130 ' On Disagreeable People. 



countenance and support. This deplorable humour of theirs does not hit 

 any one else. They are useful, but not agreeable people ; they may 

 assist you in your affairs, but they depress and tyrannize over your feel- 

 ings. When they have made you happy, they will not let you be so 

 have no enjoyment of the good they have done will on no account part 

 with their melancholy and desponding tone and, by their mawkish insen- 

 sibility and doleful grimaces, throw a damp over the triumph they are called 

 upon to celebrate. They would keep in hot water, that they may help 

 you out of it. They will nurse you in a fit of sickness (congenial suffer- 

 ers !) arbitrate a lawsuit for you, and embroil you deeper procure you a 

 loan of money ; but all the while they are only delighted with rubbing 

 the sore place, and casting the colour of your mental or other disorders. 

 " The whole need not a physician ;" and, being once placed at ease and 

 comfort, they have no farther use for you as subjects for their singular 

 beneficence, and you are not sorry to be quit of their tiresome interference* 

 The old proverb, A friend in need is a friend indeed, is not verified in 

 them. The class of persons here spoken of are the very reverse of summer- 

 friends, who court you in prosperity, flatter your vanity, are the humble 

 servants of your follies, never see or allude to any thing wrong, minister to 

 your gaiety, smooth over every difficulty, and, with the slightest approach 

 of misfortune or of any thing unpleasant, take French leave : 



" As when in prime of June a burnished fly, 

 Sprung from the meads, o'er which he sweeps along, 

 Cheered by the breathing bicom and vital sky, 

 Tunes up amid these airy halls his song, 

 Soothing at first the gay reposing throng ; 

 And oft he sips their bowl, or nearly drowned, 

 He thence recovering drives their beds among, 

 And scares their tender sleep with tramp profound ; 

 Then out again he flies to wing his mazy round." 



THOMSON'S CASTLE OF INDOLENCE. 



However we may despise such triflers, yet we regret them more than those 

 well-meaning friends on whom a dull melancholy vapour hangs, that drags 

 them and every one about them to the ground. 



Again, there are those who might be very agreeable people, if they had 

 but spirit to be so ; but there is a narrow, unaspiring, under-bred tone in all 

 they say or do. They have great sense and information abound in a 

 knowledge of character have a fund of anecdote are unexceptionable 

 in manners and appearance and yet we cannot make up our minds to like* 

 them : we are not glad to see them, nor sorry when they go away. Our 

 familiarity with them, however great, wants the principle of cement, 

 which is a certain appearance of frank cordiality and social enjoyment. 

 They have no pleasure in the subjects of their own thoughts, and therefore 

 can communicate none to others. There is a dry, husky, grating manner 

 a pettiness of detail a tenaciousness of particulars, however trifling or 

 unpleasant a disposition to cavil an aversion to enlarged and liberal 

 views of things in short, a hard, painful; unbending matter-of-factness, 

 from which the spirit and effect are banished, and the letter only is attended 

 to, which makes it impossible to sympathize with their discourse. To make 

 conversation interesting or agreeable, there is required either the habitual 

 tone of good company, which gives a favourable colouring to every thing 

 or the warmth and enthusiasm of genius, which, though it may occa- 

 sionally offend or be thrown off its guard, makes amends by its rapturous 

 flights ; and flings a glancing light upon all things. The literal and dogged. 



