be nearly examined, will be
found to owe its acceptance, not to our ignorance, but knowledge of our
failures, and to delight us rather as it consoles our wants than
displays our possessions. He that shall solicit the favour of his patron
by praising him for qualities which he can find in himself, will be
defeated by the more daring panegyrist who enriches him with
adscititious excellence. Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a
present. The acknowledgment of those virtues on which conscience
congratulates us, is a tribute that we can at any time exact with
confidence; but the celebration of those which we only feign, or desire
without any vigorous endeavours to attain them, is received as a
confession of sovereignty over regions never conquered, as a favourable
decision of disputable claims, and is more welcome as it is more
gratuitous.

Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret,
or convicts us of any fault which had escaped our notice, but because it
shews us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the
officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation
is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not
willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to
conceal.

For this reason advice is commonly ineffectual. If those who follow the
call of their desires, without inquiry whither they are going, had
deviated ignorantly from the paths of wisdom, and were rushing upon
dangers unforeseen, they would readily listen to information that recals
them from their errours, and catch the first alarm by which destruction
or infamy is denounced. Few that wander in the wrong way mistake it for
the right, they only find it more smooth and flowery, and indulge their
own choice rather than approve it: therefore few are persuaded to quit
it by admonition or reproof, since it impresses no new conviction, nor
confers any powers of action or resistance. He that is gravely informed
how soon profusion will annihilate his fortune, hears with little
advantage what he knew before, and catches at the next occasion of
expense, because advice has no force to suppress his vanity. He that is
told how certainly intemperance will hurry him to the grave, runs with
his usual speed to a new course of luxury, because his reason is not
invigorated, nor his appetite weakened.

The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is
what he i