1827.] On Disagreeable People. 131 



style of conversation resembles that of a French picture, or its mechanical 

 fidelity is like evidence given in a court of justice, or a police report. 



From the literal to the plain-spoken, the transition is easy. The most 

 efficient weapon of offence is truth. Those who deal in dry and repul- 

 sive matfers-of-fact, tire out their friends ; those who blurt out hard and 

 home truths, make themselves mortal enemies wherever they come. There 

 are your blunt, honest creatures, who omit no opportunity of letting you 

 know their minds, and are sure to tell you all the ill, and conceal all the 

 good they hear of you. They would not flatter you for the world, and 

 to caution you against the malice of others, they think the province of a 

 friend. This is not candour, but impudence ; and yet they think it odd 

 you are not charmed with their unreserved communicativeness of disposi- 

 tion. Gossips and tale-bearers, on the contrary, who supply the tittle- 

 tattle of the neighbourhood, flatter you to your face, and laugh at you 

 behind your back, are welcome and agreeable guests in all companies. 

 Though you know it will be your turn next, yet for the sake of the imme- 

 diate gratification, you are contented to pay your share of the public tax 

 upon character, and are better pleased with the falsehoods that never reach 

 your ears, than with the truths that others (less complaisant and more sin- 

 cere) utter to your face so short-sighted and willing to be imposed upon 

 is our self-love ! There is a man, who has the air of not being convinced 

 without an argument : you avoid him as if he were a lion in your path. 

 There is another, who asks you fifty questions as to the commonest things 

 you advance : you would sooner pardon a fellow who held a pistol to your 

 breast and demanded your money. No one regards a turnpike-keeper, or 

 a custom-house officer, with a friendly eye : he who stops you in an excur- 

 sion of fancy, or ransacks the articles of your belief obstinately and chur- 

 lishly, to distinguish the spurious from the genuine, is still more your foe. 

 These inquisitors and cross-examiners upon system make ten enemies for 

 every controversy in which they engage. The world dread nothing so 

 much as being convinced of their errors. In doing them this piece of ser- 

 vice, you make war equally on their prejudices, their interests, their pride,, 

 and indolence. You not only set up for a superiority of understanding 

 over them, which they hate, but you deprive them of their ordinary grounds 

 of action, their topics of discourse, of their confidence in themselves, and 

 those to whom they have, been accustomed to look up for instruction and 

 advice. It is making children of them. You unhinge all their established 

 opinions and trains of thought ; and after leaving them in this listless, 

 vacant, unsettled state dissatisfied with their own notions and shocked at 

 yours you expect them to court and be delighted with your company, 

 because, forsooth, you have only expressed your sincere and conscientious 

 convictions. Mankind are not deceived by professsions, unless they 

 choose. They think that this pill of true doctrine, however it may 

 be gilded over, is full of gall and bitterness to them ; and, again, it is a 

 maxim of which the vulgar are firmly persuaded, that plain-speaking (as 

 it is called) is, nine parts in ten, spleen and self-opinion ; and the other 

 part, perhaps, honesty. Those who will not abate an inch in argument, 

 and are always seeking to recover the wind of you, are, in the eye of the 

 world, disagreeable, unconscionable people, who ought to be sent to 

 Coventry, or left to wrangle by themselves. No persons, however, are 

 more averse to contradiction than these same dogmatists. What shews our 

 susceptibility on this point is, that there is no flattery so adroit or effectual 

 as that of implicit assent. Anyone, however mean his capacity or ill- 



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