OLIYEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1763. respect too trifling for him not to think a diminution,
JEOS. exacting effort and failure anew. It was now, more than ever,
he called "William Filby to his aid, and appeared in tailor's
finery which made plainer the defects it was meant to hide.
It was now he resented non-acceptance of himself by affecting
careless judgments of others. It was now that his very avarice
of social pleasure made him fretful of the restraints of Gerrard-
street; and all he had suffered or enjoyed of old, in the college
class room, at the inn of Ballyniahon, among the Axe-lane
beggars, or in the garret of Griffiths, reacted on his cordial
but fitful nature;—never seriously to spoil, but very often to
obscure it. Too little self-confidence begets the forms of
vanity, and self-love will exaggerate faults as well as virtues. If
Goldsmith had been more thoroughly assured of his own fine
genius, the slow social recognition of it would have made him
less uneasy; but he was thrust suddenly into this society,
with little beyond a vague sense of other claims than it was
disposed to concede to him, however little it might sympathise
with the special contempts of Hawkins ; and what argued a
doubt in others, seems to have become one to himself, which
he took as doubtful means of reinforcing. If they could
talk, why so could he; but unhappily he did not talk, as in
festive evenings at Islington or the White-conduit, to please
" Foot of contributing to Mirth and Diversion. ... It is certainly as great an
" Instance of Self-love to a Weakness, to be impatient of being mimick'd, as any
" can be imagined. There were none but the Vain, the Formal, the Proud, or
"those who were incapable of amending their Faults, that dreaded him ; to others
" he was in the highest Degree pleasing ; and I do not know any Satisfaction of
" any indifferent kind I ever tasted so much, as having got over an Impatience of
" my seeing myself in the Air he could put me when I have displeased him. It
" is indeed to his exquisite Talent this way, more than any Philosophy I could
" read on the Subject, that my Person is very little of my Care; and it is
" indifferent to me what is said of my Shape, my Air, my Manner, my Speech, or
" my Address. It is to poor Eastcourt I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the
" Happiness of thinking nothing a Diminution to .me, but what argues a Depravity
"of my Will."