y to be such a hen-pecked
frigot, than always to be wracked and tortured with the grating surmises
of suspicion and jealousy. In fine, there is no one society, no one
relation men stand in, would be comfortable, or indeed tolerable,
without my assistance; there could be no right understanding betwixt
prince and people, lord and servant, tutor and pupil, friend and
friend, man and wife, buyer and seller, or any persons however otherwise
related, if they did not cowardly put up small abuses, sneakingly cringe
and submit, or after all fawningly scratch and flatter each other. This
you will say is much, but you shall yet hear what is more; tell me then,
can any one love another that first hates himself? Is it likely any
one should agree with a friend that is first fallen out with his own
judgment? Or is it probable he should be any way pleasing to another,
who is a perpetual plague and trouble to himself? This is such a paradox
that none can be so mad as to maintain. Well, but if I am excluded
and barred out, every man would be so far from being able to bear
with others, that he would be burthensome to himself, and consequently
incapable of any ease or satisfaction. Nature, that toward some of her
products plays the step-mother rather than the indulgent parent, has
endowed some men with that unhappy peevishness of disposition, as to
nauseate and dislike whatever is their own, and much admire what belongs
to other persons, so as they cannot in any wise enjoy what their birth
or fortunes have bestowed upon them: for what grace is there in the
greatest beauty, if it be always clouded with frowns and sulliness? Or
what vigour in youth, if it be harassed with a pettish, dogged,
waspish, ill humour? None, sure. Nor indeed can there be any creditable
acquirement of ourselves in any one station of life, but we should sink
without rescue into misery and despair, if we were not buoyed up and
supported by self-love, which is but the elder sister (as it were) of
Folly, and her own constant friend and assistant For what is or can be
more silly than to be lovers and admirers of ourselves? And yet if it
were not so there will be no relish to any of our words or actions. Take
away this one property of a fool, and the orator shall become as dumb
and silent as the pulpit he stands in; the musician shall hang up his
untouched instruments on the wall; the completest actors shall be hissed
off the stage; the poet shall be burlesqued with his own