above little ludicrous pleasures, it ensures to us those that are more solid and satisfactory. 147. He is a most impudent blockhead, who rails at others, for the faults he is guilty of himself. But he sometimes does it to shut their mouths, or divert their attention from such a life, as cannot bear inspection. A most preposterous method! but it now and then succeeds. Like the light of the sun on the mirror of a reflecting telescope, he sets those spots to view in others which he conceals in himself; or if he owns them, takes pains to impute them too, like the fool who content to wear his cap, would often clap it on the head of another. 148. A hypocrite is as ostentatious in the display of his actions, as he is careful to conceal his motives. Like the tree in Virgil, which exalts its head as high towards heaven, as it strikes its root downward towards hell. 149. The peevish man punishes himself for the faults, as well imaginary, as real, of others; and because his neighbour hath done him an injury, writes a note to him to desire he would come and kill him. This is intended for revenge; but death and the demon of false honour, grin at it, as the most ridiculous thing a fool can possibly be tempted to. 150. The link-boy stumbles through the dirt, and gives his light and the even part of the street to the person who pays him. Some of these link-boys go in gowns. 151. A man's actions are his monument; those of the truly great give him a mausoleum; those of the little, who can go no farther, than to a parcel of insignificant singularities, afford them only a flat stone with a curt and quaint epitaph. 152. Is it not a little odd, that the most plain and obvious things in nature, should still be unsettled, even among the knowing part of mankind. It is not yet agreed among people who live within seven miles of one another, when day and night begin. No almanac-maker nor natural philosopher, nor astronomer, can settle it. Just where I am, the farmer living next to me, begins his day, at four in the morning. I go eastward, and find the citizen begins his, at six, which is two degrees of longitude to the westward; I go still eastward, but about fifteen feet, and, perceive his wife begins her day at eight, two degrees more to the westward. I go half a mile more to the eastward still, and find the court lady and rake beginning their day. at twelve, four degrees more to the westward still, though I am sure I have moved forwards to the east. This is enough to distract all astronomical observation, and prevent the possibility of discovering the longitude, at least a common longitude, unless we can agree that the city of London, commonly, but, it seems erroneously, fixed for the first degree of longitude, is eight degrees of longitude distant from itself. 153. All things appear to us very much according to the frame of our own mind, and the sensations we are disposed to feel of this or that object. To the sullen, all mankind appear dark and ill-humoured; to the selfish, narrowhearted; to the subtle, designing. The resentful see indignation; and the jealous, suspicion in every body. How unhappy is he, who makes so bad a world for himself! On the other hand, the honest, the benevolent, the generous, for the most part, meet with themselves in others, and see a thousand good qualities even in villains. Be good and you shall have a good world to live in, I mean on a footing more solid, than your mere opinion; for people usually suit themselves to those they converse or deal with, and treat as they expect to be treated. We know not how to be civil to the sullen; and he who stands on all the nice punctilios of honour with a known scoundrel, is an honourable man indeed. Again, an ingenuous and kind disposition excites an occasional honesty and good-will from persons apt to be knavish and cruel to creatures of their own stamp. The world is, or (which amounts to somewhat like it in effect) seems to be, good to the good, and bad to the wicked. The same may be said, in regard to happiness and misery. What a beautiful, what a happy scene of things does this life appear to the happy! but how full of tombs and tears, to the miserable! What a gay world to the young! how decayed and degenerate to the aged! The women grow uglier and the stones harder, as we advance in years. 154. You seem conceited, not so much for thinking too highly of yourself, as for not thinking highly of others. That is, as highly as they think of themselves. 155. In giving advice, every man points out his own road to that which he takes for happiness, though he knows you take it to consist in somewhat else. Yet he might as well talk to you continually of a good ear for music, if he were to teach you the art of painting. The man of this world will give you abundance of sage advice, how to manage your affairs, how to cultivate an interest with the great ones, how to carry your lawsuit, &c. Yet, all this time, he hath reason enough to believe, on the strength of your repeated declarations, that you mean not to be a man of this world, but rather to provide for your happiness in a better. It is plain by his manner of advising, that he does not give credit to your declarations, or that he knows not how to speak on any but worldly matters, or that he thinks nothing else worth speaking of. 156. Singularity is always regarded as whimsical, and therefore when the generality of mankind are silly, capricious, or whimsical, the epithet of whimsical, is always given to the wise man. Hence it was, that many said that Christ was beside himself. A drunken man is the most apt to think others drunk, and a madman to call others mad. If the Scriptures are the word of God, and if with God there are infinite wisdom and truth, it will follow that the bulk of mankind are beside themselves, as is evident by their going two different ways at once, going to riches, honours, or pleasures, without end, by inclination choice and labour, while they are going to death, in a very few years, by natural necessity. 157. When I first set out in the world, I imagined, it would be sufficient, in order to keep well with all, to say ill of none. But I had travelled but a very little way, when I perceived that if I did not speak as well of others, as they thought of themselves, which, to say the truth, was no easy matter, I was not to hope for much of their good liking, or good will. Finding matters in this posture, I was willing to barter a little commendation with my acquaintances, in expectation of a return in kind from them, and only on the square of trade. Here I was again mistaken. They valued what I said at so low, and what they said themselves at so high a rate, that it was plain I must pay applause for approbation, and invoke Apollo and the nine muses, without omitting a single nymph, must call for the trumpet of fame, and for a hundred iron tongues, to sound his praises about, who thought it enough to say, I was no fool, and less he could not say for his own sake. Well, perceiving how things went, I cried every body up to the stars, and had a hundred men, every one of whom was absolutely the wisest, the bravest, the best man alive, and as many beauties, every one of whom was the loveliest girl of the age. This did purely for a while, and I got a great character, by giving enormous ones; the character of a judicious person, who, of all men, knew best how to do justice to merit. This, however, did not last long. Each hero found out, I made heroes of all, whereas praise without preference, or universal preference, is not praise. By this time I found out, that I was not to hope for the good word of every one, and therefore began to drive a closer kind of traffic. I singled out a few, and made each of them an object of admiration to myself, and a subject of panegyric to others, for some particular excellence, taking care never to ascribe the same to more than one. By this expedient I kept my characters, distinct and separate, without suffering my Cæsar to break in upon my Socrates; nor my Cicero, though too eager for it, to interfere with my Homer. I throve pretty well on this narrow way of dealing; for as these few were my only worthies, so I was their only judge of men and actions, I mean, for some time. It was not long ere my heroes, dissatisfied with their own praises, drew as largely on me for satire and ridicule, in regard to others. This would not be content to be made a demi-god, unless I made another a toad. One could not enjoy the saintship I had given him, if I did not brand another for a devil. Had I attempted this, I should have made many bitter enemies, for one cool friend. On my refusal therefore, I was cashiered as a panegyrist, because I would not be employed as a satirist, and considered afterward, as no judge of merit, because I seemed blind to its opposite. 158. Were you to converse with Gelon and Xanthus, you would imagine, they had passed their lives in two widely different worlds. Gelon, as an officer in the army, hath been quartered in a thousand different places, and was the delight of every place he came to, as a man of good sense and of an easy and cheerful turn. He hath met with nothing but civility and kindness from mankind, for he knows how to be properly civil and kind to every one. Mankind in his report, are but a little lower than angels. On the contrary, Xanthus is ever telling you stories of the brutality of one, and the treachery of another, and the extreme severity of a third; all exercised on himself. In his account, men are but a little higher than devils. But then Xanthus is sour, suspicious, and disobliging. Which of these two are we to believe? Both, as to facts. Gelon makes friends by being a friend; Xanthus, enemies by being an enemy. From a redundancy of good nature, Gelon thinks he hath been better treated, than he was, and Xanthus, from an excess of the opposite quality, magnifies the ill usage he hath received. It is true, mankind should deal by others, as they wish others to deal by them. If they are not so just, they at least generally follow a maxim which is the counterfeit of this, namely, to do as they are done by. A very few do good, without a view to returns, and even do good for evil. The rest of mankind trade in good or bad offices, in the former receiving less, and in the latter more than value. But they can do no better. 159. If time, according to the definition of philosophers and astronomers, is that portion of duration, which is bounded and distinguished by the revolutions of the earth and the other planets, I am not much concerned in it. The other idea of it, as bounded by the womb and grave, comes nearer to my purpose. This era, setting out with my birth is distinguished into several smaller portions by the revolutions, which my mind and body undergo in the different stages of life. Changes of place or condition, with every disorder or recovery, every event, whether to or against my wish, every fall from, or rise to virtue, subdivide these again into more particular epochas. Here I have periods of my own, for a system of chronology wherein I am greatly interested. I am not equally beholding to the sun and moon, to the Olympiads, the Julian or Gregorian calendars, for marking out a duration, that is not mine. I mean the same thing by life and time, and compute it, not by what passes without, but within me. I gaze at no star, nor constellation of stars, |