pon his face. 'There's
sympathy!' This alone is a diversion to your unqualified contempt. He is
stupid, and says nothing, but he seems to have something in him when he
laughs. You had conceived of him as a rank Whig or Tory--yet he talks
upon other subjects. You knew that he was a virulent party-writer; but
you find that the man himself is a tame sort of animal enough. He does
not bite. That's something. In short, you can make nothing of it. Even
opposite vices balance one another. A man may be pert in company, but he
is also dull; so that you cannot, though you try, hate him cordially,
merely for the wish to be offensive. He i did not know before--that he
is a fool as well; so you forgive him. On the other hand, he may be a
profligate public character, and may make no secret of it; but he gives
you a hearty shake by the hand, speaks kindly to servants, and supports
an aged father and mother. Politics apart, he is a very honest fellow.
You are told that a person has carbuncles on his face; but you have
ocular proofs that he is sallow, and pale as a ghost. This does not much
mend the matter; but it blunts the edge of the ridicule, and turns your
indignation against the inventor of the lie; but he is -----, the editor
of a Scotch magazine; so you are just where you were. I am not very fond
of anonymous criticism; I want to know who the author can be: but the
moment I learn this, I am satisfied. Even ----- would do well to come
out of his disguise. It is the mask only that we dread and hate: the
man may have something human about hi from partial representations, or
from guess-work, are simple uncompounded ideas, which answer to nothing
in reality: those which we derive from experience are mixed modes, the
only true, and, in general, the most favourable ones. Instead of naked
deformity, or abstract perfection--

Those faultless monsters which the world ne'er saw--

'the web of our lives is of mingled yarn, good and ill together: our
virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not; and our vices
would despair, if they were not encouraged by our virtues.' This was
truly and finely said long ago, by one who knew the strong and weak
points of human nature; but it is what sects, and parties, and those
philosophers whose pride and boast it is to classify by nicknames, have
yet to know the meaning of!

NOTES to ESSAY X

(1) See Wilkie's Blind Fiddler.

(2) _Essay on Consciousness_, p. 303.

ESSAY XI. ON C