Ellesmere. Say it all over again, my dear Milverton: it is rather
hard. [Milverton did so, in nearly the same words.] I think I have
heard it all before. But you may have it as you please. I do not
say this irreverently, but the truth is, I am too old and too
earthly to enter upon these subjects. I think, however, that the
view is a stout-hearted one. It is somewhat in the same vein of
thought that you see in Carlyle's works about the contempt of
happiness. But in all these cases, one is apt to think of the sage
in "Rasselas," who is very wise about human misery till he loses his
daughter. Your fly illustration has something in it. Certainly
when men talk big about what might have been done for man, they omit
to think what might be said, on similar grounds, for each sentient
creature in the universe. But here have we been meandering off into
origin of evil, and uses of great men, and wickedness of writers,
etc., whereas I meant to have said something about the essay. How
would you answer what Bacon maintains? "A mixture of a lie doth
ever add pleasure."

Milverton. He is not speaking of the lies of social life, but of
self-deception. He goes on to class under that head "vain opinions,
flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would."
These things are the sweetness of "the lie that sinketh in." Many a
man has a kind of mental kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken
glass are his own merits and fortunes, and they fall into harmonious
arrangements and delight him--often most mischievously and to his
ultimate detriment, but they are a present pleasure.

Ellesmere. Well, I am going to be true in my pleasures: to take a
long walk alone. I have got a difficult case for an opinion, which
I must go and think over.