leave a scruple of the fanciful injuries--for
they were mere fancies--which had provoked the humour. But the humour
itself was too self-pleasing, while it lasted--we know how bare we
lay ourself in the confession--to be abandoned all at once with the
grounds of it. We still brood over wrongs which we know to have been
imaginary; and for our old acquaintance, N----, whom we find to
have been a truer friend than we took him for, we substitute some
phantom--a Caius or a Titius--as like him as we dare to form it, to
wreak our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to fall at
once from the pinnacle of neglect; to forego the idea of having been
ill-used and contumaciously treated by an old friend. The first thing
to aggrandise a man in his own conceit, is to conceive of himself as
neglected. There let him fix if he can. To undeceive him is to deprive
him of the most tickling morsel within the range of self-complacency.
No flattery can come near it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of
an injustice; but supremely blest, who thinks all his friends in a
conspiracy to depress and undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we
sing not to the profane) far beyond the reach of all that the world
counts joy--a deep, enduring satisfaction in the depths, where the
superficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we to recite one half of
this mystery, which we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all
the world would be in love with disrespect; we should wear a slight
for a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would be the only matter
for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious book in the Apocalypse, the
study of this mystery is unpalatable only in the commencement. The
first sting of a suspicion is grievous; but wait--out of that wound,
which to flesh and blood seemed so difficult, there is balm and honey
to be extracted. Your friend passed you on such or such a day,--having
in his company one that you conceived worse than ambiguously disposed
towards you,--passed you in the street without notice. To be sure he
is something shortsighted; and it was in your power to have accosted
_him_. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in
the science of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you; and S----,
who was with him, must have been the cause of the contempt. It galls
you, and well it may. But have patience. Go home, and make the worst
of it, and you are a made man from this time. Shut yourself up,
and--rejecting, as an