"
To encounter an antagonist like Burke, and to come off with credit,
might stimulate moderate vanity into public self-exposure; but in Paine
vanity was the besetting weakness. It was now swollen by success and
flattery into magnificent proportions. Franklin says, that, "when we
forbear to praise ourselves, we make a sacrifice to the pride or to the
envy of others." Paine did not hesitate to mortify both these failings
in his fellow-men. He praises himself with the simplicity of an Homeric
hero before a fight. He introduces himself, without a misgiving, almost
in the words of Pius Aeneas,--
"Sum Thomas Paine,
Fauna, super aethera notus."
"With all the inconveniences of early life against me, I am proud to
say, that, with a perseverance undismayed by difficulties, a
disinterestedness that compels respect, I have not only contributed to
raise a new empire in the world, founded on a new system of government,
but I have arrived at an eminence in political literature, the most
difficult of all lines to succeed and excel in, which aristocracy, with
all its aids, has not been able to reach or to rival.
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