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But, for my part, I feel that there are some small faults more difficult to me to confess than any large ones. Affectation, for instance; it is something so little, so paltry, it is more than a crime, it is a ridicule: I believe I did make myself completely ridiculous; I am glad Lord Davenant was not by, it lasted but a short time. The disenchantment was rather rude.
"I am not ashamed of the workmanship, Sir Mungo," said the honest citizen. "They say, a good cook knows how to lick his own fingers; and, methinks, it were unseemly that I, who have furnished half the cupboards in broad Britain, should have my own covered with paltry pewter."
I must finish, for I cannot think of his intolerable insolence with common patience; and I know not what right I have to tease you, concerning my paltry disputes with a plebeian pedant, and my still more paltry jealousies. But let him beware! If he really have the arrogance to place himself in my way, I will presently trample him into his original nonentity.
When the parish happened to be situated in a great city, it divided all the inhabitants into two parties; and when that city happened, either to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head and capital of a little republic, as in the case with many of the considerable cities in Switzerland and Holland, every paltry dispute of this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity of all their other factions, threatened to leave behind it, both a new schism in the church, and a new faction in the state.
When you hear such detraction, fix your thoughts not on the paltry accidents of your art, such as the use of cosmetics and other little infirmities of its practice, things that are obvious marks for the cheap sneer, but look rather to what that art is capable of in its highest forms, to what is the essence of the actor's achievement, what he can do and has done to win the genuine admiration and respect of those whose admiration and respect have been worth the having.
Thou wouldst keep me here, that I might soon die, so thou couldst have my estates. Poor, puny thing, that art upon death's threshold now. Thou wouldst have me die, so thou couldst live luxuriously and use as much of my wealth as thou couldst, leaving behind a paltry residue for the Crown.
So one day I took courage to speak to my father upon the subject, and told him that I thought it was time for me to select a profession. "Oh! you are going to hunt for some paltry office in the district courts?" he said, with a snarl. "No! I am going to study as a physician," I replied. "What?
Some times a paltry bribe secured one a safe passage, and often emigrants were aided by men who made it their profession to help them cross, often suffering themselves to be paid such sums for the service that it paid best to be provided with a special passport.
Nor could it be want of society, for George Bascombe was to dine with them. So was the curate, but he did not count for much. Neither was she weary of herself. That, indeed, might be only a question of time, for the most complete egotist, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon Bonaparte, must at length get weary of his paltry self; but Helen, from the slow rate of her expansion, was not old enough yet.
"What a paltry, miserable, arrogant wretch I was then," he thought "and how pitifully uncontrolled." But all was now too late. The next morning's post brought him a letter from Henry Fordyce, in which he told him he had been meaning to write to him ever since he had returned from France more than a month ago, but had been too occupied. The whole epistle breathed ecstatic happiness.
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