment we feel in

other respects. The truth is, a man in love prefers his passion to every

other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue.

Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.

CCCLI. An accomplished coquet excites the passions of others, in

proportion as she feels none herself. Her forwardness allures, her

indifference irritates desire. She fans the flame that does not scorch

her own bosom; plays with men’s feelings, and studies the effect of her

several arts at leisure and unmoved.

CCCLII. Grace in women is the secret charm that draws the soul into its

circle, and binds a spell round it for ever. The reason of which is,

that habitual grace implies a continual sense of delight, of ease and

propriety, which nothing can interrupt, ever varying, and adapting

itself to all circumstances alike.

CCCLIII. Even among the most abandoned of the sex, there is generally

found to exist one strong and individual attachment, which remains

unshaken through all circumstances. Virtue steals like a guilty thing

into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted

victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human

heart.

CCCLIV. There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and

infamy have their altars and their religion. This makes nothing in their

favour, but is a proud compliment to man’s nature. Whatever he is or

does, he cannot entirely efface the stamp of the Divinity on him. Let

him strive ever so, he cannot divest himself of his natural sublimity of

thought and affection, however he may pervert or deprave it to ill.

CCCLV. We judge of character too much from names and classes and modes

of life. It alters very little with circumstances. The theological

doctrines of _Original Sin_, of _Grace_, and _Election_, admit of a

moral and natural solution. Outward acts or events hardly reach the

inward disposition or fitness for good or evil. Humanity is to be met

with in a den of robbers, nay, modesty in a brothel. Nature prevails,

and vindicates its rights to the last.

CCCLVI. Women do not become abandoned with the mere loss of character.

They only discover the vicious propensities which they before were bound

to conceal. They do not (all at once) part with their virtue, but throw

aside the veil of affectation and prudery.

CCCLVII. It is enough to satisfy ambition to excel in some one thing. In

everything else, one would wish to be a common man. Those who aim at

every kind of distinction turn out mere pretenders and coxcombs. One of

the ancients has said that ‘the wisest and most accomplished man is like

the statues of the Gods placed against a wall—in front an Apollo or a

Mercury, behind a plain piece of marble.’

CCCLVIII. The want of money, according to the poet, has the effect of

making men ridiculous. It not only has this disadvantage with respect to

ourselves, but it often shews us others in a very contemptible point of

view. If we sink in the opinion of the world from adverse circumstances,

the world is apt to sink equally in ours. Poverty is the test of

civility and the touchstone of friendship.

CCCLIX. There are those who borrow money, in order to lend it again.

This is raising a character for generosity at an easy rate.

CCCLX. The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great

deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this—they throw it

away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that

strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or

discharge old debts.

CCCLXI. Those who have the habit of _being generous before they are

just_, fancy they are getting out of difficulties all their lives,

because it is in their power to do so whenever they will; and for this

reason they go on in the same way to the last, because the time never

comes for baulking their inclinations or breaking off a bad habit.

CCCLXII. It is a mistake that we court the society of the rich and the

great merely with a view to what we can obtain from them. We do so,

because there is something in external rank and splendour that gratifies

and imposes on the imagination, just as we prefer the company of those

who are in good health and spirits to that of the sickly and

hypochondriacal, or as we would rather converse with a beautiful woman

than with an ugly one.

CCCLXIII. Shakspeare says, ‘Men’s judgments are a parcel of their

fortunes.’ A person in depressed circumstances is not only not listened

to—he has not the spirit to say a good thing.

CCCLXIV. We _are_ very much what others _think of us_. The reception our

observations meet with, gives us courage to proceed or damps our

efforts. A man is a wit and a philosopher in one place, who dares not

open his mouth and is considered as a blockhead in another. In some

companies nothing will go down but coarse practical jests, while the

finest remark or sarcasm would be disregarded.

CCCLXV. Men of talent rise with their company, and are brought out by

the occasion. Coxcombs and pedants have no advantage but over the dull

and ignorant, with whom they talk on by rote.

CCCLXVI. In France or abroad one feels one’s self at a loss; but then

one has an excuse ready in an ignorance of the language. In Scotland

they speak the same language, but do not understand a word that you say.

One cannot get on in society, without ideas in common. To attempt to

convert strangers to your notions, or to alter their whole way of

thinking in a short stay among them, is indeed making a toil of a

pleasure, and enemies of those who may be inclined to be friends.

CCCLXVII. In some situations, if you say nothing you are called dull; if

you talk, you are thought impertinent or arrogant. It is hard to know

what to do in this case. The question seems to be whether your vanity or

your prudence predominates.

CCCLXVIII. One has sometimes no other way of escaping from a sense of

insignificance, but by offending the self-love of others. We should

recollect, however, that good manners are indispensable at all times and

places, whereas no one is bound to make a figure, at the expense of

propriety.

CCCLXIX. People sometimes complain that you do not talk, when they have

not given you an opportunity to utter a word for a whole evening. The

real ground of disappointment has been, that you have not shewn a

sufficient degree of attention to what they have said.

CCCLXX. I can listen with patience to the dullest or emptiest companion

in the world, if he does not require me to do anything more than listen.

CCCLXXI. Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of

education, and the most common among the uneducated.

CCCLXXII. Are we to infer from this, that wit is a vulgar faculty, or

that people of education are proportionably deficient in liveliness and

spirit?

CCCLXXIII. We seldom hear and seldomer make a witty remark. Yet we read

nothing else in Congreve’s plays.

CCCLXXIV. Those who object to wit are envious of it.

CCCLXXV. The persons who make the greatest outcry against bad puns, are

the very same who also find fault with good ones. A bad pun at least

generally leads to a wise remark—_that it is a bad one_.

CCCLXXVI. A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively

one—they shew one another off to the best advantage.

CCCLXXVII. A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or

dullness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.

CCCLXXVIII. It is not easy to write essays like Montaigne, nor Maxims in

the manner of the Duke de la Rochefoucault.

CCCLXXIX. The most perfect style of writing may be that which treats

strictly and methodically of a given subject; the most amusing (if not

the most instructive) is that, which mixes up the personal character of

the author with general reflections.

CCCLXXX. The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart.

We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.

CCCLXXXI. He who exercises a constant independence of spirit, and yet

seldom gives offence by the freedom of his opinions, may be presumed to

have a well-regulated mind.

CCCLXXXII. There are those who never offend by never speaking their

minds; as there are others who blurt out a thousand exceptionable things

without intending it, and because they are actuated by no feelings of

personal enmity towards any one.

CCCLXXXIII. Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens

that the better part of discretion is valour.

CCCLXXXIV. Mental cowards are afraid of expressing a strong opinion, or

of striking hard, lest the blow should be retaliated. They throw

themselves on the forbearance of their antagonists, and hope for

impunity in their insignificance.

CCCLXXXV. No one ever gained a good word from friend or foe, from man or

woman, by want of spirit. The public know how to distinguish between a

contempt for themselves and the fear of an adversary.

CCCLXXXVI. Never be afraid of attacking a bully.

CCCLXXXVII. An honest man speaks truth, _though_ it may give offence; a

vain man, _in order that_ it may.

CCCLXXXVIII. Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is,

who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.

CCCLXXXIX. Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living.

It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity,

who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in

it for future flight.

CCCXC. The inhabitant of a metropolis is apt to think this circumstance

alone gives him a decided superiority over every one else, and does not

improve that natural advantage so much as he ought.

CCCXCI. A true-bred _cockney_ fancies his having been born in London is

a receipt in full for every other species of merit. He belongs, in his

own opinion, to a _privileged class_.

CCCXCII. The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses

the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any

ideas. The understanding thus becomes habitually mechanical and

superficial.

CCCXCIII. In proportion to the number of persons we see, we forget that

we know less of mankind.

CCCXCIV. Pertness and conceit are the characteristics of a true

_cockney_. He feels little respect for the greatest things, from the

opportunity of seeing them often and without trouble; and at the same

time he entertains a high opinion of himself from his familiarity with

them. He who has seen all the great actors, the great public characters,

the chief public buildings, and the other wonders of the metropolis,

thinks less of them from this circumstance; but conceives a prodigious

contempt for all those who have not seen what he has.

CCCXCV. The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and

bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure,

stagnant—without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or

others—and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate

race of beings.

CCCXCVI. Those who, from a constant change and dissipation of outward

objects have not a moment’s leisure left for their own thoughts, can

feel no respect for themselves, and learn little consideration for

humanity.

CCCXCVII. Profound hypocrisy is inconsistent with vanity: for the last

would betray our designs by some premature triumph. Indeed, vanity

implies a sympathy with others, and consummate hypocrisy is built on a

total want of it.

CCCXCVIII. A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no

respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

CCCXCIX. There is a degree of selfishness so complete, that it does not

feel the natural emotions of resentment, contempt, &c. against those who

have done all they could to provoke them. Everything but itself is a

matter of perfect indifference to it. It feels towards others no more

than if they were of a different species; and inflicts torture or

imparts delight, itself unmoved and immovable.

CCCC. Egotism is an infirmity that perpetually grows upon a man, till at

last he cannot bear to think of anything but himself, or even to suppose

that others do.

CCCCI. He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.

CCCCII. The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets

with no more respect than he exacts.

CCCCIII. What puts the baseness of mankind in the strongest point of

view is, that they avoid those who are in misfortune, instead of

countenancing or assisting them. They anticipate the increased demand on

their sympathy or bounty, and escape from it as from a falling house.

CCCCIV. Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can

boast no advantage over us; nor can we triumph over them.

CCCCV. We judge of an author by the quality, not the quantity, of his

productions. Unless we add as much to our reputation by a second attempt

as we did by our first, we disappoint expectation, and lose ground with

the public. Those therefore who have done the least have often the

greatest reputation. The author of Waverley has not risen in public

estimation by the extreme voluminousness of his writings: for it seems

as if that which is done so continually could not be very difficult to

do, and that there is some trick or _knack_ in it. The miracle ceases

with the repetition! The _Pleasures of Hope_ and the _Pleasures of

Memory_, on the contrary, stand alone and increase in value, because

they seem unrivalled and inimitable, even by the authors themselves. An

economy of expenditure is the way to grow rich in fame, as well as in

other pursuits.

CCCCVI. It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow

pleasures.

CCCCVII. Those who can command themselves, command others.

CCCCVIII. A surfeit of admiration or friendship often ends in an

indifference worse than hatred or contempt. It is not a lively

perception of faults, but a sickly distaste to the very idea of the

persons formerly esteemed, a palling of the imagination, or a conscious

inertness and inability to revive certain feelings—a state from which

the mind shrinks with greater repugnance than from any other.

CCCCIX. The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.

CCCCX. Those people who are fond of giving trouble like to take it; just

as those who pay no attention to the comforts of others, are generally

indifferent to their own. We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of

our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility.

CCCCXI. No one is idle, who can do anything.

CCCCXII. Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of

amusement: it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.

CCCCXIII. Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

CCCCXIV. Praise is no match for blame and obloquy. For, were the scales

even, the malice of mankind would throw in the casting-weight.

CCCCXV. The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will

become great in some particular way. It has the greatest shew of

magnanimity, and the least of it in reality. We are not jealous of

dormant merit, which nobody recognises but ourselves, and which in

proportion as it developes itself, demonstrates our sagacity. If our

prediction fails, it is forgotten; and if it proves true, we may then

set up for prophets.

CCCCXVI. Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they

labour in it, but they labour in it, because they excel.

CCCCXVII. Vice is man’s nature: virtue is a habit—or a mask.

CCCCXVIII. The foregoing maxim shews the difference between truth and

sarcasm.

CCCCXIX. Exalted station precludes even the exercise of natural

affection, much more of common humanity.

CCCCXX. We for the most part strive to regulate our actions, not so much

by conscience or reason, as by the opinion of the world. But _by the

world_ we mean those who entertain an opinion about us. Now, this circle

varies exceedingly, but never expresses more than a part. In senates, in

camps, in town, in country, in courts, in a prison, a man’s vices and

virtues are weighed in a separate scale by those who know him, and who

have similar feelings and pursuits. We care about no other opinion.

There is a moral horizon which bounds our view, and beyond which the

rest is air. The public is divided into a number of distinct

jurisdictions for different claims; and posterity is but a name, even to

those who sometimes dream of it.

CCCCXXI. We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

CCCCXXII. Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great

objection to seeing them wrong. There is often a good deal of spleen at

the bottom of benevolence.

CCCCXXIII. The reputation of science which ought to be the most lasting,

as synonymous with truth, is often the least so. One discovery

supersedes another; and the progress of light throws the past into

obscurity. What has become of the Blacks, the Lavoisiers, the

Priestleys, in chemistry? In political economy, Adam Smith is laid on

the shelf, and Davenant and De Witt have given place to the Says, the

Ricardos, the Malthuses, and the Macullochs. These persons are happy in

one respect—they have a sovereign contempt for all who have gone before

them, and never dream of those who are to come after them and usurp

their place. When any set of men think theirs the only science worth

studying, and themselves the only infallible persons in it, it is a sign

how frail the traces are of past excellence in it, and how little

connection it has with the general affairs of human life. In proportion

to the profundity of any inquiry, is its futility. The most important

and lasting truths are the most obvious ones. Nature cheats us with her

mysteries, one after another, like a juggler with his tricks; but shews

us her plain honest face, without our paying for it. The understanding

only blunders more or less in trying to find out what things are in

themselves: the heart judges at once of its own feelings and

impressions; and these are true and the same.

CCCCXXIV. Scholastic divinity was of use in its day, by affording

exercise to the mind of man. Astrology, and the finding-out the

philosopher’s stone, answered the same purpose. If we had not something

to doubt, to dispute and quarrel about, we should be at a loss what to

do with our time.

CCCCXXV. The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.

CCCCXXVI. It has been said that any man may have any woman.

CCCCXXVII. Many people are infatuated with ill-success, and reduced to

despair by a lucky turn in their favour. While all goes well, they are

_like fish out of water_. They have no confidence or sympathy with their

good fortune, and look upon it as a momentary delusion. Let a doubt be

thrown on the question, and they begin to be full of lively

apprehensions again; let all their hopes vanish, and they feel

themselves on firm ground once more. From want of spirit or of habit,

their imaginations cannot rise from the low ground of humility, cannot

reflect the gay, flaunting colours of the rainbow, flag and droop into

despondency, and can neither indulge the expectation, nor employ the

means of success. Even when it is within their reach, they dare not lay

hands upon it, and shrink from unlooked-for prosperity, as something of

which they are ashamed and unworthy. The class of _croakers_ here spoken

of are less delighted at other people’s misfortunes than at their own.

Querulous complaints and anticipations of failure are the food on which

they live, and they at last acquire a passion for that which is the

favourite subject of their thoughts and conversation.

CCCCXXVIII. There are some persons who never succeed, from being too

indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because

the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and

give over the attempt.

CCCCXXIX. To be remembered after we are dead, is but a poor recompense

for being treated with contempt while we are living.

CCCCXXX. Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead,

because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to

the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.

CCCCXXXI. Truth is not one, but many; and an observation may be true in

itself that contradicts another equally true, according to the point of

view from which we contemplate the subject.

CCCCXXXII. Much intellect is not an advantage in courtship. General

topics interfere with particular attentions. A man, to be successful in

love, should think only of himself and his mistress. Rochefoucault

observes that lovers are never tired of each other’s company, because

they are always talking of themselves.

CCCCXXXIII. The best kind of oratory or argument is not that which is

most likely to succeed with any particular person. In the latter case,

we must avail ourselves of our knowledge of individual circumstances and

character: in the former, we must be guided by general rules and

calculations.

CCCCXXXIV. The picture of the Misers, by Quintin Matsys, seems to

proceed upon a wrong idea. It represents two persons of this description

engaged and delighted with the mutual contemplation of their wealth. But

avarice is not a social passion; and the true miser should retire into

his cell to gloat over his treasures alone, without sympathy or

observation.

The End.

NOTES

MEMOIRS OF THOMAS HOLCROFT

The chief source of information respecting the life of Thomas Holcroft

(1745–1809) is the _Life_ here printed. A brief résumé of dates may not,

however, be useless. He was born in London, December 10, 1745 (o.s.).

After wandering with his father, who was in turn shoemaker, horse-dealer

and pedlar, he was apprenticed at the age of thirteen as a stableboy at

Newmarket. He returned to London when he was sixteen, and his next years

were spent as shoemaker, school-master and strolling player. He turned

dramatist, and his first piece, _The Crisis, or Love and Famine_, was

acted on May 1, 1778, for a single performance. He turned author, and in

1780 his first novel, _Alwyn, or the Gentleman Comedian_, was published.

These were followed by other novels and many plays, the best known of

which is _The Road to Ruin_ (Covent Garden, February 18, 1792). In 1783

he went abroad in the interests of journalism, and busied himself with

sundry translations (_e.g._ _Le Mariage de Figaro_, by Beaumarchais,

which was successful at Covent Garden, December 14, 1784, as _The

Follies of a Day_). He did not escape the political troubles of his

time, and, on October 7, 1794, he was sent to Newgate to await his trial

for high-treason: he was discharged, however, without being tried, on

December 1. The remaining years of his life were spent in unfortunate

business speculations (chiefly picture-buying) and literary adventures

in England and abroad: they were years of constant struggle against

poverty and adverse fate. He died on March 23, 1809, and lies buried in

Marylebone Parish Cemetery. He married four times.

There does not seem much reason for the abbreviation of the names of

people mentioned in Holcroft’s ‘Memoirs,’ since they are rarely the

subject of scandal. (See, however, with respect to the Diary, a letter

from Wm. Godwin to Mrs. Holcroft, given in C. Kegan Paul’s ‘William

Godwin,’ vol. ii. pp. 176–77, and Hazlitt’s remarks on p. 169 of the

‘Memoirs.’) Capitals were evidently used for the sake of shortness; in

some cases it is easy to identify from the context the persons

indicated; in others, less so, and, where possible, the identification

is made in the Notes. In some few cases it has not been possible to

state definitely the person meant.

In addition to the works mentioned in the text Holcroft seems also to

have translated Count Stolberg’s ‘Travels through Germany, Switzerland,

Italy and Sicily’ (1796), ‘The Life of Baron Trenck’ (1792), Goethe’s

‘Hermann and Dorothea’ (1801), ‘Sacred Dramas’ by the Countess de Genlis

(1786).

In a letter from Mary Lamb to Mrs. Hazlitt (Nov. 30, 1810, ‘Memoirs of

Hazlitt,’ vol. i. p. 179), in speaking of Hazlitt’s ‘Memoirs of

Holcroft,’ she calls the book the ‘Life Everlasting.’

PAGE

1. _Orange Court, Leicester Fields_, known later as Orange Street,

Leicester Square.

2. _History of Parismus and Parismenos._ A romance of Bohemia (1598)

by Emanuel Ford (fl. 1607).

_Seven Champions of Christendom._ By Richard Johnson (1573–1659?)

Published 1596–97.

4. _Chapman’s Books_, _i.e._ books sold by chapmen or pedlars.

6. Note. _Hugh Trevor._ ‘The Adventures of Hugh Trevor,’ London,

1794–97, 6 vols. See p. 136.

10. _the feast of reason._ Pope, Hor. Bk. II. Sat. 1.

18. _the great vulgar and the small._ Cowley, Hor. Od. III. 1.

19. _spell and null._ A game of ball. The ball (= nur) is released by

a spring from a cup at the end of a piece of steel (= spell).

The object is to strike it, when released, as far as possible.

_bandy._ A game similar to hockey.

_prison-bars._ A game of speed in running from goals or bases.

22. _Childers._ 1715. He was one of the fleetest horses ever known,

and was never beaten.

_Careless._ 1751. Was bred by John Borlace Warren of Stapleford,

Notts. He seems to have been beaten in 1758 by Atlas at

Huntingdon. In 1760 he beat the Duke of Devonshire’s Atlas at

York, but previously, in 1759, he had suffered another defeat

from Atlas at Newmarket.

24. _Mr Woodcock._ Holcroft’s father could hardly have applied to a

better person. John Woodcock was chosen by Mr Jenison Shafto in

1761 to ride a match for him on the following conditions: to

ride a hundred miles a day on any one horse each day for

twenty-nine successive days on any number of horses not

exceeding twenty-nine. He began on Newmarket Heath, May 4, 1761,

at one o’clock in the morning, and won the sum staked, two

thousand guineas, for his master on the 1st of June, at six

o’clock in the evening, having ridden on only fourteen horses.

One day he rode a hundred and sixty miles owing to his first

horse having tired when sixty miles only had been accomplished.

See Whyte’s ‘History of the British Turf,’ vol. i. p. 513.

25. _Tim Bobbin’s Lancashire dialect._ By John Collier (1708–1786). A

popular humorous work in dialogue and dialect (1746).

35. _chuck-farthing._ A game in which coins are thrown into a prepared

hole.

_bones, sinews, and thews._ ‘Heart, sinews, and bones.’—‘Troilus

and Cressida,’ v. 8.

42. _Death and the Lady._ See Bell’s ‘Early Ballads and Ballads of the

Peasantry’ (1877), p. 252.

_Margaret’s Ghost._ ‘William and Margaret’ (1724), by David Mallet

(?1705–1765). See also Bell’s ‘Early Ballads,’ 1877, p. 120.

_King Charles’s golden rules._ Twelve pithy ‘Table Observations,’

probably of seventeenth century origin. See ‘Notes and Queries,’

March 7 and 14, 1863, Jan. 13, 1872. Cf. Goldsmith’s ‘The

Deserted Village,’ l. 232.

43. _The Whole Duty of Man._ 1659. Authorship unknown.

_Horneck’s Crucified Jesus._ 1686. Anthony Horneck (1641–1697).

_The Life of Francis Spira._ Possibly ‘A Relation of the fearful

estate of Francis Spira after he turned apostate from the

Protestant Religion to Popery.’ By N. Bacon, 1637 and many later

editions.

56. _Mr Granville Sharpe._ G. Sharp, the abolitionist (1735–1813).

_one Macklin._ Charles Macklin (?1697–1797). ‘Man of the World’

(1781). For particulars of further well-known actors referred to

in the ‘Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft,’ see Notes to Hazlitt’s ‘A

View of the English Stage,’ present edition.

59. _Mr Foote._ Samuel Foote (1720–1777).

_Pierre and Jaffier._ In ‘Venice Preserved’ (1681–82), by Thomas

Otway (1652–1685).

_Lothario._ In ‘The Fair Penitent’ (1703), by Nicholas Rowe

(1674–1718).

_as Nic. Bottom says_. ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ 1, 2.

63. _Mossop._ Henry Mossop (?1729–?1774) opened Smock Alley Theatre in

1760.

66. _Downing or Dunning._ ? George Downing (d. 1780), who wrote the

comedy, ‘Newmarket, or The Humours of the Turf’ (1763).

67. _lamb’s wool._ A drink made of ale, nutmeg, sugar and roasted

apples.

70. _Clementi._ Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), the father of pianoforte

music.

Note. _the Spoiled Child._ 1790. Ascribed to Isaac Bickerstaffe

(d. 1812?).

Note. _The Road to Ruin._ See p. 121, and note thereto.