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Yet, I must confess, that this enumeration puts the matter in so strong a light, that I cannot, at PRESENT, be more assured of any truth, which I learn from reasoning and argument, than that personal merit consists entirely in the usefulness or agreeableness of qualities to the person himself possessed of them, or to others, who have any intercourse with him.
Here, for instance, the thought is not only spirited, but it is so rendered as to give to the idea both the force of novelty and the agreeableness of wit. The words are as hard and compact, and the thought flies as swift, as a bullet. A public man may reasonably esteem it a piece of good fortune to be vigorously attacked in the newspapers. In the first place, it lifts him prominently into notice.
Lastly, not to multiply more particulars, the Presbytery testify against the scandalous abuse, and sinful prostitution of church discipline, and tyranny in government, whereby the forementioned party have remarkably signalized themselves; and which, in a most precipitant and arbitrary manner, they have pretended to execute against such as have discovered the smallest degree of faithfulness, in endeavoring to maintain the principles of our reformation, in agreeableness to the true state of the covenanted testimony of the Church of Scotland; which has not only appeared in the case of David Leslie, and some others, on account of a paper of grievances given in to said Associates; against whom they proceeded to the sentence of excommunication, without using those formalities and means of conviction required and warranted by the church's Head, even in the case of just offenses done by any of the professed members of his mystical body; or so much as allowing that common justice to the sentenced party, that might be expected from any judicatory, bearing the name of Presbyterian.
He soars high above prose, and even common poetry, which is poetry only because comprised in a certain number of feet; and he seems to me not so much endowed with the wit of a man, as inspired by a sort of Delphic oracle. Xenophon What shall I say of Xenophon's unaffected agreeableness, so unattainable by any imitation that the Graces themselves seem to have composed his language?
But let me now, in my turn, desire your opinion of our epic poet, Milton. Boileau. Longinus perhaps would prefer him to all other writers, for he surpasses even Homer in the sublime; but other critics who require variety, and agreeableness, and a correct regularity of thought and judgment in an epic poem, who can endure no absurdities, no extravagant fictions, would place him far below Virgil.
It is recorded, I think, of Madame de Stael, that, after her first conversation with William Wilberforce, she said: "I have always heard that Mr. Wilberforce was the most religious man in England, but I did not know that he was also the wittiest." The agreeableness of the great philanthropist's son Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and of Winchester I discussed in my last chapter.
And it cannot be denied, though he admitted some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of their natures, and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship for the most part was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity; and such had a title to his bosom.
I do not presume to criticise the Prussian bureaucracy of my own knowledge; it certainly is not a pleasant institution for foreigners to come across, though agreeableness to travellers is but of very second-rate importance.
She so resented the unprofessional bad manners of it, that she turned away and sauntered into the Dresden blue and white library and sat down with a book. She was quite relieved, when, only a few minutes later, he went away having evidently done what he could. The book she had picked up was a new novel and opened with an attention-arresting agreeableness, which led her on.
But next to an interesting person in social value, is an agreeable one, and it would add vastly to the agreeableness of life if our widely spread provinces were not so self-centred in their notion that their own way is the best, to the degree that they criticise any deviation from it as an eccentricity.
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