CXX.

WHO EXALT THEIR ENEMIES INTO IMPORTANCE.

If it show want of policy to ruin rivals, it shows not less so to raise enemies to undue importance. Burke was guilty of this in respect to Paine; especially when he said of him, that he was an amphibious animal, part American, part French, and part English; but pos'sessing a sufficiency of each to create confusion in "them all.'

The remark applies equally to Watson, Bishop of Llandaff. Had his Apology for the Bible never appeared, Paine's attack upon its authority would, probably, before this have perished in the mass. Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, too, had, probably, fallen almost still-born from the press, had not Fiddes, Law, Hutchinson, Warburton, and Berkeley, extended its fame, and therefore its influence, by answering it with so much virulence, violence, and contempt. Warburton knew better, and ought to have guarded himself from such a consequence; for he writes thus to Dr. Birch *:- I hope ' that no one will be so indiscreet as to notice the book, 'called the Moral Philosopher, publicly, though it be ' in the fag-end of an objection. It is that indiscreet conduct in our defenders of religion, that conveys so many worthless books from hand to hand.’

To cast contempt upon a warrior is, sometimes, the best method of fighting him; but when the court of

* Newarke, Aug. 17, 1737. Sloane MSS., No. 4320.

Vienna laughed at Gustavus Adolphus, called him a < King of Snow,' and declared that he would melt as he advanced farther south, the event proved how fatal it is to laugh when we ought rather to prepare. Shall we be idle enough to take a shaft from such a quiver? To do so,―let our strength be ever so great,—is to resemble the Caspian; which, though fed by a multitude of rivers, never seems to increase.

There is one point, however, that all men ought to regard-never to despise a small enemy. Man is equal to all the larger beasts of the earth; but he is unable to contend with the smaller ones. An army of lions can be subdued in a day; but an army of locusts baffles our strength.

CXXI.

WHOSE NAMES ARE ENOUGH.

'Plunge not into Avernus: Avernus is too dark for you.'

ONE passage of a flock of reindeer over a field of grass is sufficient to render it useless to the Lapland and Norwegian farmer for the rest of the year; for cows will eat no grass over which the foot of a reindeer has passed. Thus is it also with some men; for certain it is, that there are some whom we can bear neither to associate with, to accost, and scarcely even to look at.

As there are some flowers, some birds, and some quadrupeds, whose mere names are enough (wormwood, the hoopoe, and the wolf); so are there some men,— those, for instance, who wear a continual austerity of

smile; who laugh, as they affect to assure us, their enemies to scorn; and who are so enamoured of their own actions and sentiments, that they would almost approve a theft, a murder, or a treason,, if committed by themselves. Too sullen to give pleasure; too proud to receive it; they have a hard and unrelenting furrow, down which never stole one tear either of joy or of commiseration. Rough, violent, and insolent, they love not even so much as the mother that gave them birth. Men, whom we can neither sport with in the hours of our cheerfulness, nor sympathize with in the hours of their distress. They are continually insulting their neighbours; they banish affection from their hearths; their roughness is the personification of vulgarity; and their sententiousness amounts to insolence, and sometimes even to ferocity. Any men rather than these!

CXXII.

WHO, IN RUINING THEIR RIVALS, RUIN THEMSELVES.

'Lands, intersected by a narrow frith,

Abhor each other. Mountains, interposed,
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.'

Cowper.

ABOUT three months after the death of the Marquis of Londonderry, a friend of mine saw Lord Liverpool stand some few minutes before the monuments of Pitt and Fox, sometimes looking at the one and sometimes at the other. Meditating on this circumstance, two or three years after, I could not but lament that Sir James

VOL. II.

M

Scarlett should have been practically right when he stated in the House of Commons, that he had once intended to bring in a bill of legal reform; but that he had, afterwards, declined doing so from a conviction, that all measures of that sort, to be successful, must originate on the ministerial side of the house. Politicians, if they can prevent it, will seldom permit their rivals to do them harm, or their country good. Lord Liverpool could not see, or would not see, the absolute necessity of legal reform.

Persia produces the most beautiful of flowers, and the most nauseous of gums. There, too, they have a saying, that though two dervises can sleep on one carpet, two kings cannot rest in one kingdom. Hence the friends of a rival to a throne are more rigorously dealt with in that country than in any other. No two equal lights can be tolerated in one picture; hence the uncle of the present King of Persia caused five thousand inhabitants of Kerman to be massacred, and five thousand to be deprived of sight, for having permitted his rival to escape the walls of their city. 'Vultures,' said his majesty, purify the air of Cairo, and these executions 'shall purify the heat of Kerman.'

Sallust states, that when the Romans had subdued all their rivals, they, almost instantly, sunk into two vices, immediately opposite to each other; avarice and luxury. Sallust here makes a mistake. He means rapacity, not avarice. Avarice grasps to hoard; rapacity to spend.

The conquest of Thebes promoted the ruin of Athens; and that of Carthage paved the way for the usurpation

of Cæsar. To ruin a rival, then, is always a dubious policy, and, not unfrequently, a policy that leads to ruin, that can never be redeemed.

The most celebrated rivals in history, as every one knows, were the Spartans and Athenians, the Romans and Carthaginians. Paterculus says of the latter, that there existed between them, at all times, either a war, preparations for war, or a deceitful peace. To these instances may be added the Germans and Turks, the Florentines and Venetians, the Spaniards and Portuguese, the French and English. As to factions,-the most famous in recent times have been those of the Guelphs and Guibellines*; and in respect to rival warriors, the most eminent have been Francis I. and Charles V., Tamerlane and Bajazet, Louis XIV. and William III., Charles XII. and Peter the Great.

I never read the respective histories of these countries, factions, and heroes, but I remember Snyders' picture of a boar-hunt (now in the Grosvenor gallery), where the pursuers seem to be as much tortured as the pursued: and such it ought to be.

In ruining their rivals, it is certain that men frequently ruin themselves; but I could never see the propriety of an assertion, I once heard Mr. Wilberforce make in the House of Commons †; viz., that a sacrifice, which would ruin the British navy, would eventually lead, also, to the ruin of America.

*For the origin and progress of these rivalships, see Muratori, Antiq. Medii Ævi, tom. iv. 603.

+ Feb. 13, 1812.