But if a man be
sensitive to this wild praise, we must suppose him equally alive to
that which often accompanies and always follows it - wild ridicule.
A man may have done well for years, and then he may fail; he will
hear of his failure. Or he may have done well for years, and still
do well, but the critics may have tired of praising him, or there
may have sprung up some new idol of the instant, some "dust a
little gilt," to whom they now prefer to offer sacrifice. Here is
the obverse and the reverse of that empty and ugly thing called
popularity. Will any man suppose it worth the gaining?
CHAPTER XI - PULVIS ET UMBRA
We look for some reward of our endeavours and are disappointed; not
success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our
ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our
virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down
of the sun. The canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and
we look abroad, even on the face of our small earth, and find them
change with every climate, and no country where some action is not
honoured for a virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice;
and we look in our experience, and find no vital congruity in the
wisest rules, but at the best a municipal fitness. It is not
strange if we are tempted to despair of good. We ask too much.
Our religions and moralities have been trimmed to flatter us, till
they are all emasculate and sentimentalised, and only please and
weaken.
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