“O, don’t trouble yourself.”
“But I must,” said the officer, “for the Admiral’s invitation, like that of the Queen, is a command.”
“Never mind; pray don’t mention my name,” rejoined the lieutenant.
“For your own sake I certainly will,” was the reply.
At length the hero of a hundred cards stammered out, “Don’t say a word about it; I had a hint to stay away.”
“A hint to stay away! Why so?”
“The fact is, I—wasn’t invited.”
The man who prides himself in his aristocratic acquaintances betrays little respect for himself. A wise man knows that if he have true distinction, he must be indebted to himself for it. The shadow of his own body is more valuable to him than the substance of another man’s. In the mirror of self-examination he beholds the imperfections of his own doings and virtues, which will not for conscience’ sake allow him to parade his small apparent excellencies or acquisitions before society.
Lord Erskine was a great egotist; and one day in conversation with Curran he casually asked what Grattan said of himself.
“Said of himself!” was Curran’s astonished reply. “Nothing. Grattan speak of himself! Why, sir, Grattan is a great man. Sir, the torture could not wring a syllable of self-praise from Grattan; a team of six horses could not drag an opinion of himself out of him. Like all great men, he knows the strength of his reputation, and will never condescend to proclaim its march like the trumpeter of a puppet-show. Sir, he stands on a national altar, and it is the business of us inferior men to keep up the fire and incense. You will never see Grattan stooping to do either the one or the other.” Curran objected to Byron’s talking of himself as a great drawback on his poetry. “Any subject,” he said, “but that eternal one of self. I am weary of knowing once a month the state of any man’s hopes or fears, rights or wrongs. I would as soon read a register of the weather, the barometer up to so many inches to-day and down so many inches to-morrow. I feel scepticism all over me at the sight of agonies on paper—things that come as regular and notorious as the full of the moon.”