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Of Flattery

Now it has ever seemed most delightful to me to be delicately touched up by the skilful flattery of disceraing critic, to have a dearest work or feature drawn into a soft radiance so that it might seem to shimmer there by nought but its own beauty. How rare a thing is flattery that can so enhance but yet be unobtrusive? How crude the form best known to this our century, and, to the general, most acceptable! For that is gross and clumsy vulgarity by which a man smears thick his friend with flattering words until it were impossible to see beneath the varnish the man as Nature made him. For your would-be flatterer being a man of infinite assurance, past- master in the art of making the most of small things, and above all things eager to be known as having discovered greatness, smothers his friend beneath a dough of praises as foolish as extravagant.

And by this you may know the worth of him he praises. For there be some who bear this hateful daubing with a pleased smile and swelling vanity, and straightway fall to magnifying the petty glories of their flatterers in return, and all part well pleased with the world and themselves and the Golden Rule.

But there are those to whom appreciation is an art. Not lightly will these bear the excited babblings of their flatterers, but incensed and humiliated, scrape off the cloying praises that would hide all true beauty and leave them indistinguishable from the dull mass around them. It is then that "He that praiseth his friend aloud, rising early, it shall be to him no better than a curse."

For this flattery of the foolish, knowing not what to praise, but praising all things equally, ignores the highest form of flattery, to be ready to spend time, even a little time, in the study of our friend and the things he holds most dear. And if you would be a true master of the art of flattery, then must yon seek to bring only one person into the limelight. Your turn will surely come later.

There is a form of compliment most unpleasing to the fastidious but much affected. How should one be overcome with delight when some Master Condescension tosses to one some such choice flower as "Thy hand! I had not thought thee such a sport!" What suitable response is there to such a tribute?

And there is yet another all unconscious form of flattery. For who has not been in a large book-store on the eve of some great festival, and watched the hurrying, frothing throng about their purchases. And here some gay little rose-bud Elsie ranges wildly through a wilderness of books unknown to her, then seizing a delicately-bound booklet, prattles gaily, "'Thoughts from Plato,' this will do for Kitty," and trips away with her treasure feeling already a gentle satisfaction at Kitty's probable respect for her dear friend's ambitious taste. And what could be more delicate flattery of Kitty's literary habits than just such a gift?

And many other attempts at flattery have we amongst us which would make Sir Water Raleigh blush; for though flattery perfected "filleth all around and is like the fragrance of ointment," too few there are who know the just amount of exaggeration which is proper for artistic perfection "On croit quelquefois hair la flat- terie: mais on ne hait que la maniere de flatter."

M.T.