which was frequently the case, took his
part when no other person would; indeed, he could well afford to bear him
no ill-will. He had never sought for the appointment, nor wished for it,
nor, indeed, ever believed himself to be qualified for it. He was
conscious, it is true, that he was not altogether unacquainted with the
language and literature of the country with which the appointment was
connected. He was likewise aware that he was not altogether deficient in
courage and in propriety of behaviour. He knew that his appearance was
not particularly against him; his face not being like that of a convicted
pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox who has lost his tail;
yet he never believed himself adapted for the appointment, being aware
that he had no aptitude for the doing of dirty work, if called to do it,
nor pliancy which would enable him to submit to scurvy treatment, whether
he did dirty work or not--requisites, at the time of which he is
speaking, indispensable in every British official; requisites, by the
bye, which his friend the Radical possessed in a high degree; but though
he bore no ill-will towards his friend, his friend bore anything but good-
will towards him; for from the moment that he had obtained the
appointment for himself, his mind was filled with the most bitter
malignity against the writer, and naturally enough; for no one ever yet
behaved in a base manner towards another, without forthwith conceiving a
mortal hatred against him. You wrong another, know yourself to have
acted basely, and are enraged, not against yourself--for no one hates
himself--but against the innocent cause of your baseness; reasoning very
plausibly, "But for that fellow, I should never have been base; for had
he not existed I could not have been so, at any rate against him;" and
this hatred is all the more bitter, when you reflect that you have been
needlessly base.

Whilst the Tories are in power the writer's friend, of his own accord,
raves against the Tories because they do not give the writer a certain
appointment, and makes, or says he makes, desperate exertions to make
them do so; but no sooner are the Tories out, with whom he has no
influence, and the Whigs in, with whom he, or rather his party, has
influence, than he gets the place for himself, though, according to his
own expressed opinion--an opinion with which the writer does not, and
never did, concur--the writer was the only person competent to ho