[36]. Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that ‘Modest merit never can succeed!’
[37]. During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte’s levee. Instead of the usual question, ‘Where have you served, Sir?’ the First Consul immediately addressed him, ‘I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero of Richardson’s Romance!’ Here was a Consul. The young man’s uncle, who was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. I had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of Richardson’s Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte.
[38]. He is there called ‘Citizen Lauderdale.’ Is this the present Earl?
[39]. ‘I know at this time a person of vast estate, who is the immediate descendant of a fine gentleman, but the great-grandson of a broker, in whom his ancestor is now revived. He is a very honest gentleman in his principles, but cannot for his blood talk fairly: he is heartily sorry for it; but he cheats by constitution, and over-reaches by instinct.’—See this subject delightfully treated in the 75th Number of the Tatler, in an account of Mr. Bickerstaff’s pedigree, on occasion of his sister’s marriage.
[40].
Fideliter didicisse ingenuas artes
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.
The same maxim does not establish the purity of morals that infers their mildness.
[41]. Richardson’s Works, On the Science of a Connoisseur, p. 212.
[42]. The reputation is not the man. Yet all true reputation begins and ends in the opinion of a man’s intimate friends. He is what they think him, and in the last result will be thought so by others. Where there is no solid merit to bear the pressure of personal contact, fame is but a vapour raised by accident or prejudice, and will soon vanish like a vapour or a noisome stench. But he who appears to those about him what he would have the world think him, from whom every one that approaches him in whatever circumstances brings something away to confirm the loud rumour of the popular voice, is alone great in spite of fortune. The malice of friendship, the littleness of curiosity, is as severe a test as the impartiality and enlarged views of history.