270. Flattery is a false coin, which only derives its currency from our vanity. Shakspeare holds up to ridicule "the sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pool, And when I ope my lips let no dog bark." Merchant of Venice. "I have observed," says Lord Bolingbroke, "that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life,-wise men spend their time in mirth, 'tis only fools who are serious." Lord Shaftesbury also observes, that "Gravity is of the very essence of imposture ; it does not only make us mistake other things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake itself." Sterne is still more severe on gravity, "Yorick sometimes in his wild way of talking would say, that Gravity was an arrant scoundrel, and, he would add, of the most dangerous kind too, because a sly one; and that he verily believed more honest wellmeaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelvemonth than by pocket-picking and shoplifting in seven. In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say, there was no danger but to itself; whereas the very essence of Gravity was design, and con 271. Civility is a desire to receive it in turn, and and to be accounted well bred. 272. The education commonly given to the young is a second self-love with which they are inspired. 273. There is no passion in which self-love reigns so powerfully as in love; and we are often more disposed to sacrifice the peace of the loved object than to lose our own. sequently deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth, and that, with all its pretensions, it was no better but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz., a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind; which definition of gravity Yorick with great imprudence would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold." -Tristram Shandy, vol. i. chap. ii. The list may be closed with a remark of the shrewd observer Lavater, "Too much gravity argues a shallow mind." Notwithstanding these authorities, it is to be feared that gravity still retains its power of imposing on the credulity of the world, though it may, perhaps, be considered a less dangerous, because more easily detected, mode of imposture than that denounced by our author in Maxim 300, namely, affected simplicity. 274. What is called liberality is most often only the vanity of giving, which we like better than the thing we give. 275. Pity is often a perception of our own misfortunes in those of others; it is a clever foresight of the evils into which we may fall. We succor others in order to engage them to succor us in similar circumstances; and the services 275. This is one of the maxims which has been subject to the most unfavorable comments, but the author, as will appear from the following quotations, was by no means singular in his views of pity. Aristotle defines pity to be "a sort of a pain occasioned by an evil capable of hurting or destroying, appearing to befall one who does not deserve it, which one may himself expect to endure, or that some person connected with him will; and this when it appears near; for it evidently is necessary that a person likely to feel pity should be actually such as to deem that, either in his own person, or in the person of some one connected with him, he may suffer some evil, and that an evil of such a description as has been stated."-Rhet. book ii. ch. viii. The philosopher Aristippus appears to have held a nearly similar opinion, for "being asked why men gave to the poor rather than to philosophers, he replied, because they think themselves may sooner come to be poor than to be philosophers."-BACON, Apophthegms. H we render them are, to speak properly, a good which we do to ourselves by anticipation. 276. Narrowness of mind is the cause of obstinacy-we do not easily believe what is beyond our sight. 277. It is deceiving ourselves to fancy that it is only the violent passions, such as ambition and love, which can triumph over the others. In "Homo qui in homine calamitoso est misericors meminit sui. In adversis tutelam parat, qui in secundis commodat.” Hobbes says, "Grief for the calamity of another is pity, and ariseth from the imagination that a like calamity may befall himself, and therefore is called compassion."-Leviathan. "On ne plaint jamais dans autrui que les maux dont on ne se croit pas exempt soi-même."-ROUSSEAU, Emile, 4. La Bruyère, in a passage aimed probably at La Rochefoucauld, has a stinging remark on these definitions, which, indeed, it goes far towards overthrowing:-"S'il est vrai que la pitié ou la compassion soit un retour vers nousmêmes qui nous met en la place des malheureux, pourquoi tirent-ils de nous si peu de soulagement dans leurs misères ?” -Du Cœur. dolence, all languid as it is, nevertheless is frequently their master; it spreads its dominion over all the designs and all the actions of life, and thus destroys and insensibly consumes the passions and the virtues. 278. Readiness to believe evil without sufficient examination is the result of pride and indolence. We wish to find people guilty, and we do not wish to give ourselves the trouble of examining into the crimes. 279. We take exceptions to judges who are in the least degree interested, and yet we are quite willing that our reputation and our fame should depend on the judgment of men who are all opposed to us, either from jealousy, or from prejudice, or from want of intelligence; it is only to induce them to decide in our favor 279. This thought would seem to be suggested by the following passage in Montaigne, Essays, book ii. c. 16, of Glory: "A dozen men must be culled out of a whole na tion to judge of an acre of land; and the judgment of our inclinations and actions, the most important thing that is, we refer to the voice and determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance, prejudice, and inconstancy. Is it |