CHAP. IV.

ON THE LIES OF FLATTERY..

THE Lies of Flattery are next on my list.

These lies are, generally speaking, not only unprincipled, but offensive: and though they are usually told to conciliate good will, the flatterer often fails in his attempt: for his intended dupe frequently sees through his art, and he excites indignation where he meant to obtain regard. Those who know aught of human nature as it really is, and do not throw the radiance of their own christian benevo

lence over it, must be well aware that few persons hear with complacency the praises of others, even where there is no competition between the parties praised and themselves. Therefore, the objects of excessive flattery are painfully conscious that the praises bestowed on them, in the hearing of their acquaintances, will not only provoke those auditors to undervalue their pretensions, but to accuse them of believing in and enjoying the gross flattery offered to them. There are no persons, in my opinion, with whom it is so difficult to keep up "the relations of peace and amity," as flatterers by system and habit. Those persons, I mean, who deal out their flatteries on the same principle as boys throw a handful of burs. However unskilfully the burs are thrown, the chances are that some will stick;

and flatterers expect that some of their compliments will dwell with, and impose on, their intended dupe. Perhaps their calculation is not, generally considered, an erroneous one; but if there be any of their fellow-creatures with whom the sensitive and the discerning may be permitted to loathe association, it is with those who presume to address them in the language of compliment, too violent and unappropriate to deceive even for a moment; while they discover on their lips the flickering sneer of contempt contending with its treacherous smile, and mark their wily eye looking round in search of some responsive one, to which it can communicate their sense of the uttered falsehood, and their mean exultation over their imagined dupe. The lies of benevolence, even when they can be resolved into lies of

flattery, may be denominated amiable lies; but the lie of flattery is usually uttered by the bad-hearted and censorious; therefore to the term LIE OF FLATTERY might be added an alias;alias, the LIE OF MALEVOLEnce.

Coarse and indiscriminating flatterers lay it down as a rule, that they are to flatter all persons on the qualities which they have not. Hence, they flatter the plain, on their beauty; the weak, on their intellect; the dull, on their wit; believing, in the sarcastic narrowness of their conceptions, that no one possesses any self-knowledge; but that every one implicitly believes the truth of the eulogy bestowed.— This erroneous view, taken by the flatterer of the penetration of the flattered, is common only in those who have more cunning than intellect; more shrewdness than penetration;

and whose knowledge of the weakness of our nature has been gathered, not from deep study of the human heart, but from the depravity of their own, or from the pages of ancient and modern satirists;-those who have a mean, malignant pleasure, in believing in the absence of all moral truth amongst their usual associates; and are glad to be able to comfort themselves for their own conscious dereliction from a high moral standard, by the conviction that they are, at least, as good as their neighbours. Yes; my experience tells me that the above-mentioned rule for flattery is acted upon only by the half-enlightened, who take for superiority of intellect that base, low cunning,

which, in fools, supplies,

And amply too, the place of being wise.

But the deep observer of human na