fort of raillery which may not only be in offenfive, but even flattering; as when, by a genteel irony, you accuse people of thofe imperfections which they are most notorioutly free from, and confequently infinuate that they poffefs the contrary virtues. You may fafely call Ariftides a knave, or a very handfome woman an ugly one. Take care, however, that neither the man's character nor the lady's beauty be in the leaft doubtful. But this fort of raillery requires a very light and steady hand to adminifter it. A little too strong, it may be mistaken into an offence; and a little too fmooth, it may be thought a fneer, which is a moft odious thing.

There is another fort, I will not call it wit, but merriment and buffoonery, which is mimicry. The most fuccessful mimic in the world is always the most abfurd fellow, and an ape is infinitely his fuperior. His profeffion is to imitate and ridicule thofe natural defects and deformities for which no man is in the leaft accountable, and in the imitation of which he makes himfelf, for the time, as difagreeable and fhocking as thofe he mimics. But 1 will fay no more of thefe creatures, who only amufe the lowest rabble of mankind.

There is another fort of human animals, called wags, whofe profeffion is to make the company laugh immoderately; and who always fucceed, provided the company confift of fools; but who are equally difappointed in finding that they never can alter a mufcle in the face of a man of fenfe. This is a moft contemptible character, and never esteemed, even by thofe who are filly enough to be diverted by them.

Be content for yourfelf with found good fenfe and good manners, and let wit be thrown into the bargain, where it is proper and inoffenfive. Good fenfe will make you efteemed; good manners will make you beloved; and wit will give a luftre to both. Chesterfield.

31. Egotifm to be avoided. The egotifm is the moft ufual and fa. vourite figure of most people's rhetoric, and which I hope you will never adopt, but, on the contrary, moft fcrupulously avoid. Nothing is more disagreeable or irksome to the company, than to hear a man either praifing or condemning himfelf; for both proceed from the fame motive, vanity. I would allow no man to fpeak of himself unlefs in a court of juftice, in his own defence, or as a witness.

Shall a man fpeak in his own praise? No: the hero of his own little tale always puzzles and difgufts the company; who do not know what to fay, or how to look. Shall he blame himfelf? No: vanity is as much the motive of his condemnation as of his panegyric.

I have known many people take fhame to themfelves, and, with a modeft contrition, confefs themselves guilty of most of the cardinal virtues. They have fuch a weakness in their nature, that they cannot help being too much moved with the miffortunes and miferies of their fellow-creatures; which they feel perhaps more, but at least as much as they do their own. Their generofity, they are fenfible, is imprudence; for they are apt to carry it too far, from the weak, the irrefiftible beneficence of their nature. They are poffibly too jealous of their honour, too irafcible when they think it is touched; and this proceeds from their unhappy warm conftitution, which makes them too fenfible upon that point; and fo poffibly with refpect to all the virtues. A poor trick, and a wretched inftance of human vanity, and what defeats its own purpose.

Do you be fure never to speak of yourfelf, for yourself, nor against yourself; but let your character fpeak for you: whatever that fays will be believed; but whatever you fay of it will not be believed, and only make you odious and ridiculous.

I know that you are generous and benevolent in your nature; but that, though the principal point, is not quite enough; you must feem fo too. I do not mean oftentatiously; but do not be afhamed, as many young fellows are, of owning the laudable fentiments of good-nature and humanity, which you really feel. I have known many young men, who defired to be reckoned men of fpirit, affect a hardnefs and unfeeling nefs which in reality they never had; their converfation is in the decifive and menacing tone, mixed with horrid and filly oaths; and all this to be thought men of fpirit. Aftonishing error this! which natnrally reduces them to this dilemma: If they really mean what they fay, they are brutes; and if they do not, they are fools for faying it. This, however, is a common character among young men; carefully avoid this contagion, and content yourself with being calmly and mildly refolute and steady, when you are thoroughly convinced you are in the right; for this is true spirit.

Obferve

Obferve the à-propos in every thing you fay or do. In converfing with those who are much your fuperiors, however eafy and familiar you may and ought to be with them, preferve the refpect that is due to them. Converfe with your equals with an eafy familiarity, and, at the fame time, great civility and decency: but too much familiarity, according to the old faying, often breeds contempt, and fometimes quarrels. I know nothing more difficult in common behaviour, than to fix due bounds to familiarity: too little implies an unfociable formality; too much deftroys friendly and focial intercourse. The best rule I can give you to manage familiarity is, never to be more familiar with any body than you would be willing, and even with, that he should be with you. On the other hand, avoid that uncomfortable referve and coldness which is generally the fhield of cunning or the protection of dulnefs. To your inferiors you fhould use a hearty benevolence in your words and actions, instead of a refined politenefs, which would be apt to make them fufpect that you rather laughed at them.

Carefully avoid all affectation either of body or of mind. It is a very true and a very trite obfervation, That no man is ridiculous for being what he really is, but for affecting to be what he is not. No man is awkward by nature, but by affecting to be genteel. I have known many a man of common fenfe pafs generally for a fool, because he affected a degree of wit that nature had denied him. A plowman is by no means awkward in the exercife of his trade, but would be exceedingly ridiculous, if he attempted the air and graces of a man of fashion. You learned to dance; but it was not for the fake of dancing; it was to bring your air and motions back to what they would naturally have been, if they had had fair play, and had not been warped in youth by bad examples, and awkward imitations of other boys.

Nature may be cultivated and improved both as to the body and the mind; but it is not to be extinguished by art; and all endeavours of that kind are abfurd, and an inexpreffible fund for ridicule. Your body and mind must be at ease to be agreeable'; but affectation is a particular reftraint, under which no man can be gentcel in his carriage or pleafing in his converfation. Do you think your motions would be eafy or graceful, if you wore the cloaths of an

other man much flenderer or taller than yourself? Certainly not: it is the fame thing with the mind, if you affect a character that does not fit you, and that nature never intended for you.

In fine, it may be laid down as a general rule, that a man who defpairs of pleafing will never please; a man that is fure that he fhall always pleafe wherever he goes, is a coxcomb; but the man who hopes and endeavours to please, will most infallibly please. Chefterfield.

32. Extract from Lord BOLINGBROKE'S

My Lord,

Letters.

1736. You have engaged me on a fubject which interrrupts the series of those letters I was writing to you; but it is one which, I confefs, I have very much at heart. I fhall therefore explain myself fully, nor blush to reafon on principles that are out of fashion among men who intend nothing by ferving the public, but to feed their avarice, their vanity, and their luxury, without the fense of any duty they owe to God or man.

It seems to me, that in order to maintain the moral fyftem of the world at a certain point, far below that of ideal perfection, (for we are made capable of conceiving what we are incapable of attaining) but however fufficient, upon the whole, to constitute a state easy and happy, or at the worft tolerable; I fay, it feems to me, that the Author of nature has thought fit to mingle from time to time among the focieties of men, a few, and but a few, of thofe on whom he is graciously pleased to bestow a larger proportion of the ethereal fpirit, than is given in the ordinary course of his providence to the fons of men. These are they who engross almost the whole reason of the fpecies, who are born to instruct, to guide, and to preferve, who are designed to be the tutors and the guardians of human kind. When they prove fuch, they exhibit to us examples of the highest virtue and the trueft piety; and they deferve to have their feftivals kept, instead of that pack of anchorites and enthusiasts, with whofe names the Calendar is crowded and difgraced. When these men apply their talents to other purposes, when they strive to be great, and defpife being. good, they commit a moft facrilegious breach of truft; they pervert the means, they defeat, as far as lies in them, the designs of Providence, and disturb, in fome fort, the system of In

finite Wisdom. To mifapply thefe talents is the most diffufed, and therefore the greatest of crimes in its nature and confequences; but to keep them unexerted and unemployed, is a crime too. Look about you, my Lord, from the palace to the cottage, you will find that the bulk of man. kind is made to breathe the air of this atmofphere, to roam about this globe, and to confume, like the courtiers of Alcinous, the fruits of the earth. Nos numerus fumus & fruges confumere nati. When they have trod this infipid round a certain number of years, and left others to do the fame after them, they have lived; and if they have performed, in fome tolerable degree, the ordinary moral duties of life, they have done all they were born to do. Look about you again, my Lord, nay, look into your own breaft, and you will find that there are fuperior fpirits, men who fhew, even from their infancy, though it be not always perceived by others, perhaps not always felt by themselves, that they were born for fomething more, and better. Thefe are the men to whom the part I mentioned is affigned; their talents denote their general defignation, and the opportunities of conforming themfelves to it, that arife in the courfe of things, or that are prefented to them by any circumstances of rank and fituation in the fociety to which they belong, denote the particular vocation which it is not lawful for them to refift, nor even to neglect. The duration of the lives of fuch men as thefe is to be determined, I think, by the length and importance of the parts they act, not by the number of years that pafs between their coming into the world and their going out of it. Whether the piece be of three or five acts, the part may be long; and he who fuftains it through the whole, may be said to die in the fulness of years; whilft he who declines it fooner, may be faid not to live out half his days.

§ 33. The Birth of MARTINUS SCRIB

LERUS.

Nor was the birth of this great min unattended with prodigies: he himself has often told me, that on the night before he was born, Mrs. Scriblerus dreamed the was brought to bed of a huge ink-horn, out of which iffued feveral large ftreams of ink, as it had been a fountain. This dream was by her husband thought to fignify, that the child fhould prove a very voluminous writer. Like wife a crab-tree,

that had been hitherto barren, appeared on a fudden laden with a vast quantity of crabs: this fign alfo the old gentleman imagined to be a prognostic of the acutenefs of his wit. A great warm of wals played round his cradle without hurting him, but were very troublelome to all in the room befides. This feemed a certain prefage of the effects of his fatire. A dunghill was feen within the fpace of one night to be covered all over with mushrooms: this fome interpreted to promife the infant great fertility of fancy, but no long duration to his works; but the father was of another opinion.

But what was of all moft wonderful, was a thing that feemed a monftrous fowl, which just then dropped through the fkylight, near his wife's apartment. It had a large body, two little difproportioned wings, a prodigious tail, but no head. As its colour was white, he took it at first fight for a fwan, and was concluding his fon would be a poet; but on a nearer view he perceived it to be fpeckled with black, in the form of letters; and that it was indeed a paper-kite which had broke its leath by the impetuofity of the wind. His back was armed with the art military, his belly was filled with phyfic, his wings were the wings of Quarles and Withers, the feveral nodes of his voluminous tail were diverfified with feveral branches of fcience; where the Doctor beheld with great joy a knot of logic, a knot of metaphyfic, a knot of cafuitry, a knot of polemical divinity, and a knot of common law, with a lanthorn of Jacob Behmen.

There went a report in the family, that as foon as he was born, he uttered the voice of nine feveral animals: he cried like a calf, bleated like a fheep, chattered like a magpye, grunted like a hog, neighed like a foal, croaked like a raven, mewed like a cat, gabbled like a goofe, and brayed like an afs; and the next morning he was found playing in his bed with two owls which came down the chimney. His father was greatly rejoiced at all the fe fgns, which betokened the variety of his eloquence, and the extent of his learning; but he was more particularly pleafed with the laft, as it nearly refembled what happened at the birth of Homer.

The Doctor and his Shield.

The day of the chriftening being come, and the houfe filled with goflips, the levity of whofe converfation fuited but ill with

"warrant her: what a ftir a man makes "about a bason, that an hour ago, before "her labour was beftowed upon it, a country barber would not have hung at his thop door?" "A bafon, (cried another) no fuch matter; 'tis nothing but a "paultry old fconce, with the nozzle broke "off." The learned gentlemen, who till now had flood fpeechlefs, hereupon looking narrowly on the fhield, declared their affent to this latter opinion, and defired Cornelius to be comforted; affuring him it was a fconce, and no other. But this, inftead of comforting, threw the doctor into fuch a violent fit of paffion, that he was carried off groaning and fpeechlefs to bed; where, being quite fpent, he fell into a kind of flumber.

The Nutrition of SCRIBLERUS. Cornelius now began to regulate the fuction of his child; feldom did there pafs a day without difputes between him and the mother, or the nurfe, concerning the nature of aliment. The poor woman never dined but he denied her fome dish or other, which he judged prejudicial to her milk. One day he had a longing defire to a piece of beef; and as fhe ftretched her hand towards it, the old gentleman drew it away, and fpoke to this effect: "Hadit thou read "the ancients, O nurse, thou would'st pre"fer the welfare of the infant which thou "nourisheft, to the indulging of an irregular and voracious appetite. Beef, it "is true, may confer a robuftnefs on the "limbs of my fon, but will hebetate and clog his intellectuals." While he fpoke this the nurse looked upon him with much anger, and now and then caft a wishful eye upon the beef." Paffion (continued the doctor, ftill holding the dish) throws the "mind into too violent a fermentation: it " is a kind of fever of the foul; or, as Ho"race expreffes it, a fhort madness. Con"fider, woman, that this day's fuction of my son may cause him to imbibe many ungovernable passions, and in a manner "fpoil him for the temper of a philofo"pher. Romulus, by fucking a wolf, be"came of a fierce and favage difpofition: "and were I to breed fome Ottoman emperor, or founder of a military common"wealth, perhaps I might indulge thee in "this carnivorous appetite."-What! interrupted the nurse, beef fpoil the underftanding! that's fine indeed-how then could our parfon preach as he does upon Leef, and pudding too, if you go to that?

66

Don't tell me of your ancients, had not you almoft killed the poor babe, with a difh of dæmonial black broth?" Lacedæ"monian black broth, thou would't fay "(replied Cornelius;) but I cannot allow "the furfeit to have been occafioned by "that diet, fince it was recommended by "the divine Lycurgus. No, nurfe, thou "muft certainly have eaten fome meats of "ill digeftion the day before; and that "was the real cause of his disorder, Con“fider, woman, the different tempera"ments of different nations: What makes "the English phlegmatic and melancholy, "but beef? What renders the Welsh fo "hot and choleric, but cheese and leeks? "The French derive their levity from the

foups, frogs, and mushrooms. I would "not let my fon dine like an Italian, left, "like an Italian, he should be jealous and

revengeful. The warm and folid diet "of Spain may be more beneficial, as it might endow him with a profound gra"vity; but, at the fame time, he might "fuck in with their food their intolerable "vice of pride. Therefore, nnrse, in "fhort, I hold it requifite to deny you, at

prefent, not only beef, but likewife what"foever any of those nations eat." During this fpeech, the nurse remained pouting and marking her plate with the knife, nor would fhe touch a bit during the whole dinner. This the old gentleman obferving, ordered, that the child, to avoid the rifque of imbibing ill humours, fhould be kept from her breaft all that day, and be fed with butter mixed with honey, according to a prefcription he had met with fomewhere in Euftathius upon Homer. This indeed gave the child a great loofeness, but he was not concerned at it, in the opinion that whatever harm it might do his body, would be amply recompenfed by the improvements of his understanding. But from thenceforth he infifted every day upon a particular diet to be obferved by the nurfe; under which, having been long uneafy, the at last parted from the family, on his ordering her for dinner the paps of a fow with pig; taking it as the highest indignity, and a direct infult upon her fex and calling.