It is not only common to find the difficulty of an enterprize greater,
but the profit less, than hope had pictured it. Youth enters the world
with very happy prejudices in her own favour. She imagines herself not
only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those
rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily
persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by
obstinacy and avarice, or its lustre darkened by envy and malignity. She
has not yet learned that the most evident claims to praise or preferment
may be rejected by malice against conviction, or by indolence without
examination; that they may be sometimes defeated by artifices, and
sometimes overborne by clamour; that, in the mingled numbers of mankind,
many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves
excelled; that others have ceased their curiosity, and consider every
man who fills the mouth of report with a new name, as an intruder upon
their retreat, and disturber of their repose; that some are engaged in
complications of interest which they imagine endangered by every
innovation; that many yield themselves up implicitly to every report
which hatred disseminates or folly scatters; and that whoever aspires to
the notice of the publick, has in almost every man an enemy and a rival;
and must struggle with the opposition of the daring, and elude the
stratagems of the timorous, must quicken the frigid and soften the
obdurate, must reclaim perverseness and inform stupidity.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168