Paul Clifford — Complete
nowadays; it is sometimes better to affect the hypocrisy of vice. Appear
generously profligate, and swear with a hearty face that you do not
pretend to be better than the generality of your neighbours. Sincerity
is not less a covering than lying; a frieze great-coat wraps you as well
as a Spanish cloak.
XIII.
When you are about to execute some great plan, and to defraud a number
of persons, let the first one or two of the allotted number be the
cleverest, shrewdest fellows you can find. You have then a reference
that will alone dupe the rest of the world. “That Mr. Lynx is
satisfied,” will amply suffice to satisfy Mr. Mole of the honesty of
your intentions! Nor are shrewd men the hardest to take in; they rely on
their strength: invulnerable heroes are necessarily the bravest. Talk to
them in a business-like manner, and refer your design at once to their
lawyer. My friend John Shamberry was a model in this grand stroke of
art. He swindled twelve people to the tune of some thousands, with no
other trouble than it first cost him to swindle--whom do you think?--the
Secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Swindling!
XIV.
Divide your arts into two classes,--those which cost you little labour,
those which cost much. The first,--flattery, attention, answering
letters by return of post, walking across a street to oblige the man you
intend to ruin; all these you must never neglect. The least man is worth
gaining at a small cost. And besides, while you are serving yourself,
you are also obtaining the character of civility, diligence,
and good-nature. But the arts which cost you much labour--a long
subservience to one testy individual; aping the semblance of a virtue,
a quality, or a branch of learning which you do not possess, to a person
difficult to blind,--all these never begin except for great ends, worth
not only the loss of time, but the chance of detection. Great pains
for small gains is the maxim of the miser. The rogue should have more
grandeur d'ame!--[Greatness of soul].
XV.
Always forgive.
XVI.
If a man owe you a sum of money--pupils though you be of mine, you may
once in your lives be so silly as to lend--and you find it difficult
to get it back, appeal, not to his justice, but to his charity. The
components of justice flatter few men! Who likes to submit to an
inconvenience because he ought to do it,--without praise, without
even self--gratulation? But charity, my dear friends, tickles up human
ostentation deliciously. Charity implies superiority; and the feeling of
superiority is most grateful to social nature. Hence the commonness of
charity, in proportion to other virtues, all over the world; and hence
you will especially note that in proportion as people are haughty
and arrogant, will they laud almsgiving and encourage charitable
institutions.
XVII.
Your genteel rogues do not sufficiently observe the shrewdness of the
vulgar ones. The actual beggar takes advantage of every sore; but the
moral swindler is unpardonably dull as to the happiness of a physical
infirmity. To obtain a favour, neglect no method that may allure
compassion. I knew a worthy curate who obtained two livings by the
felicity of a hectic cough, and a younger brother who subsisted for ten
years on his family by virtue of a slow consumption.
XVIII.
When you want to possess yourself of a small sum, recollect that the
small sum be put into juxtaposition with a great. I do not express
myself clearly--take an example. In London there are sharpers who
advertise L70,000 to be advanced at four per cent; principals only
conferred with. The gentleman wishing for such a sum on mortgage goes to
see the advertiser; the advertiser says he must run down and look at the
property on which the money is to be advanced; his journey and expenses
will cost him a mere trifle,--say, twenty guineas. Let him speak
confidently; let the gentleman very much want the money at the interest
stated, and three to one but our sharper gets the twenty guineas,--so
paltry a sum in comparison to L70,000 though so serious a sum had the
matter related to halfpence!
XIX.
Lord Coke has said: “To trace an error to its fountainhead is to refute
it.” Now, my young pupils, I take it for granted that you are interested
in the preservation of error; you do not wish it, therefore, to be
traced to its fountain head. Whenever, then, you see a sharp fellow
tracking it up, you have two ways of settling the matter. You may say,
with a smile, “Nay, now, sir, you grow speculative,--I admire your
ingenuity;” or else look grave, colour up, and say, “I fancy, sir, there
is no warrant for this assertion in the most sacred of all authorities!”
The Devil can quote Scripture, you know; and a very sensible Devil it is
too!
XX.
Rochefoucauld has said: “The hate of favourites is nothing else but the
love of favour.” The idea is a little cramped; the hate we bear to any
man is only the result of our love for some good which we imagine
he possesses, or which, being in our possession, we imagine he has
attacked. Thus envy, the most ordinary species of hate, arises from our
value for the glory, or the plate, or the content we behold; and revenge
is born from our regard for our fame that has been wounded, or our acres
molested, or our rights invaded. But the most noisy of all hatreds is
hatred for the rich, from love for the riches. Look well on the poor
devil who is always railing at coaches and four! Book him as a man to be
bribed!
XXI.
My beloved pupils, few have yet sufficiently studied the art by which
the practice of jokes becomes subservient to the science of swindlers.
The heart of an inferior is always fascinated by a jest. Men know this
in the knavery of elections. Know it now, my pupils, in the knavery of
life! When you slap yon cobbler so affectionately on the back, it is
your own fault if you do not slap your purpose into him at the same
time. Note how Shakspeare (whom study night and day,--no man hath
better expounded the mysteries of roguery!) causes his grandest and most
accomplished villain, Richard III., to address his good friends, the
murderers, with a jocular panegyric on that hardness of heart on which,
doubtless, those poor fellows most piqued themselves,--
“Your eyes drop millstones, where fools' eyes drop tears--
I like you, lads!”
Can't you fancy the knowing grin with which the dogs received this
compliment, and the little sly punch in the stomach with which Richard
dropped those loving words, “I like you, lads!”
XXII.
As good-nature is the characteristic of the dupe, so should good-temper
be that of the knave; the two fit into each other like joints. Happily,
good-nature is a Narcissus, and falls in love with its own likeness.
And good-temper is to good-nature what the Florimel of snow was to the
Florimel of flesh,--an exact likeness made of the coldest materials.
XXIII.
BEING THE PRAISE OF KNAVERY.
A knave is a philosopher, though a philosopher is not necessarily a
knave. What hath a knave to do with passions? Every irregular desire he
must suppress; every foible he must weed out; his whole life is spent in
the acquisition of knowledge: for what is knowledge?--the discovery of
human errors! He is the only man always consistent yet ever examining;
he knows but one end, yet explores every means; danger, ill-repute, all
that terrify other men, daunt not him; he braves all, but is saved from
all: for I hold that a knave ceaseth to be the knave--he hath passed
into the fool--the moment mischief befalls him. He professes the art of
cheating; but the art of cheating is to cheat without peril. He is
teres et rotundas; strokes fly from the lubricity of his polish, and the
shiftings of his circular formation. He who is insensible of the glory
of his profession, who is open only to the profit, is no disciple of
mine. I hold of knavery, as Plato hath said of virtue, “Could it be seen
incarnate, it would beget a personal adoration!” None but those who are
inspired by a generous enthusiasm will benefit by the above maxims, nor
(and here I warn you solemnly from the sacred ground, till your head be
uncovered, and your feet be bared in the awe of veneration) enter with
profit upon the following descriptions of character,--that Temple of the
Ten Statutes, wherein I have stored and consecrated the most treasured
relics of my travelled thoughts and my collected experience.
TEN CHARACTERS.
I.
The mild, irresolute, good-natured, and indolent man. These qualities
are accompanied with good feelings, but no principles. The want of
firmness evinces also the want of any peculiar or deeply rooted system
of thought. A man conning a single and favourite subject of meditation
grows wedded to one or the other of the opinions on which he revolves. A
man universally irresolute has generally led a desultory life, and never
given his attention long together to one thing. This is a man most easy
to cheat, my beloved friends; you cheat him even with his eyes open.
Indolence is dearer to him than all things; and if you get him alone and
put a question to him point blank, he cannot answer, No.
II.
The timid, suspicious, selfish, and cold man. Generally a character of
this description is an excellent man of business, and would at first
sight seem to baffle the most ingenious swindler. But you have
one hope,--I have rarely found it deceive me,--this man is usually
ostentatious. A cold, a fearful, yet a worldly person has ever an eye
upon others; he notes the effect certain things produce on them; he is
anxious to learn their opinions, that he may not transgress; he likes to
know what the world say of him; nay, his timidity makes him anxious
to repose his selfishness on their good report. Hence he grows
ostentatious, likes that effect which is favourably talked of, and that
show which wins consideration. At him on this point, my pupils!
III.
The melancholy, retired, sensitive, intellectual character. A very good
subject this for your knaveries, my young friends, though it requires
great discrimination and delicacy. This character has a considerable
portion of morbid suspicion and irritation belonging to it,--against
these you must guard; at the same time its prevailing feature is a
powerful but unacknowledged vanity. It is generally a good opinion of
himself, and a feeling that he is not appreciated by others, that make
a man reserved; he deems himself unfit for the world because of
the delicacy of his temperament, and the want of a correspondent
insensibility in those he sees! This is your handle to work on. He is
peculiarly flattered, too, on the score of devotion and affection; he
exacts in love, as from the world, too much. He is a Lara, whose females
must be Medoras; and even his male friends should be extremely like
Kaleds! Poor man! you see how easily he can be duped. Mem.--Among
persons of this character are usually found those oddities, humours,
and peculiarities which are each a handle. No man lives out of the world
with impunity to the solidity of his own character. Every new outlet to
the humour is a new inlet to the heart.
IV.
The bold, generous, frank, and affectionate man,--usually a person of