Suspicion in talking is a disposition which renders its subject unacceptable to others and unhappy in himself. Persons will have as little as possible to say to him or do with him, lest they fall under his ruling power; and this is what no one with self-respect cares to do. Who likes to have himself, in his motives and deeds, put through the crucible of his narrow, prickly, stingy soul? He cannot see an inch from himself to judge you by. He “measures your cloth by his yard,” and weighs your goods in his scales, and judges your colours through his spectacles; and of the justice and trueness of these nothing need be said.
“Suspicion overturns what confidence builds;
And he that dares but doubt when there’s no ground,
Is neither to himself nor others sound.”
The true remedy for suspicion in talking is more knowledge in the head and more love in the heart. As bats fly before the light, so suspicions before knowledge and love. Throw open the windows of the soul, and admit the truth. Be generous and noble in thoughts of others. Give credit for purity of intention and disinterestedness of motives. Build no fabric of fancies and surmises in the imagination without a solid basis. Be pure in yourself in all things. “The more virtuous any man is in himself,” says Cicero, “the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious.”
XXIX.
THE POETIC.
“I begin shrewdly to suspect the young man of a terrible taint—poetry; with which idle disease, if he be infected, there is no hope of him in a state course.”—Ben Jonson.
Scraps of poetry picked up from Burns, or Thomson, or Shakespeare, or Tennyson, are ready to hand for every occasion, so that you may calculate upon a piece, in or out of place, in course of conversation. If you will do the prose, rely upon it he will do the poetic, much to his own satisfaction, if not to your entertainment. In walking he will gently lay his finger on your shoulder, saying, as he gathers up his recollection, and raising his head, “Hear what my favourite poet says upon the subject.”