1S27.J On Disagreeable People. 133 



also find another class, who continually do and say what they ought not, 

 and what they do not intend, and who are governed almost entirely by an 

 instinct of absurdity. Owing to a perversity of imagination or irritability 

 of nerve, the idea that a thing is improper acts as a provocation to it : the 

 fear of committing a blunder is so strong, that in their agitation they bolt 

 out whatever is uppermost in their minds, before they are aware of the con- 

 sequence. The dread of something wrong haunts and rivets their attention 

 to it ; and an uneasy, morbid apprehensiveness of temper takes away their 

 self-possession, and hurries them into the very mistakes they are most 

 anxious to avoid. 



If we look about us, and ask who are the agreeable and disagreeable 

 people in the world, w r e shall see that it does not depend on their virtues or 

 vices their understanding or stupidity but as much on the degree of 

 pleasure or pain they seem to feel in ordinary social intercourse. What 

 signify all the good qualities any one possesses, if he is none the better for 

 them himself? If the cause is so delightful, the effect ought to be so too. 

 We enjoy a friend's society only in proportion as he is satisfied with ours. 

 Even wit, however it may startle, is only agreeable as it is sheathed in 

 good-humour. There are a kind of intellectual stammerers, who are 

 delivered of their good things with pain and effort; and consequently what 

 costs them such evident uneasiness does not impart unmixed delight to the 

 bystanders. There are those, on the contrary, whose sallies cost them 

 nothing who abound in a flow of pleasantry and good humour ; and we 

 float down the stream with them carelessly and triumphantly, 



" Wit at the helm, and Pleasure at the prow." 



Perhaps it may be said of English wit in general, that it too much resem- 

 bles pointed lead : after all, there is something heavy and dull in it ! The 

 race of small wits are not the least agreeable people in the world. They 

 have their little joke to themselves, enjoy it, and do not set up any pre- 

 posterous pretensions to thwart the current of our self-love. Toad-eating 

 is accounted a thriving profession ; and a butt, according to the Spectator, 

 is a highly useful member of society as one who takes whatever is said 

 of him in good part, and as necessary to conduct off the spleen and super- 

 fluous petulance of the company. Opposed to these are the swaggering 

 bullies the licensed wits the free-thinkers the loud talkers, who, in the 

 jockey phrase, have lost their mouths, and cannot be reined in by any 

 regard to decency, or common-sense. The more obnoxious the subject, the 

 more are they charmed with, it, converting their want of feeling into a 

 proof of superiority to vulgar prejudice and squeamish affectation. But 

 there is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body. There 

 are some objects that shock ihe sense, and cannot with propriety be men- 

 tioned : there are naked truths that offend the mind, and ought to be kept 

 out of sight as much as possible. For human nature cannot bear to be 

 too hardly pressed upon. One of these cynical truisms, when brought 

 forward to the world, may be forgiven as a slip of the pen : a succession of 

 them, denoting a deliberate purpose and malice prepense, must ruin any 

 writer. Lord Byron had got into an irregular course of these a little before 

 his death seemed desirous, in imitation of Mr. Shelley, to. run the gaunt- 

 let of public obloquy and, at the same time, wishing to screen himself 

 from the censure he defied, dedicated his Cain to Sir Walter Scott a 

 pretty godfather to such a bantling ! 



Some persons are of so teazing and fidgeity a turn of mind, that they do 



