APHORISM XXIX.

Men of least merit most apt to be contemptuous, because most ignorant and most overweening of themselves.

Leighton.

Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves; for they look with both eyes on the failings and defects of others, and scarcely give their good qualities 77 half an eye, while, on the contrary, in themselves, they study to the full their own advantages, and their weaknesses and defects, (as one says,) they skip over, as children do their hard words in their lesson, that are troublesome to read; and making this uneven parallel, what wonder if the result be a gross mistake of themselves!