Has a strange natural inclination to all ill intents and purposes. He bears nothing so resolutely as ill-will, which he takes naturally to, as some do to gaming, and will rather hate for nothing than sit out. He believes the devil is not so bad as he should be, and therefore endeavours to make him worse by drawing him into his own party offensive and defensive; and if he would but be ruled by him, does not doubt but to make him understand his business much better than he does. He lays nothing to heart but malice, which is so far from doing him hurt that it is the only cordial that preserves him. Let him use a man never so civilly to his face, he is sure to hate him behind his back. He has no memory for any good that is done him; but evil, whether it be done him or not, never leaves him, as things of the same kind always keep together. Love and hatred, though contrary passions, meet in him as a third and unite, for he loves nothing but to hate, and hates nothing but to love. All the truths in the world are not able to produce so much hatred as he is able to supply. He is a common enemy to the world, for being born to the hatred of it, Nature, that provides for everything she brings forth, has furnished him with a competence suitable to his occasions, for all men together cannot hate him so much as he does them one by one. He loses no occasion of offence, but very thriftily lays it up and endeavours to improve it to the best advantage. He makes issues in his skin to vent his ill-humours, and is sensible of no pleasure so much as the itching of his sores. He hates death for nothing so much as because he fears it will take him away before he has paid all the ill-will he owes, and deprive him of all those precious feuds he has been scraping together all his lifetime. He is troubled to think what a disparagement it will be to him to die before those that will be glad to hear he is gone, and desires very charitably they might come to an agreement like good friends and go hand-in-hand out of the world together. He loves his neighbour as well as he does himself, and is willing to endure any misery so they may but take part with him, and undergo any mischief rather than they should want it. He is ready to spend his blood and lay down his life for theirs that would not do half so much for him, and rather than fail would give the devil suck, and his soul into the bargain, if he would but make him his plenipotentiary to determine all differences between himself and others. He contracts enmities, as others do friendships, out of likenesses, sympathies, and instincts; and when he lights upon one of his own temper, as contraries produce the same effects, they perform all the offices of friendship, have the same thoughts, affections, and desires of one another's destruction, and please themselves as heartily, and perhaps as securely, in hating one another as others do in loving. He seeks out enemies to avoid falling out with himself, for his temper is like that of a flourishing kingdom; if it have not a foreign enemy it will fall into a civil war and turn its arms upon itself, and so does but hate in his own defence. His malice is all sorts of gain to him, for as men take pleasure in pursuing, entrapping, and destroying all sorts of beasts and fowl, and call it sport, so would he do men, and if he had equal power would never be at a loss, nor give over his game without his prey; and in this he does nothing but justice, for as men take delight to destroy beasts, he, being a beast, does but do as he is done by in endeavouring to destroy men. The philosopher said, "Man to man is a god and a wolf;" but he, being incapable of the first, does his endeavour to make as much of the last as he can, and shows himself as excellent in his kind as it is in his power to do.
A KNAVE
Is like a tooth-drawer, that maintains his own teeth in constant eating by pulling out those of other men. He is an ill moral philosopher, of villainous principles, and as bad practice. His tenets are to hold what he can get, right or wrong. His tongue and his heart are always at variance, and fall out like rogues in the street, to pick somebody's pocket. They never agree but, like Herod and Pilate, to do mischief. His conscience never stands in his light when the devil holds a candle to him, for he has stretched it so thin that it is transparent. He is an engineer of treachery, fraud, and perfidiousness, and knows how to manage matters of great weight with very little force by the advantage of his trepanning screws. He is very skilful in all the mechanics of cheat, the mathematical magic of imposture, and will outdo the expectation of the most credulous to their own admiration and undoing. He is an excellent founder, and will melt down a leaden fool and cast him into what form he pleases. He is like a pike in a pond, that lives by rapine, and will sometimes venture on one of his own kind, and devour a knave as big as himself. He will swallow a fool a great deal bigger than himself, and, if he can but get his head within his jaws, will carry the rest of him hanging out at his mouth, until by degrees he has digested him all. He has a hundred tricks to slip his neck out of the pillory without leaving his ears behind. As for the gallows, he never ventures to show his tricks upon the high-rope for fear of breaking his neck. He seldom commits any villainy but in a legal way, and makes the law bear him out in that for which it hangs others. He always robs under the wizard of law, and picks pockets with tricks in equity. By his means the law makes more knaves than it hangs, and, like the Inns-of-Court, protects offenders against itself. He gets within the law and disarms it. His hardest labour is to wriggle himself into trust, which if he can but compass his business is done, for fraud and treachery follow as easily as a thread does a needle. He grows rich by the ruin of his neighbours, like grass in the streets in a great sickness. He shelters himself under the covert of the law, like a thief in a hemp-plot, and makes that secure him which was intended for his destruction.
APPENDIX.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Wrote "The Character of the Happy Warrior" in 1806. It was suggested by the death of Nelson at Trafalgar on the 21st of October 1805. Wordsworth did not connect the poem with the name of Nelson because there was a stain upon his public life, in his relations with Lady Hamilton, that clouded the ideal. The poet said that in writing he thought much of his true-hearted sailor-brother who, as Captain of an Indiaman, had been drowned in the wreck of his ship off the Bill of Portland on the 5th of February 1805, his body not being found until the 20th of March.
CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR.
Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to he?
--It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed--miserable train!--
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable--because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
--'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He labours good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows:
--Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honourable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
Whose flowers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need:
--He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;
More brave for this, that he hath much to love:--
'Tis finally, the man who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye,
Or left unthought of in obscurity,--
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not--
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpassed:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name--
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be.