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Whether it is that their book education leaves them very often ignorant of the plain rules of honour which bind men of the world, or whether their zeal makes them think that the end justifies the means, I cannot tell; but 'But, said the vicar, half smiling, half severely, 'you must not disparage the priesthood before a priest.
Nor is the future less assured than the present, for their lives are my property; they are my slaves, and I their master, in charge of their souls. So much for my preface; now I will proceed. I will not disparage your powers of memory by reminding you that my interesting narrative was broken off au premier lendemain at the first glimmer of our honeymoon.
It is an ungenerous trick of criticism to disparage good work by comparing it with better; but the reader can scarcely help contrasting M. Taine's overcrowded pages with the perfect assimilation, the pithy fulness, the pregnant meditation, of De Tocqueville's book on the same subject.
And only the other day a bold attempt was made to tear from Emily Brontë the glory that she has won at last from time. And Sydney Dobell, with his little error, is made to serve as a witness. In order to make out a case for Charlotte, the enthusiast and researcher is obliged to disparage every other work of Emily's.
You who disparage it corrupt it. You ascetics anywhere. You libidinous roues anywhere. You corrupt it. By your excesses. You who never say yes. You who never say no. You corrupt it. You parents. You professors. You prudes. This is addressed to you. What have you got to say about it? You have tremblingly closed the question. I would coolly open it. You have rebuked God by silence.
Sometimes we may judge of a man's reputation among his contemporaries by an anecdote, even when we doubt its truth; for men do not usually tell stories that disparage the capacity of those whom they respect. Baudin found one, but as it was somewhat rusty, the officer feared that the magnetic properties of the steel would be impaired.
Call to mind, I pray you, my foliophagous friend, what was the extent of Michael Montaigne's library; and that if you had passed a winter in his chateau you must, with that appetite of yours, have but yourself upon short allowance there. Historical knowledge is not the first thing needful for a statesman, nor the second. And yet do not hastily conclude that I am about to disparage its importance.
But surely these complaints have very little foundation. We would by no means disparage the ladies of the sixteenth century or their pursuits. But we conceive that those who extol them at the expense of the women of our time forget one very obvious and very important circumstance.
When all this blazing and thundering had led to no better result than to convert a hundred thousand good Flemish florins into noise and smoke, the thrifty Netherlanders on both sides of the walls began to disparage the young general's reputation. After all, they said, the Spaniards were right when they called artillery mere 'espanta-vellacos' or scare-cowards.
It represented a female Centaur giving suck to two offspring, with the father of the family in the background, amusing himself by swinging a lion's whelp above his head to scare his young. This was, no doubt, admirable in its way, and it would be narrow-minded to disparage it because it did not stand on the ethical level of Polygnotus's work.
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