[No. 202. [Steele.]
From Saturday, July 22, to Tuesday, July 25, 1710.
——Est hic,
Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus.
Hor., 1 Ep. xi. 30.
From my own Apartment, July 24.
This afternoon I went to visit a gentleman of my acquaintance at Mile End, and passing through Stepney Churchyard, I could not forbear entertaining myself with the inscriptions on the tombs and graves. Among others, I observed one with this notable memorial:
"Here lies the body of T.B."
This fantastical desire of being remembered only by the two first letters of a name, led me into the contemplation of the vanity and imperfect attainments of ambition in general. When I run back in my imagination all the men whom I have ever known and conversed with in my whole life, there are but very few who have not used their faculties in the pursuit of what it is impossible to acquire, or left the possession of what they might have been (at their setting out) masters, to search for it where it was out of their reach. In this thought it was not possible to forget the instance of Pyrrhus, who proposing to himself in discourse with a philosopher,[22] one, and another, and another conquest, was asked, what he would do after all that? "Then," says the King, "we will make merry." He was well answered, "What hinders your doing that in the condition you are already?" The restless desire of exerting themselves above the common level of mankind is not to be resisted in some tempers; and minds of this make may be observed in every condition of life. Where such men do not make to themselves or meet with employment, the soil of their constitution runs into tares and weeds. An old friend of mine, who lost a major's post forty years ago, and quitted, has ever since studied maps, encampments, retreats, and countermarches, with no other design but to feed his spleen and ill-humour, and furnish himself with matter for arguing against all the successful actions of others. He that at his first setting out in the world was the gayest man in our regiment, ventured his life with alacrity, and enjoyed it with satisfaction, encouraged men below him, and was courted by men above him, has been ever since the most froward creature breathing. His warm complexion spends itself now only in a general spirit of contradiction; for which he watches all occasions, and is in his conversation still upon sentry, treats all men like enemies, with every other impertinence of a speculative warrior.
He that observes in himself this natural inquietude, should take all imaginable care to put his mind in some method of gratification, or he will soon find himself grow into the condition of this disappointed major. Instead of courting proper occasions to rise above others, he will be ever studious of pulling others down to him: it being the common refuge of disappointed ambition, to ease themselves by detraction. It would be no great argument against ambition, that there are such mortal things in the disappointment of it; but it certainly is a forcible exception, that there can be no solid happiness in the success of it. If we value popular praise, it is in the power of the meanest of the people to disturb us by calumny. If the fame of being happy, we cannot look into a village but we see crowds in actual possession of what we seek only the appearance. To this may be added, that there is I know not what malignity in the minds of ordinary men to oppose you in what they see you fond of; and it is a certain exception against a man's receiving applause, that he visibly courts it. However, this is not only the passion of great and undertaking spirits, but you see it in the lives of such as one would believe were far enough removed from the ways of ambition. The rural squires of this nation even eat and drink out of vanity. A vainglorious fox-hunter shall entertain half a county for the ostentation of his beef and beer, without the least affection for any of the crowd about him. He feeds them, because he thinks it a superiority over them that he does so: and they devour him, because they know he treats them out of insolence. This indeed is ambition in grotesque, but may figure to us the condition of politer men, whose only pursuit is glory. When the superior acts out of a principle of vanity, the dependant will be sure to allow it him; because he knows it destructive of the very applause which is courted by the man who favours him, and consequently makes him nearer himself.