1827.] On Disagreeable People. 135 



but it is the cool manner in which the whole is done that annoys you * 

 the speculating upon you, as if you were nobody the regarding you, with 

 a view to an experiment in corpore vili the principle of dissection the 

 determination to spare no blemishes to cut you down to your real 

 standard ; in short, the utter absence of the partiality of friendship, the 

 blind enthusiasm of affection, or the delicacy of common decency, that 

 whether they " hew you as a carcase fit for hounds, or carve you as a dish 

 fit for the gods," the operation on your feelings and your sense of obliga- 

 tion is just the same ; and. whether they are demons or angels in them- 

 selves, you wish them equally at the devil ! 



Other persons of worth and sense give way to mere violence of tempera- 

 ment (with which the understanding has nothing to do) are burnt up with 

 - a perpetual fury repel and throw you to a distance by their restless, whirl- 

 ing motion so that you dare not go near them, or feel as uneasy in their 

 company as if you stood on the edge of a volcano. They have their 

 tempora molliafandi ; but then what a stir may you not expect the next 

 moment! Nothing is less inviting or less comfortable than this state of 

 uncertainty and apprehension. Then there are those who never approach 

 you without the most alarming advice or information, telling you that you 

 are in a dying way, or that your affairs are on the point of ruin, by way 

 of disburthening their consciences ; and others, who give you to understand 

 much the same thing as a good joke, out of sheer impertinence, constitu- 

 tional vivacity, and want of something to gay. All these, it must be con- 

 fessed, are disagreeable people; and you repay their over-anxiety or total 

 forgetfulness of you, by a determination to cut them as speedily as possible. 

 We meet with instances of persons who overpower you by a sort of bois- 

 terous mirth and rude animal spirits, with whose ordinary state of excite- 

 ment it is as impossible to keep up as with that of any one really intoxi- 

 cated ; and with others who seem scarce alive who take no pleasure or 

 interest in any thing who are born to exemplify the maxim, 



" Not to admire is all the art I know, 



To make men happy, or to keep them so," 



and whose mawkish insensibility or sullen scorn are equally annoying. In 

 general, all people brought up in remote country-places, where life is crude, 

 and harsh all sectaries all partisans of a losing cause, are discontented 

 and disagreeable. Commend me above all to the Westminster School of 

 Reform, whose blood runs as cold in their veins as the torpedo's, and whose 

 touch jars like it. Catholics are, upon the whole, more amiable than Pro- 

 testants foreigners than English people. Among ourselves, the Scotch, as- 

 a nation, are particularly disagreeable. They hate every appearance of 

 comfort themselves, and refuse it to others. Their climate, their religion, 

 and their habits are equally averse to pleasure. Their manners are either 

 distinguished by a fawning sycophancy (to gain their own ends, and conceal 

 their natural defects), that makes one sick ; or by a morose unbending cal- 

 lousness, that makes one shudder, I had forgot to mention two other descrip- 

 tions of persons who fall under the scope of this essay : those who take up a 

 subject, and run on with it interminably, without knowing whether their 

 hearers care one word about it, or in the least minding what reception their 

 oratory meets with -these are pretty generally voted bores (mostly Ger- 

 man ones); and others, who may be designated as practical paradox- 

 mongers who discard the " milk of human kindness," and an attention 

 to common observances, from all their actions, as effeminate and puling 



