True pleasures never can our souls enjoy.

Let us add, "[3]That if we did not help to deceive ourselves, we should
never enjoy any pleasure at all. The most agreeable things in this world
are, in the bottom, so trivial, that they would not much affect us, if
we made but never so little serious reflection upon them. Pleasures are
not made to be strictly examined into, and we are obliged every day to
pass over a great many things in them, about which it would not be
proper to make one-self uneasy."

Besides, "[4]Is not the illusion we enjoy as valuable as the good we
possess? M. Fontenelle makes a very excellent observation hereupon in
these verses[5]:--

"Souvent en s'attachant a des fantomes vains
Notre raison seduite avec plaisir s'egare.
Elle-meme joueit des objets qu'elle a feints.
Et cette illusion pour quelque tems repare
Le defaut des vrais biens que la Nature avare
N'a pas accordez aux humains."

Often enchanted by the 'luring charms
Of phantoms gay, our reason all seduc'd,
With pleasure roams thro' endless desarts wild,
Enjoys the objects which herself has form'd.
And this illusion for some time repairs
The want of real joys, which niggard Nature
Never has granted to unhappy man.

"Enjoyment," says Montaigne[6], "and possession, belong principally to
imagination, which embraces more eagerly that which it is in pursuit of,
than that which we have in our power."

And certainly, one may pronounce them happy, who thus amuse themselves,
and believe themselves to be so. And indeed, when a man is so far gone
in this persuasion, every thing that is alleged to the contrary is
rejected as a fable.

But to shew, at present, the reality, if one may say so, of mere
illusion, we need go no farther than the poets, who are certainly the
happiest mortals living in that respect.

To instance no more, there's Mr. --------, who would fain be a rhimer,
and that is his folly; but though the poor man, for his insipid verses,
and improper epithets, richly deserves our pity, yet is he wonderfully
pleased with his performances, and with a great deal of tranquillity
mounts up Parnassus, in his own conceit, in loftier tracts than Virgil
or Theocritus ever knew. But, alas! what would become of him, if some
audacious person should dare unbind his eyes, and make him see his weak
and graceless lines, which, however smoothly they may run, are, at best,
but exquisitely dull; contain terms that