TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.
The Lodge, June 15, 1791.
My dear Friend,—If it will afford you any comfort that you have a share in my affections, of that comfort you may avail yourself at all times. You have acquired it by means which, unless I should have become worthless myself to an uncommon degree, will always secure you from the loss of it. You are learning what all learn, though few at so early an age, that man is an ungrateful animal; and that benefits, too often, instead of securing a due return, operate rather as provocations to ill-treatment. This I take to be the summum malum of the human heart. Towards God we are all guilty of it more or less; but between man and man, we may thank God for it, there are some exceptions. He leaves this peccant principle to operate, in some degree against himself, in all, for our humiliation, I suppose; and because the pernicious effects of it in reality cannot injure him, he cannot suffer by them; but he knows that, unless he should restrain its influence on the dealings of mankind with each other, the bonds of society would be dissolved, and all charitable intercourse at an end amongst us. It was said of Archbishop Cranmer, "Do him an ill turn, and you make him your friend for ever;" of others it may be said, "Do them a good one, and they will be for ever your enemies." It is the grace of God only that makes the difference.
The absence of Homer (for we have now shaken hands and parted) is well supplied by three relations of mine from Norfolk—my cousin Johnson, an aunt of his,[592] and his sister.[593] I love them all dearly, and am well content to resign to them the place in my attentions so lately occupied by the chiefs of Greece and Troy. His aunt and I have spent many a merry day together, when we were some forty years younger; and we make shift to be merry together still. His sister is a sweet young woman, graceful, good-natured, and gentle, just what I had imagined her to be before I had seen her.[594]
Farewell,
W. C.