It is most poisonous and implacable when directed against personal qualities, because then the envious have nothing to hope for. And precisely in such cases its vilest form also appears, because men are made to hate what they ought to love and honour. Yet so “the world wags,” even as Petrarca complained:

Di lor par pi�, che d'altri, invidia s'abbia,

Che per se stessi son levati a volo,

Uscendo fuor della commune gabbia.

(For envy fastens most of all on those,

Who, rising on their own strong wings, escape

The bars wherein the vulgar crowd is cag'd.)

The reader is referred to the Parerga, vol.