law, so likewise many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners. One principal good point of this art is, to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men: our superiors, our equals, and those below us. For instance, to press either of the two former to eat or drink is a breach of manners; but a tradesman or a farmer must be thus treated, or else it will be difficult to persuade them that they are welcome. Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners: without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or of what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world. I defy any one to assign an incident wherein reason will not direct us what to say or do in company, if we are not misled by pride or ill nature. Therefore I insist that good sense is the principal foundation of good manners; but because the former is a gift which very few among mankind are possessed of, therefore all the civilised nations of the world have agreed upon fixing some rules upon common behaviour best suited to their general customs or fancies, as a kind of artificial good sense, to supply the defects of reason. Without which the gentlemanly part of dunces would be perpetually at cuffs, as they seldom fail when they happen to be drunk, or engaged in squabbles about women or play. And, God be thanked, there hardly happens a duel in a year which may not be imputed to one of these three motives. Upon which account, I should be exceedingly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws against the practice of duelling; because the methods are easy and many for a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour, or engage in it with innocence. And I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own, where the law has not been able to find an expedient. As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose use they were contrived. For these people have fallen into a needless and endless way of multiplying ceremonies, which have been extremely troublesome to those who practise them, and insupportable to everybody else: insomuch that wise men are often more uneasy at the over civility of these refiners, than they could possibly be in the conversation of peasants or mechanics. The impertinences of this ceremonial behaviour are nowhere better seen than at those tables where the ladies preside who value themselves upon account of their good breeding; where a man must reckon upon passing an hour without doing any one thing he has a mind to do, unless be will be so hardy as to break through all the settled decorum of the family. She determines what he loves best, and how much he shall eat; and if the master of the house happens to be of the same disposition, he proceeds in the same tyrannical manner to prescribe in the drinking part at the same time, you are under the necessity of answering a thousand apologies for your entertainment. And although a good deal of this humour is pretty well worn off among many people of the best fashion, yet too much of it still remains, especially in the country; where an honest gentleman assured me, that, having been kept four days against his will at a friend's house, with all the circumstances of hiding his boots, locking up the stable, and other contrivances of the like nature, he could not remember, from the moment he came into the house to the moment he left it, any one thing wherein his inclination was not directly contradicted; as if the whole family had entered into a combination to torment him. But, besides all this, it would be endless to recount the many foolish and ridiculous accidents I have observed among these unfortunate proselytes to ceremony. I have seen a duchess fairly knocked down, by the precipitancy of an officious coxcomb running to save her the trouble of opening a door. I remember, upon a birthday at court, a great lady was rendered utterly disconsolate by a dish of sauce let fall by a page directly upon her head-dress and brocade, while she gave a sudden turn to her elbow upon some point of ceremony with the person who sat next to her. Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, whose politics and manners were much of a size, brought a son with him, about thirteeen years old, to a great table at court. The boy and his father, whatever they put on their plates, they first offered round in order to every person in company; so that we could not get a minute's quiet during the whole dinner. At last their two plates happened to encounter, and with so much violence that, being china, they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the company with wet sweetmeats and cream. There is a pedantry in manners, as in all arts and sciences, and sometimes in trades. Pedantry is properly the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to. And if that kind of knowledge be a trifle in itself, the pedantry is the greater. For which reason I look upon fiddlers, dancing masters, heralds, masters of the ceremony, etc., to be greater pedants than Lipsius or the elder Scaliger. With this kind of pedants, the court, while I knew it, was always plentifully stocked; I mean from the gentleman usher (at least) inclusive, downwards to the gentleman porter: who are, generally speaking, the most insignificant race of people that this island can afford, and with the smallest tincture of good manners; which is the only trade they profess. For, being wholly illiterate, and conversing chiefly with each other, they reduce the whole I can think of nothing more useful upon this subject than to point out some particulars wherein the very essentials of good manners are con very much disturb the good commerce of the world, by introducing a traffic of mutual uneasiness in most companies. First, A necessary part of good manners is a punctual observance of time at our own dwellings, or those of others, or at third places, whether upon matter of civility, business, or diversion: which rule, though it be a plain dictate of common reason, yet the greatest minister I ever knew was the greatest trespasser against it; by which all his business doubled upon him, and placed him in a continual arrear. Upon which I often used to rally him, as deficient in point of good manners. I have known more than one ambassador and secretary of state, with a very moderate portion of intellectuals, execute their offices with good success and applause, by the mere force of exactness and regularity. If you duly observe time for the service of another, it doubles the obligation; if upon your own account, it would be manifest folly, as well as ingratitude, to neglect it; if both are concerned, to make your equal or inferior attend on you, to his own disadvantage, is pride and injustice. system of breeding within the forms and circles of their several offices: and, as they are below the notice of ministers, they live and die in court under all revolutions, with great obse-cerned, the neglect or perverting of which does quiousness to those who are in any degree of credit or favour, and with rudeness and insolence to everybody else. Whence I have long concluded. that good manners are not a plant of the court growth: for if they were, those people, who have understandings directly of a level for such acquirements, who have served such long apprenticeships to nothing else, would certainly have picked them up. For as to the great officers who attend the prince's person or councils, or preside in his family, they are a transient body, who have no better a title to good manners than their neighbours, nor will probably have recourse to gentleman ushers for instruction. So that I know little to be learned at court upon this head, except in the material circumstance of dress; wherein the authority of the maids of honour must indeed be allowed to be almost equal to that of a favourite actress. I remember a passage my Lord Bolingbroke told me; that going to receive Prince Eugene of Savoy at his landing, in order to conduct him immediately to the queen, the prince said he was much concerned that he could not see her Majesty that night; for Monsieur Hoffman (who was then by) had assured his highness that he could not be admitted into her presence with a tied-up periwig; that his equipage was not arrived; and that he had endeavoured in vain to borrow a long one among all his valets and pages. My lord turned the matter into a jest, and brought the prince to her Majesty; for which he was highly censured by the whole tribe of gentleman ushers; among whom Monsieur Hoffman, an old dull resident of the emperor's, had picked up this material point of ceremony; and which I believe was the best lesson he had learned in five-and-twenty years' residence. I make a difference between good manners and good breeding; although, in order to vary my expression, I am sometimes forced to confound *hem. By the first, I only understand the art of remembering and applying certain settled forms of general behaviour. But good breeding is of a much larger extent; for, beside an uncommon degree of literature sufficient to qualify a gentleman for reading a play or a political pamphlet, it takes in a great compass of knowledge; no less than that of dancing, fighting, gaming, making the circle of Italy, riding the great horse, and speaking French; not to mention some other secondary or subaltern accomplishments, which are more easily acquired. So that the difference between good breeding and good manners lies in this, that the former cannot be attained to by the best understandings without study and labour; whereas a tolerable degree of reason will instruct us in every part of good manners, without other assistance. Ignorance of forms cannot properly be styled ill manners, because forms are subject to frequent changes, and consequently, being not founded upon reason, are beneath a wise man's regard. Besides, they vary in every country; and, after a short period of time, very frequently in the same; so that a man who travels must needs be at first a stranger to them in every court through which he passes; and perhaps at his return as much a stranger in his own; and, after all, they are easier to be remembered or forgotten than faces or names. Indeed, among the many impertinences that superficial young men bring with them from abroad, this bigotry of forms is one of the principal, and more predominant than the rest; who look upon them not only as if they were matters capable of admitting of choice; but even as points of importance; and are therefore zealous on all occasions to introduce and propagate the new forms and fashions they have brought back with them; so that, usually speaking, the worst bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad. HINTS TOWARDS AN ESSAY ON I have observed few obvious subjects to have been so seldom, or at least so slightly, handled as this; and indeed I know few so difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there seems so much to be said. Most things pursued by men for the happiness of public or private life, our wit or folly have so refined that they seldom subsist but in idea; a true friend, a good marriage, a perfect form of government, with some others, require so many ingredients, so good in their several kinds, and so much niceness in mixing them, that for some thousands of years men have despaired of reducing their schemes to perfection. But in conversation it is, or might be, otherwise; for here we are only to avoid a multitude of errors, which, although a matter of some difficulty, may be in every man's power, for want of which it remains as mere an idea as the other. Therefore it seems to me, that the truest way to understand conversation is to know the faults and errors to which it is subject, and thence every man to form maxims to himself whereby it may be regulated; because it requires few talents to which most men are not born, or at least may not acquire without any great genius or study. For nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both, who, by a very few faults that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable. I was prompted to write my thoughts upon this subject by mere indignation to reflect that so useful and innocent a pleasure, so fitted for every period and condition in life, and so much in all men's power, should be so much neglected and abused. And in this discourse it will be necessary to note those errors that are obvious, as well as others which are seldomer observed, since there are few so obvious, or acknowledged, into which most men, some time or other, are not apt to run. But stances of them; will enumerate the hardships and injustice they have suffered in court, in parliament, in love, or in law. Others are more dexterous, and with great art will lie on the watch to hook in their own praise: they will call a witness to remember they always foretold what would happen in such a case, but none would believe them; they advised such a man from the beginning, and told him the consequences just as they happened, but he would have his own way. Others make a vanity of telling their faults; they are the strangest men in the world; they cannot dissemble; they own it is a folly; they have lost abundance of advantages by it; but if you would give them the world, they cannot help it; there is something in their nature that abhors insincerity and constraint: with many other insufferable topics of the same altitude. Of such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to think he is so to others; without once making this easy and obvious reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men, than theirs have with him; and how little that is, he is sensible enough. Where a company has met, I often have observed two persons discover, by some accident, that they were bred together at the same school or university; after which the rest are condemned to silence, and to listen while these two are refreshing each other's memory with the arch tricks and passages of themselves and their comrades. I know a great officer of the army who will sit for some time with a supercilious and impatient silence, full of anger and contempt for those who are talking; at length, of a sudden, de dogmatical way; then withdraw within himself again, and vouchsafe to talk no more until his spirits circulate again to the same point. For instance, nothing is more generally ex-manding audience, decide the matter in a short ploded than the folly of talking too much; yet I rarely remember to have seen five people together, where some one among them has not been predominant in that kind, to the great There are some faults in conversation which constraint and disgust of all the rest. none are so subject to as the men of wit, nor among such as deal in multitudes of words, ever so much as when they are with each other. none are comparable to the sober, deliberate If they have opened their mouths without entalker, who proceeds with much thought and deavouring to say a witty thing, they think it caution, makes his preface, branches out into is so many words lost: it is a torment to the several digressions, finds a hint that puts him hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them in mind of another story, which he promises to upon the rack for invention, and in perpetual tell you when this is done; comes back regularly constraint, with so little success. They must to his subject, cannot readily call to mind some do something extraordinary in order to acquit person's name, holding his head, complains of themselves and answer their character, else the his memory; the whole company all this while standers-by may be disappointed, and be apt to in suspense; at length says, it is no matter, and think them only like the rest of mortals. I so goes on. And, to crown the business, it per- have known two men of wit industriously haps proves at last a story the company has brought together in order to entertain the comheard fifty times before; or, at best, some in-pany, where they have made a very ridiculous sipid adventure of the relater. figure, and provided all the mirth at their own expense. Another general fault in conversation is that of those who affect to talk of themselves: some, I know a man of wit who is never easy but without any ceremony, will run over the history where he can be allowed to dictate and preside: of their lives; will relate the annals of their he neither expects to be informed or enterdiseases, with the several symptoms and circumn-tained, but to display his own talents. His |