om Paine_, so vain of the most
childish distinctions, that when he had been to court he drove to the
office where his book was printing without changing his clothes, and
summoned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles and sword;
such was this man, and such he was content and proud to be. Everything
which another man would have hidden, everything the publication of which
would have made another man hang himself, was matter of gay and
clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things he
said, what bitter retorts he provoked, how at one place he was troubled
with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how at another place, on
waking from a drunken doze, he read the prayerbook and took a hair of
the dog that had bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and came away
maudlin, how he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his
babies because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was
frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted him as
they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one
evening and how much his merriment annoyed the ladies, how impertinent
he was to the Duchess of Argyle and with what stately contempt she put
down his impertinence, how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his
impudent obtrusiveness, how his father and the very wife of his bosom
laughed and fretted at his fooleries; all these things he proclaimed to
all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and ostentatious
rejoicing. All the caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his
vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, he
displayed with a cool self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that
he was making a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a
parallel in the whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill;
but assuredly he has used nobody so ill as himself.

That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world
is strange enough. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted
themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has
indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works.
Goldsmith was very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an
inspired idiot, and by another as a being

Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll.

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders
would not come in amiss among the stories of