some one has asked in the course of it, 'Pray, did any one ever see
an account of one Cavanagh that appeared some time back in most of the
papers? Is it known who wrote it?' These are trying moments. I had a
triumph over a person, whose name I will not mention, on the following
occasion. I happened to be saying something about Burke, and was
expressing my opinion of his talents in no measured terms, when this
gentleman interrupted me by saying he thought, for his part, that Burke
had been greatly overrated, and then added, in a careless way, 'Pray,
did you read a character of him in the last number of the -----?'
'I wrote it!'--I could not resist the antithesis, but was afterwards
ashamed of my momentary petulance. Yet no one that I find ever spares
me.

Some persons seek out and obtrude themselves on public characters in
order, as it might seem, to pick out their failings, and afterwards
betray them. Appearances are for it, but truth and a better knowledge
of nature are against this interpretation of the matter. Sycophants and
flatterers are undesignedly treacherous and fickle. They are prone to
admire inordinately at first, and not finding a constant supply of food
for this kind of sickly appetite, take a distaste to the object of their
idolatry. To be even with themselves for their credulity, they sharpen
their wits to spy out faults, and are delighted to find that this
answers better than their first employment. It is a course of study,
'lively, audible, and full of vent.' They have the organ of wonder and
the organ of fear in a prominent degree. The first requires new objects
of admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings: the second makes them
crouch to power wherever its shifting standard appears, and willing
to curry favour with all parties, and ready to betray any out of sheer
weakness and servility. I do not think they mean any harm: at least, I
can look at this obliquity with indifference in my own particular case.
I have been more disposed to resent it as I have seen it practised upon
others, where I have been better able to judge of the extent of the
mischief, and the heartlessness and idiot folly it discovered.

I do not think great intellectual attainments are any recommendation to
the women. They puzzle them, and are a diversion to the main question.
If scholars talk to ladies of what they understand, their hearers are
none the wiser: if they talk of other things, they prove themselves
fools. The conver