could
not exist without some little foundation; that in all likelihood the boy
had merit, considerable for his years and means, to which his puerility
might have given a peculiar recommendation, and that when he came to be
unloaded by time and public reflection of that injurious burthen of
idolatrous praise, which to our thinking had all the bad effects of
calumny, we should be able to find at bottom something that could be
applauded without impairing our veracity, deceiving the public, or
joining the multitude in burning the vile incense of flattery under the
boy's nose, and hiding him from the world and from himself in a cloud of
pernicious adulation.

But how to encounter this reigning humour was the question: to render
his reasoning efficacious, the critic must take care not to make it
unpalatable. And here the general taste seemed to be in direct
opposition to our reason and experience; for we had not yet (even in the
case of young Betty, with the aggregate authority of England, Ireland,
and Scotland in his favour) been free from scepticism: the Roscio-mania
contagion had not yet infected us quite so much: in a word, we had no
faith in MIRACLES, nor could we, in either the one case or the other,
screw up our credulity to any sort of unison with the pitch of the
multitude. We shall not readily forget the mixed sensations of concern
and risibility with which, day after day, from the first annunciation of
Master Payne's expected appearance at Philadelphia, we were obliged to
listen to the misjudging applause of his panegyrists. There is a
narrowness of heart, and a nudity of mind too common in our nature,
under the impulse of which few people can bring themselves to do homage
to one person without magnifying their incense by the depreciation of
some other. According to these a favourite has not his proper station,
till all others are put below him; as if there was no merit positive,
but all was good but by comparison. In this temper there certainly is at
least as much malice to one as kindness to the other: but an honourable
and beneficent wisdom gives other laws for human direction, and dictates
that in the house of merit there are not only many stories, but many
apartments in each story: and that every man may be fairly adjudicated
all the praise he deserves without thrusting others down into the ground
floor to make room for him. Yet not one in twenty could we find to
praise Master Payne, without doing it at the ex