able. Their nerves
are as irritable as their imaginations are callous and inert. They are
addicted to an inveterate habit of littleness and perversity, which
rejects every other motive to action or object of contemplation but the
daily, teasing, contemptible, familiar, favourite sources of uneasiness
and dissatisfaction. When they are of a sanguine instead of a morbid
temperament, they become _quid-nuncs_ and virtuosos--collectors of
caterpillars and odd volumes, makers of fishing-rods and curious in
watch-chains. Will Wimble dabbled in this way, to his immortal honour.
But many others have been less successful. There are those who build
their fame on epigrams or epitaphs, and others who devote their lives to
writing the Lord's Prayer in little. Some poets compose and sing their
own verses. Which character would they have us think most highly of--the
poet or the musician? The Great is One. Some there are who feel more
pride in sealing a letter with a head of Homer than ever that old
blind bard did in reciting his _Iliad._ These raise a huge opinion of
themselves out of nothing, as there are those who shrink from their own
merits into the shade of unconquerable humility. I know one person at
least, who would rather be the author of an unsuccessful farce than of
a successful tragedy. Repeated mortification has produced an inverted
ambition in his mind, and made failure the bitter test of desert. He
cannot lift his drooping head to gaze on the gaudy crown of popularity
placed within his reach, but casts a pensive, riveted look downwards to
the modest flowers which the multitude trample under their feet. If he
had a piece likely to succeed, coming out under all advantages, he
would damn it by some ill-timed, wilful jest, and lose the favour of the
public, to preserve the sense of his personal identity. 'Misfortune,'
Shakespear says, 'brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows';
and it makes our thoughts traitors to ourselves.--It is a maxim with
many--_'Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of
themselves.'_ Those only put it in practice successfully who think more
of the pence than of the pounds. To such, a large sum is less than a
small one. Great speculations, great returns are to them extravagant
or imaginary: a few hundreds a year are something snug and comfortable.
Persons who have been used to a petty, huckstering way of life cannot
enlarge their apprehensions to a notion of anything better. Instead