The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-21
PLEASING FOIBLES.
The Little Flaws that Lend Fest to the
 Appreciation of Virtue.

Appreciation of Virtue.
 Tn one of Sir Arthur Helps charming
 Friends in Councir' essays, ne lays it
 down that mo man is sincerely and se-
 curely loved, except by those who know
 his foib;es'' and he, in another place
 adverting to a certain peculiarity of
 Realmahs, |, Us us that there was not a
 person, man or woman in Abibah who
 did not know this foibln of the great
 king, and that it probably endearel
 him to them, flor man of great mer~
 it ought to have many foibles if he
 would be much loved This principle
 in more or less distinct guise is to be
 found constantly insisted upon, says
 the London Standard, by nearly all of
 the great essayists and biographers,
 and it is interesting to trace both in
 fact and fiction how the truth of the
 axiom is shown. One of the less known | and quoted maxims of La Rochefou- cauld is that we more frequently please in an intercourse of life by our failings | than by our god qualities; while Vau- venargues afffrns that i've are capable | of loving with all our heart those in
 whom we recognize great defects, and that it would be impertinent to suppose
 perfection alone to have the right to please"
 Rousseau qualities his recognition of
 faults in his old friend Gauffrecourt by the surmise that without them he would
 perhaps have been less amiable, MT,
 Leslie Stephen remarks that to bring
 out the beauty of character by means
 of it's external oddities is the triumph
 of a kindly humorist; and Boswell
 would have acted as absurdly in sup
 pressing the weaknesses. and whims of
 Johnson, as, Stern would have done had
 he made Uncle Toby a perfectly sound
 and rational person. In no words is
 this better exemplified than in those of
 Charles Dickens. He laid it down, in-
 deed, as a rule, in his judgment of men,
 to observe narrowly whether some (of
 whom one is disposed to think badly) may not carry their faults on the sur face, and others (on whom the reverse
 is probable) may not carry more be- heath it. One friend, he had long sat
 isfied himself, belonged to the former class-"and when I know all the foibles a man has, with httle trouble in the dis covery, I begin to think he is worth liking" MT. Forster records that in Talfourds case ''such small oddities GIT folbles as he had, made him secretly on- ly dearer to Dickens, who had no friend he was more attached to-" And of Dickens own father, and his notable hn t1f cr,A I 1 Forster declares that no one could know him without liking him the better for them. Nobody likes Micawber less for his follies," and Dickens liked his, fa- ther the more, the more he recalled his | whimsical qualities. "The longer I live, | the better man I think him. was the l sons own testimony in after life.
 One of the most notable examples of | the fact that foibles may rather endear | than enstrange is in Oliver Goldsmith. | Writing of him, Washington Irving says that where eminent talent is unit | ed to spotless virtue we are awed and | dazzled into admiration, but our admir- | ation is apt ito be cold and reverential, 1 while there is something in the harm | less infrmities of a good and great but | erring nature that pleads touchingly | to ours. We turn more Kindly to the object of idolatry when we find that, like ourselves, he is mortal and frail. The epithet so often heard, and ever in kindly tones, of Poor Goldsmith" speaks volumes. Irving is persuaded that few who consider the real com pound of admirable and whimsical oual- ities, trim its grotesque luxuriance, and .It,, | T fO .l l of rigid virtue. Let not his frailties be remembered" said Johnson; Che was a very great man" Washington Irv- ing would rather say, "Let them be re- membered since their chief tendency and end was to endear." Archdeacon Hare held few person ito be much worth ovingin in whom there was not something well worth laughing at. That frailty, he argued. without some symtons of which man has never yet been found, and which in the bad forms the gan grene for their vices to fester and ran xle in, shows itself also in the best men, and attaches itself even to their in them it appears mainly n occasional awkwardnesses, in their 'alling short or stepping aside now and hen, rather than in any absolute aban- of the path of duty. He recog- lized in it the earthly particle which .ints the eolorless ray, and without which that ray is no object of human Z tlsion. Ut gives them their determin- { lte features and characteristic expres- ion, constituting them real persons in ltead of mere personified ideas" Oliver Wendell Holmes asserts that ve must have a weak spot or two in { my character before we can love it nuch People that do not laugh or cry 1 F take more of anything than is al- l ogether good for them. or use any but !ictionary words, may be admirable 2