The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Science
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
disagreeable man, if he held by his own principles, and quite declined
to take their wishes into account in exercising the trust of the
franchise. Now, of course, a nobleman or gentleman of right feeling
would regard the parson as a turncoat and sneak, who should thus deny
his convictions. Yes, there is no doubt that you may make yourself
agreeable to unworthy folk by unworthy means. A late marquis declared
on his dying bed, that a two-legged animal, of human pretensions, who
had acted as his valet, and had aided that hoary reprobate in the
gratification of his peculiar tastes, was "an excellent man." And you
may remember how Burke said, that, as we learn that a certain
Mr. Russell made himself very agreeable to Henry VIII., we may
reasonably suppose that Mr. Russell was himself (in a humble degree)
something like his master. Probably, to most right-minded men, the
fact that a man was agreeable to Henry VIII., or to the marquis in
question, or to Belial, Beelzebub, or Apollyon, would tend to make
that man remarkably disagreeable. And let the reader remember the
guarded way in which the writer laid down his general principle as to
pleasantness of character and demeanor. I said that a sensible man,
seeking by honest means to make himself agreeable, will generally
succeed in making himself agreeable to sensible men. I exclude from
the class of men to be esteemed agreeable those who would disgust all
but fools or blackguards. I exclude parsons who express heretical
views in theology in the presence of a patron known to be a
freethinker. I exclude men who do great folk's dirty work. I exclude
all toad-eaters, sneaks, flatterers, and fawning impostors,--from the
school-boy who thinks to gain his master's favor by voluntarily
bearing tales of his companions, up to the bishop who declared that he
regarded it not merely as a constitutional principle, but as an
ethical fact, that the king could do no wrong, and the other bishop
who declared that the reason why George II. died was that this world
was not good enough for him, and it was necessary to transfer him to
heaven that he might be the right man in the right place. Such persons
may succeed in making themselves agreeable to the man with whom they
desire to ingratiate themselves, provided that man be a fool or a
knave; but they assuredly render themselves disagreeable, not to say
revolting, to all human beings whose good opinion is worth the
possessing. And though any one who is not a fool will generally make
himself agreeable to people of ordinary temper and nervous system, if
he wishes to do so, it is to be remembered that too intrusive attempts
to be agreeable often make a man very disagreeable; and likewise, that
a man is the reverse of agreeable, if you see that he is trying, by
managing and humoring you, to make himself agreeable to you,--I mean,
if you can see that he is smoothing you down, and agreeing with you,
and trying to get you on your blind side, as if he thought you a baby
or a lunatic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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