“From all rash censure be the mind kept free;
He only judges right who weighs, compares,
And, in the sternest sentence which his voice
Pronounces, ne’er abandons Charity.”
Well and wisely said La Bruyère, that “La règle de Descartes, qui ne veut pas que l’on décide sur les moindres vérités avant qu’elles soient connues clairement et distinctement, est assez belle et assez juste pour devoir s’étendu au jugement que l’on fait des personnes.” Real character, as William Hazlitt says, is not one thing, but a thousand things: actual qualities do not conform to any factitious standard in the mind, but rest upon their own truth and nature. “The dull stupor under which we labour in respect of those whom we have the greatest opportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well to imitate, before we give extreme and uncharitable verdicts against those whom we only see in passing, or at a distance.”
“Well—after all—
What know we of the secret of a man?
His nerves were wrong. What ails us; who are sound,
That we should mimic this raw fool, the world,
Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites,