LETTER XVII.

ON POLITICAL FLATTERY.-THE SKULL GOBLET.

ONE Gemelli Carreri, a travelled Italian, has preserved the following story. Ponder on it, my son; for, duly considered, 'twill be found to enshrine the noblest worldly wisdom.

You have doubtless heard of Shah-Abas, called the Great ? If not, it is no matter. A good story is just as good, and what may seem strange to your unripe reflection, is just as true, whether the hero of it ever lived or not. To the philosophic mind, Tom Thumb is as real a thing as Alexander. The wise man is as well taught by a shadow, as by Cæsar at the head of his legions. However, to get back to Shah-Abas. He was a great man, for he killed a certain king of the Usbecks; and having killed him, did not ingloriously thrust all his carcass into a hole, but preserved the royal skull from worms and darkness, and made it the companion of his carousals and his merry nights. Briefly, the great Shah-Abas had the king's skull set in gold, for a drinking cup. Well had it been for the world, had all kingly skulls been ever as socially employed! The Shah died; and for what we know, had a merry laugh in the shades with the king of the Usbecks, when he met and told him of the late hours his skull still kept on the earth, of the wine that sparkled in it, or the free talk that passed about it, of the jokes that were cracked, of the songs that were chirrupped! The Shah's descendant much treasured the skull; and feeling death to be the great teacher, never slept, without taking copious advice from the king of the Usbecks. It happened that the Usbeck people sent an ambassador to the Shah's descendant, to permit and ratify a treaty of commerce. In those days, commercial principles were in the bud; and therefore, the prejudice of the Usbecks is not to be considered in the strong light of present wisdom. The Usbecks prayed that they might be permitted to export their fleas free of duty into the realm of the Shah; offering as an equivalent, to admit the Shah's blue-bottle flies on the same enlightened footing. The question, as you may conceive, was of great national importance: many of the oldest Usbecks declaring they were a lost folk from the moment they admitted blue-bottles duty free whilst some of the Shah's people maintained the exclusive privilege of their fleas, as though they were creatures of their own flesh; and loudly clamoured for stringent restrictions, for the sharpest scrutiny. Every Usbeck should be

searched to the skin, to prevent the smuggling of fleas whilst the Usbecks, firing at this, threatened to throw up a line of observatories on the frontiers to prevent the entry of a single blue-bottle into their kingdom. The Shah's people were not behindhand; for albeit they had all along admitted the Usbecks' sheep, they prayed the Shah that he would henceforth have every beast shaved bare as his hand, fleas having been known— it had been proved upon committee-to be conveyed into the kingdom by means of the wool. The people also called for an army of inspection on the annual flight of the swallows from the Usbecks to the country of the Shah: they, too, had brought fleas into the country, to the manifest injury of the home-breeder. Matters were at the height, when the Shah gave a handsome banquet to the ambassador of the Usbecks. In the midst of the iollity, the Shah called, in the irony of his heart, for the lovingcup. The cup-bearer approached, and on bended knee presented the skull of the Usbeck king; the ambassador started at the indignity; and felt a nervous contraction of his fingers that suddenly seemed to hunger for the handle of his scimetar. Another second, and he had certainly made a cut at the throat of the Shah, when his eye falling on the goblet-skull of his late revered monarch, he thought he saw the bony cavity, wherein was wont to roll and flash the burning eye of fiery despotism, quickly and most significantly contract as with a wink, and the jaw-bone slightly move, as much as to look and say—“ Don't make a noodle of yourself." Happily, too, at the same moment, the Usbeck ambassador felt the fleas of his native country close at his bosom. The ambassador smiled.

"What think you of the goblet?" asked the Shah, with a very ungentlemanly leer.

66

66 I think," said the ambassador, my monarch was most happy, most honoured, in falling by the hands of a great king : but he is still happier, still more honoured, in having his skull preserved by a greater."

The king was mollified: from that moment the Usbeck fleas hopped without any fiscal restriction into the Shah's dominions, and the blue-bottles of the Shah, without let or hindrance on the part of custom-house mercenaries, sang their household music in the parlours of the Usbecks, and in their hospital larders made provisions for their oviparous little ones.

I trust, my son, you can apply the moral of this veracious story? If the ambassador had given vent to his rising imagination-if on the introduction of the royal skull, he had delivered himself of some red-hot sentence or two,-why, the anti-flea-law bigots had triumphed. Until this day, perhaps, fleas had been

smuggled into the lands of the Shah; and blue-bottles, save as pets for the rich, been unknown in the land of the Usbecks. But the ambassador rightly taking the wink from the royal skull, the lowest subject of the Shah has the luxury of fleas; whilst fly-blown mutton-allowing he can get mutton at all—is within the reach of the meanest Usbeck.

Here, my son, you perceive the beauty, the utility of political flattery! If Fortune, determining to show a great example to men, resolve to make you a cabinet minister, engrave this story on your heart. Never do any political act by straightforward means. Always go round about your purpose. And for this reason; straightforward honesty is the last resource of a foolmere honesty is the white chicken's feather in the cap of the simpleton.

You were six years old when I took you to see my friend Mr. Polito's elephant, and gave you a halfpenny. With a nascent generosity, which nearly brought tears to my paternal eyes, you flung down the copper coin at the feet of the majestic animal. Remember you not your first wonder, when the elephant took the halfpenny up? What a curve he gave his trunk! How many bendings and turnings he employed ere he placed the halfpenny cake, purchased with Christian-like sagacity of the tradesman near his den, in his capacious mouth! The same action employed by that elephant to pick up a halfpenny, would be applied to the tearing up of the forest plane. My son, the elephant is a practical politician : remember him, and if you get exalted, do nothing great or small unless you do it with a twist.

As the remainder of the sheet is not sufficient for us to discuss a new subject, let me fill up the blank that remains with a few thoughts on the drinking goblet of the Shah. In the matter of kings, you must acknowledge, from what I narrated, that their influence passes not from the earth with their death. Though they are nothing, for good or ill, their skulls-so to speakremain. What a great lesson does Napoleon offer to those Frenchmen who every morning wash themselves! Understand me.

The French are, above all nations of the earth, a people of practical wisdom-of practical morality. They make the glory of their great men a household thing.

Napoleon is on his death-bed, his eagles flee upon their golden wings to darkness—the trumpet wails in his ear-the last flutter of his heart rises with the muttering drum-and " tête d'armée !” is his death-sob. Napoleon is dead. A few minutes-the plaster is poured above the face of imperial clay, and posterity is insured the vera effigies of that thunderbolt of a man, just as the bolt was spent.

Now that face, in its dreadful calmness, is multiplied in silver -in bronze-in marble-in richest metal and in purest stone! And now, to teach a daily lesson to the common mind, that awful countenance, with the weight of death upon it, is sold modelled in-soap!

Thus, have we not moral reflections brought to the very fingers' ends of the people? As the mechanic cleanses his palms, and feels his emperor's nose wasting away in his fingers, he thinks of Marengo and Austerlitz! With the imperial face the pickpocket makes his hands clean from last night's work, thinking the while of the rifled halls and galleries of Italy: the butcher, new from his morning's killing, washes his hands with the countenance of the emperor, the while he muses on Waterloo, and whistles the "Downfall of Paris:" and the philosopher peeps into the tub, and sees the type and memory of the warrior's deeds in bubbles floating upon dirty water.

LETTER XVIII.

ON SOCIAL FLATTERY: STORY OF THE DOG PONTO-PIG AND PRUNE SAUCE.

MY DEAR SON,-Having in my last dwelt upon flattery, as necessary to the success of a politician, I dedicate this letter to a consideration of its utility to every man who would, by the exercise of his wits, make his way in the world. There is a negative flattery, as there is a positive flattery. A knowledge of the one is equally vital with the practice of the other. For instance :-You would conciliate the good graces of a man of wealth or interest? You hang and flutter about him for the bounty of his purse, or the magic of his good word in high places. This man may be a fool: I do not, understand me, fall in with the vulgar cry of paupers, that every man who is born rich is therefore born brainless; but your patron, or the man you would make your patron, may be a fool; and, consequently, is the more frequently tempted, like the climbing ape, to show his natural destitution. I think it is Mr. Addison who says, “He who is injured, and having brought his enemy on his knees, declines to punish him, was born for a conqueror." This is the sentiment, though not perhaps the exact words; for I have long since put aside The Spectator with your mother's cracked china. Mark my son, a higher, a severer test of magnanimity. He who hears the

F

abortive jest of a rich fool, yet refuses to turn his folly inside out, is born to finger ready money. This, my son, is flattery by negative. Have what wit you will, but carry it—as courtiers carry their swords in the royal presence in the scabbard. Suffer your patron to run you, as he thinks, through and through with his wooden dagger of a joke; but never let yourself be tempted to draw. Flattery has its martyrdom, the same as religion and this is of it. Bear all the wounds inflicted upon you by wealth with a merry face; join in the laugh that's raised against you; but as you value success in life, never show an inch of steel in self-defence. Men who do otherwise may be chronicled for brave, expert wits; but they die beggars.

Come we now to positive flattery. Whatever dirty-shirted philosophers may say to the contrary, flattery is a fine social thing; the beautiful handmaid of life, casting flowers and odoriferous herbs in the paths of men, who, crushing out the sweets, curl up their noses as they snuff the odour, and walk half an inch higher to heaven by what they tread upon.

Your patron is an ass : you hear his braying-you see his ears: asinus is written all over him in Nature's boldest round-hand. Well, by delicately dwelling upon the melodious wisdom of his words-by adroitly touching on the intellectual beauty with which fate has endowed him, you make him for the time love wisdom because he thinks it a part of himself—you draw his admiration towards the expression of the intellectual every time he looks in a mirror. You are thus, in an indirect way, serving the cause of wisdom and intellect by juggling a fool into a worshipper. Let it be granted, that you have your reward for this--that, in fact, you undertake the labour for the wages of life what of it? Is not the task worthy of payment? When men, in the highest places too, are so well paid for fooling common sense, shall there be no fee for him who elevates a nincompoop?

You see an ass browsing upon thistles. On this you fall into raptures at his exquisite taste for roses; the ass, with great complacency, avers that he always had a peculiar relish for them. The ass brays. Whereupon you make a happy allusion to the vibrations of the Æolian harp. The ass declares it is an instrument above all others he is most inclined to. Are not roses and Æolian harps thus honoured, even by the hypocrisy of admiration?

Believe whatever the rich and powerful say; that is, seem to believe it. Albeit they narrate histories wilder than ever Ariosto fabled, averring themselves to have been eye and ear witnesses to what they tell, yet, without a smile upon your face, gulp it all.