be little read and less commended.

_La Fontaine._ Why think so?

_Rochefoucault._ For this reason. Every man likes to hear evil of all
men: every man is delighted to take the air of the common, though not
a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment. No enclosure
act! no finger-posts! You may call every creature under heaven fool
and rogue, and your auditor will join with you heartily: hint to him
the slightest of his own defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier.
You and he are the judges of the world, but not its denizens.

_La Fontaine._ Mr. Hobbes has taken advantage of these weaknesses. In
his dissertation he betrays the timidity and malice of his character.
It must be granted he reasons well, according to the view he has taken
of things; but he has given no proof whatever that his view is a
correct one. I will believe that it is, when I am persuaded that
sickness is the natural state of the body, and health the unnatural.
If you call him a sound philosopher, you may call a mummy a sound man.
Its darkness, its hardness, its forced uprightness, and the place in
which you find it, may commend it to you; give me rather some weakness
and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies. A shrewd
reasoner in one thing, a sound philosopher is another. I admire your
power and precision. Monks will admonish us how little the author of
the _Maxims_ knows of the world; and heads of colleges will cry out 'a
libel on human nature!' but when they hear your titles, and, above
all, your credit at court, they will cast back cowl, and peruke, and
lick your boots. You start with great advantages. Throwing off from a
dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of these
puzzlers, the full cry of the more animating, and will certainly be as
long-lived as the imperfection of our language will allow. I consider
your _Maxims_ as a broken ridge of hills, on the shady side of which
you are fondest of taking your exercise: but the same ridge hath also
a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it again) all actions to
self-interest. Now, a sentiment of interest must be preceded by
calculation, long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then in what
region lies the origin of that pleasure which a family in the country
feels on the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the
country; because the sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon
canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of
de