i. This has by no
means been my case. My genius often deserted me. I was far from having
the thought, the argument, or the illustration at all times ready, when
it was required. I resembled to a certain degree the persons we read
of, who are said to be struck as if with a divine judgment. I was for
a moment changed into one of the mere herd, de grege porcus. My powers
therefore were precarious, and I could not always be the intrepid and
qualified advocate of truth, if I vehemently desired it. I have often, a
few minutes afterwards, or on my return to my chambers, recollected
the train of thinking, which world have strewn me off to advantage,
and memorably done me honour, if I could have had it at my command the
moment it was wanted.

And so much for confession. I am by no means vindicating myself.

I honour much more the man who is at all times ready to tell his
neighbour whatever it may be of advantage to him to know, to shew
himself the sincere and untemporising advocate of absent merit and
worth, and to contribute by every means in his power to the improvement
of others, and to the diffusion of salutary truths through the world.

This is what every man ought to be, and what the best devised scheme of
republican institutions would have a tendency to make us all.

But, though the man here described is to a certain degree a deserter
of his true place in society, and cannot be admitted to have played his
part in all things well, we are by no means to pronounce upon him a
more unfavourable judgment than he merits. Diffidence, though, where
it disqualifies us in any way from doing justice to truth, either as it
respects general principle or individual character, a defect, yet is on
no account to be confounded in demerit with that suppression of truth,
or misrepresentation, which grows out of actual craft and design.

The diffident man, in some cases seldomer, and in some oftener and in
a more glaring manner, deserts the cause of truth, and by that means
is the cause of misrepresentation, and indirectly the propagator of
falshood. But he is constant and sincere as far as he goes; he never
lends his voice to falshood, or intentionally to sophistry; he never for
an instant goes over to the enemy's standard, or disgraces his honest
front by strewing it in the ranks of tyranny or imposture. He may
undoubtedly be accused, to a certain degree, of dissimulation, or
throwing into shade the thing that is, but never of simulation