acting "the devil's part, ignobly to insult over a man in misery. It is a hellish disposition, which watches how to give a blow to a man already reeling." Feltham says that nature never meant man to have a mind so cruel as to add weight to an overcharged beam. "He who falls into a public disgrace has enough to bear of his own; there is no need of another's hand to load him. To envenom a name by libels, which is already openly tainted, is to add stripes with an iron rod on one who before is broken, or flayed with whipping; and is sure, in a mind well tempered, to be looked upon with disdain and abhorrence." Says captive Antonio to victorious and vexatious Gonzaga, in Massinger, "This insultation shows not manly in you." So Almada in "Braganza":

"A prostrate and defenceless enemy

Has stronger guards against a brave man's wrath
Than tenfold brass, or shields of adamant."

"Alas," exclaims Jonson's Morose, "do not rub these wounds, Master Truewit, to blood again: add not affliction to affliction." One may apply the rejoinder of Chrysothemis to Electra, in Sophocles:

ΗΛ. Τί δ' ; οὐ δοκῶ σοι ταῦτα σὺν δίκῃ λέγειν ;
ΧΡ. ̓Αλλ' ἔστιν ἔνθα χ ̓ ἡ δίκη βλάβην φέρει.

George III. declared the determined and persistent prosecution of Lord Melville to be "unworthy of the character of Englishmen, who naturally, when a man is fallen, are too noble to pursue their blows." Pitt recognised, on behalf of his old colleague and confidant, the plea that the wound which had been inflicted should not be aggravated by any unnecessary circumstances of severity, that when the justice of the public was satisfied the feelings of the individual ought not to be outraged; but he declared, that with "a deep and bitter pang" (in uttering which word his lip quivered, his voice shook, he paused, and his hearers thought he was about to burst into tears), he felt compelled to be the instrument of rendering still more severe the punishment of the impeached peer. Again Georgius Rex pleaded for his ex-minister. "All that is necessary for

example to futurity is done, and anything more is a wanton punishing of a fallen man, which is not the usual conduct of an Englishman, who never strikes his enemy when at his feet." When Pitt himself lay a-dying, the prepared assault by the Opposition was given over by its chiefs. The hostile amendment, condemning the policy of the Government, was to have been moved by Lord Henry Petty (the late Marquis of Lansdowne), who now however declined coming forward as the accuser of one who was incapable of defending himself; while Grenville earnestly recommended forbearance; and Fox, with what Macaulay calls "characteristic generosity and good nature," gave his voice against attacking his now helpless rival. "Sunt lachrymæ rerum," he said, "et mentem mortalia tangunt."

Luther's ablest biographer cannot but feel, and express, surprise at the harsh manner in which the reformer speaks of Munzer and the peasantry after their defeat, whatever may have been the atrocities with which they had disgraced the struggle. He is recognised as displaying more magnanimity with reference to his personal adversary Carlstadt, pleading for him with the Elector, whose " grace should be1 kind and merciful towards the unfortunate.” In Calvin's behaviour to

Servetus, Gibbon can see nothing but the most abominable cruelty. He loads Servetus with invectives, he fears lest his victim should escape from his hands, and, in a tone of triumph, passes on him his sentence of condemnation. But Servetus did not spare the Geneva divine. I know it. But the one loaded with reproaches a wretch whom he had confined in irons; the other only breathed out too loudly his agonies of suffering. Hard must be the heart which does not feel the difference!" "Pugna suum finem, cum jacet hostis, habet," is a well known line of Ovid's; to whom also we owe the emphatic "Vix equidem credo, sed et insultare jacenti, Te mihi, nec verbis parcere, fama refert."

1 Luther had to say of or for himself, during his days of languishing and depression, bodily and mental, in 1527, "Men who ought to have compassion upon me are selecting the very moment of my prostration to come and give me a final thrust. God mend them and enlighten them. Amen."

S

To be moderate in success, not to press heavily on the vanquished, not to kick a man when he is down, these are cited as among those commonplaces of morality which, if they are not used as texts in copybooks, very well might be. The precept to deal gently with those who are down, because they are down, may be, in one sense, according to a critical analyst of sympathy for the fallen, received unreservedly; and with this one sense of it alone are we here concerned. Any treatment of the fallen which is of the nature of mere insult, any harsh dealing with them which is simply harsh dealing, is of course, on this authority, to be condemned without exception. "Such conduct comes within the range of the law which forbids all cruelty, understanding by cruelty not simply the infliction of death or pain, but its needless, and therefore wrongful, infliction. To inflict either wanton suffering or wanton mockery, whether on the fallen ruler or on the fallen nation, is eschewed by all civilized morality." 1

1 Scott works up with masterly effect the scene where the captive Queen of Scots is harshly denounced and upbraided by the lords commissioners, overcome by whose relentless invectives she clasps her hands on her face, stoops down her head on the table, and weeps bitterly. Then up speaks Sir Robert Melville, with the mild protest, "My lords, this is too much rigour. Under your lordships' favour, we came hither, not to revive old griefs, but to find the mode of avoiding new ones."

Another illustration from Sir Walter, in quite another strain. Bailie Nicol Jarvie's harangue of poor old Owen in the Glasgow jail, delivered with "prodigious volubility," is soon explained away as proceeding rather from a total want of delicacy than from a deficiency of real kindness; for when Owen expresses himself somewhat hurt that these things should be recalled to memory in his present situation, the bailie takes him by the hand, and bids him "cheer up a gliff! D'ye think I wad hae comed out at twal o'clock at night, and amaist broken the Lord's day, just to tell a fa'en man o' his backslidings? Na, na; that's no Bailie Jarvie's gate."

FOOLS SUFFERED GLADLY BY WISEACRES.
2 CORINTHIANS xi. 19.

HAT so consummate a master of all the arts of rhetoric

THA

as St. Paul, was also a master of the uses of irony, no student of his life and letters, no ordinary reader of his epistles, can for a moment doubt. But it is equally clear that he restrained himself, and refrained from indulgence in what is apt, by its chilling tendency, to be twice unblessed-for irony tends to chill and harden the employer of it, as well as the victim. The power, then, to be even bitterly ironical was ever present with the apostle; but the will was wanting, except very rarely indeed. He willed to be ironical, however, with certain of the church at Corinth, who held his bodily presence to be weak and his oral speech contemptible,-weighty and powerful though his letters might be, and confessedly were. Now it was not expedient for him doubtless to glory, but they compelled him. Nor might it be expedient for him to be ironical with them; but they compelled him. There were debates, envyings, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults, among them; and they exalted themselves at his expense, and were overweening to his disparagement. So he that in presence was base among them, being absent, was bold toward them, and made bold to vindicate his superiority. Let them bear with him a little in his folly; they, in their wisdom. As a fool let them receive him, that he may boast himself a little. ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise."

"For

Complacent self-satisfaction, conscious of and confident in its assured superiority, can not only put up with dullards and louts, but can even take pleasure in a serenely amused contemplation of them and their ways. It can not only endure folly, but find entertainment therein. It can more than merely just suffer fools; it can suffer them gladly. The wiseacre is so wise that he has a wide margin to spare, wherein the fool may disport himself, and fool him, to the top of his bent.

Shakspeare's fool in the forest chuckles at the approach of a self evident rustic. "It is meat and drink to me to see a clown.

By my troth, we that have good wits have much to answer for; we shall be flouting; we cannot hold.” Touchstone can't answer for the consequences of contact with such a clodhopper as William, who, to him, is really too absurd. Autolycus again, aping the courtier, and holding colloquy with those supremely ridiculous rustics, the old shepherd and his oaf of a son, adopts the complacent strain of Touchstone, when he says:

"How bless'd are we, that are not simple men!

Yet nature might have made me as these are;
Therefore I'll not disdain."

Every one, according to Addison, diverts himself with some person or other that is below him in point of understanding, and triumphs in the superiority of his genius whilst he has such objects of derision before his eyes. "Mr. Dennis has very well expressed this in a couple of humourous lines, which are part of a translation of a satire in Monsieur Boileau :

'Thus one fool lolls his tongue out at another,

And shakes his empty noddle at his brother.'"

Est proprium stultitia, in Ciceronian phrase, aliorum cernere vitia, oblivisci suorum. In the Beasts' Confession to the Priest, as reported in short metre by Dean Swift,

"The Ass, approaching next, confess'd

That in his heart he loved a jest ;
A wag he was, he needs must own,
And could not let a dunce alone.
Sometimes his friend he would not spare,
And might perhaps be too severe :
But yet the worst that could be said,
He was a wit both born and bred;

And if it be a sin and shame,

Nature alone must bear the blame."

It has been said that if contentment with himself were the sole test of happiness, we should hold the savage happier than our civilised selves, nous autres. "He is the most conceited of his species. It is indeed a universal kindness of nature that she compensates ignorance by a most triumphant conceit.'