elf. The ablest man will sometimes do weak things; the proudest man,
mean things; the honestest man, ill things; and the wickedest man, good
ones. Study individuals then, and if you take (as you ought to do,) their
outlines from their prevailing passion, suspend your last finishing
strokes till you have attended to, and discovered the operations of their
inferior passions, appetites, and humors. A man's general character may
be that of the honestest man of the world: do not dispute it; you might
be thought envious or ill-natured; but, at the same time, do not take
this probity upon trust to such a degree as to put your life, fortune, or
reputation in his power. This honest man may happen to be your rival in
power, in interest, or in love; three passions that often put honesty to
most severe trials, in which it is too often cast; but first analyze this
honest man yourself; and then only you will be able to judge how far you
may, or may not, with safety trust him.

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but
two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
An Agrippina may sacrifice them to ambition, or a Messalina to lust; but
those instances are rare; and, in general, all they say, and all they do,
tends to the gratification of their vanity or their love. He who flatters
them most, pleases them best; and they are the most in love with him, who
they think is the most in love with them. No adulation is too strong for
them; no assiduity too great; no simulation of passion too gross; as, on
the other hand, the least word or action that can possibly be construed
into a slight or contempt, is unpardonable, and never forgotten. Men are
in this respect tender too, and will sooner forgive an injury than an
insult. Some men are more captious than others; some are always
wrongheaded; but every man living has such a share of vanity, as to be
hurt by marks of slight and contempt. Every man does not pretend to be a
poet, a mathematician, or a statesman, and considered as such; but every
man pretends to common sense, and to fill his place in the world with
common decency; and, consequently, does not easily forgive those
negligences, inattentions and slights which seem to call in question, or
utterly deny him both these pretensions.

Suspect, in general, those who remarkably affect any one virtue; who
raise it above all others, and who, in a manner, intimate that they
possess it exclu