X. QUEM TU, MELPOMENE 171

and fortunate, yet in others extremely doleful, both to us and himself.

The chief fault in my father’s mind, (I say so reverently, for its faults were few, but necessarily, for they were very fatal,) was his dislike of being excelled. He knew his own power-felt that he had not nerve to use or display it, in full measure; but all the more, could not bear, in his own sphere, any approach to equality. He chose his clerks first for trustworthiness, secondly for-incapacity. I am not sure that he would have sent away a clever one, if he had chanced on such a person; but he assuredly did not look for mercantile genius in them, but rather for subordinates who would be subordinate for ever. Frederick the Great chose his clerks in the same way; but then, his clerks never supposed themselves likely to be king, while a merchant’s clerks are apt to hope they may at least become partners, if not successors. Also, Friedrich’s clerks were absolutely fit for their business; but my father’s clerks were, in many ways, utterly unfit for theirs. Of which unfitness my father greatly complaining, nevertheless by no means bestirred himself to find fitter ones. He used to send Henry Watson on business tours, and assure him afterwards that he had done more harm than good: he would now and then leave Henry Ritchie to write a business letter; and, I think, find with some satisfaction that it was needful afterwards to write two, himself, in correction of it. There was scarcely a day when he did not come home in some irritation at something that one or other of them had done, or not done. But they stayed with him till his death.

198. Of the second in command, Mr. Ritchie, I will say what is needful in another place;¹ but the clerk of confidence, Henry Watson, has already been left unnoticed too long. He was, I believe, the principal support of a widowed mother and three grown-up sisters, amiable, well

¹ [For a further slight mention of him, see below, § 255 (p. 228).]

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