Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's preserve dignity.

Vulgar, low expressions, awkward motions and address, vilify; as they imply either a very low turn of mind or low education and low company.

Frivolous curiosity about trifles and laborious attention to little objects, which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man; who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously

marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind from the moment that he told him he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still.

XXXVI.

COURT MANNERS AND METHODS.

Aug. 21, O. S. 1749.

You will soon be at Courts, where though you will not be concerned, yet reflection and observation upon what you see and hear there may be of use to you when hereafter you may come to be concerned in courts yourself. Nothing in courts is exactly as it appears to be, - often very different, sometimes directly contrary. Interest, which is the real spring

of everything there, equally creates and dissolves friendship, produces and reconciles enmities; or rather, allows of neither real friendships nor enmities; for as Dryden very justly observes, "Politicians neither love nor hate." This is so true that you may think you connect yourself with two friends to-day and be obliged to-morrow to make your option between them as enemies. Observe therefore such a degree of reserve with your friends as not to put yourself in their power if they should become your enemies, and such a degree of moderation with your enemies as not to make it impossible for them to become your friends.

Courts are unquestionably the seats of politeness and good breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other, if manners did not interpose; but ambition and avarice, the two prevailing passions at courts, found dissimulation more effectual than violence; and dissimulation introduced that habit of politeness which distinguishes the courtier from the country gentleman. In the former case the strongest body would prevail; in the latter, the strongest mind.

A man of parts and efficiency need not flatter everybody at court, but he must take great care to offend nobody personally, it being in the power of very many to hurt him who cannot serve him. Homer supposes a chain let down from Jupiter to the earth to connect him with mortals. There is at all courts a chain which connects the prince or the minister

with the page of the backstairs or the chambermaid. The king's wife, or mistress, has an influence over him; a lover has an influence over her; the chambermaid or the valet de chambre has an influence over both; and so ad infinitum. You must therefore not break a link of that chain by which you hope to climb up to the prince.

XXXVII.

ON AWKWARDNESS AND ABSENCE OF MIND. - DRESS.

LONDON, Sept. 22, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY, If I had faith in philters and love potions I should suspect that you had given Sir Charles Williams some by the manner in which he speaks of you, not only to me but to everybody else. I will not repeat to you what he says of the extent and correctness of your knowledge, as it might either make you vain or persuade you that you had already enough of what nobody can have too much. You will easily imagine how many questions I asked, and how narrowly I sifted him upon your subject; he answered me, and I dare say with truth, just as I could have wished, till, satisfied entirely with his accounts of your character and learning, I inquired into other matters intrinsically indeed of less consequence but still of great consequence to every man, and of more to you than to almost any man, -I mean your address, manners, and air. To these questions

the same truth which he had observed before obliged him to give me much less satisfactory answers. And as he thought himself in friendship both to you and me obliged to tell me the disagreeable as well as the agreeable truths, upon the same principle I think myself obliged to repeat them to you.

He told me then that in company you were frequently most provokingly inattentive, absent, and distrait; that you came into a room and presented yourself very awkwardly; that at table you constantly threw down knives, forks, napkins, bread, etc., and that you neglected your person and dress to a degree unpardonable at any age, and much more so at yours.

I

These things, howsoever immaterial they may seem to people who do not know the world and the nature of mankind, give me, who know them to be exceedingly material, very great concern. have long distrusted you and therefore frequently admonished you upon these articles; and I tell you plainly that I shall not be easy till I hear a very different account of them. I know no one thing more offensive to a company than that inattention and distraction. It is showing them the utmost contempt, and people never forgive contempt. No man is distrait with the man he fears or the woman he loves; which is a proof that every man can get the better of that distraction when he thinks it worth his while to do so, and take my word for it it is always worth his while. For my own part I would rather be in company with a dead man than

with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent man, silently indeed but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention. Besides, can an absent man make any observations upon the characters, customs, and manners of the company? No. He may be in the best companies all his lifetime (if they will admit him which if I were they I would not) and never be one jot the wiser. I never will converse with an absent man; one may as well talk to a deaf one. It is in truth a practical blunder to address ourselves to a man who we see plainly neither hears, minds, nor understands us. Moreover, I aver that no man is in any degree fit for either business or conversation who cannot and does not direct and command his attention to the present object, be that what it will. You know by experience that I grudge no expense in your education, but I will positively not keep you a flapper. You may read in Dr. Swift the description of these flappers and the use they were of to your friends the Laputans, whose minds (Gulliver says) are so taken up with intense speculations that they neither can speak nor attend to the discourses of others without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason those people who are able to afford it always keep a flapper in their family as one of their domestics, nor ever walk about or make visits without him. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give a soft flap