a name, by which, as an artificial excellence, it is at once characterised and recommended.

Good Breeding, as it is generally employed in the gratification of vanity, a paffion almost universally predominant, is more highly prized by the majority than any other; and he who wants it, though he may be preserved from contempt by incontestible superiority either of virtue or of parts, will yet be regarded with malevolence, and avoided as an enemy with whom it is dangerous to combat.

In some instances, indeed, the enmity of others cannot be avoided without the participation of guilt; but then it is the enmity of those, with whom neither virtue nor wisdom can defire to afsociate: and good breeding may generally be practised upon more easy and more honourable terms, than acquiefcence in the detraction of malice or the ad ulation of servility, the obscenity of a letcher, or the blafphemy of an infidel. Disagreeable truths may be suppressed; and when they can be suppressed without guilt, they cannot innocently be uttered; the boast of vanity may be suffered without severe reprehenfion, and the prattle of absurdity may be heard without expressions of contempt.

It happens, indeed, somewhat unfortunately, that the practise of good breeding, however necessary, is obstructed by the poffefsion of more valuable talents; and that great integrity, delicacy, sensibility, and spirit, exalted genius, and extensive learning, frequently render men ill-bred.

Petrarch relates, that his admirable friend and cotemporary, Dante Aligheri, one of the most exalted and original geniuses that ever appeared, being banished his country, and having retired to the court of a VOL. III. prince

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prince which was then the sanctuary of the unfortunate, was held at first in great esteem; but became daily less acceptable to his patron, by the severity of his manners and the freedom of his speech. There were at the same court, many players and buffoons, gamesters and debauchees, one of whom, diftinguished by his impudence, ribaldry, and obscenity, was greatly caressed by the rest; which the prince suspecting Dante not to be pleased with, ordered the man to be brought bebefore him, and having highly extolled him, turned to Dante, and faid, "I wonder that this person, who is by " some deemed a fool, and by others a madman, should "yet be so generally pleasing, and so generally beloved; "when you, who are celebrated for wisdom, are yet "heard without pleasure, and commended without ،، friendship." " You would cease to wonder," replied " Dante, " if you confidered, that a conformity of " character is the source of friendship." This farcasm which had all the force of truth, and all the keenness of wit, was intolerable; and Dante was immediately disgarced and banished.

But by this answer, though the indignation which produced it was founded on virtue, Dante probably gratified his own vanity, as much as he mortified that of others: it was the petulant reproach of resentment and pride, which is always retorted with rage; and not the still voice of Reason, which is heard with complacency and reverence: if Dante intended reformation, his answer was not wife; if he did not intend reformation, his answer was not good.

Great delicacy, sensibility, and penetration, do not less obstruct the practice of good breeding than integrity. Persons thus qualified, not only discover proportionably portionably more faults and failings in the characters which they examine, but are more disgusted with the faults and failings which they discover: the common topics of conversation are too trivial to engage their attention; the various turns of fortune that have lately

happened at a game at Whist, the history of a ball at

Tunbridge or Bath, a description of lady Fanny's jewels and lady Kitty's vapours, the journals of a horferace or a cock-match, and disquisitions on the game act or the scarcity of patridges, are subjects upon which men of delicate taste do not always choose to declaim, and on which they cannot patiently hear the declamation of others. But they should remember, that their impatience is the impotence of reason and the prevalence of vanity; that if they fit filent and referved, wrapped up in the contemplation of their own dignity, they will in their turn be despised and hated by those whom they hate and despise; and with better reason, for perverted power ought to be more odious than debility. To hear with patience, and to answer with civility, seems to comprehend all the good breeding of conversation; and in proportion as this is easy, filence and inattention are without excuse.

He, who does not practice good breeding, will not find himself confidered as the object of good breeding by others. There is, however, a species of rufticity, which is not less absurd than injurious to treat with contempt: this species of ill-breeding is become almost proverbially the characteristic of a scholar; nor should it be expected, that he who is deeply attentive to an obstruse science, or who employs any of the three great faculties of the foul, the memory, the imagination, or the judgment, in the close pursuit of their several

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veral objects, should have studied punctilios of form and ceremony, and be equally able to shine at a route and in the schools. That the bow of a chronologer, and the compliment of an astronomer, should be improper or uncouth, cannot be thought strange to those, who duly confider the narrowness of our faculties, and the impossibility of attaining universal excellence.

Equally excuseable, for the fame reasons, are that absence of mind, and that forgetfulness of place and person, to which scholars are so frequently subject. When Lewis XIV. was one day lamenting the death of an old comedian whom he highly extolled, "Yes," replied Boileau, in the prefence of madam Maintenon, " he performed tolerably well in the despicable pieces " of Scarron, which are now deservedly forgotten " even in the provinces,"

As every condition of life, and every turn of mind, has some peculiar temptation and propensity to evil, let not the man of uprightness and honesty be morose and furly in his practice of virtue; let not him, whose delicacy and penetration difcern with disgust those imper. fections in others, from which he himself is not free, indulge perpetual peevisiness and discontent; nor let learning and knowledge be pleaded as an excuse for not condescending in the common offices and duties of civil life: for as no man should be Well-bred at the expence of his Virtue; no man should practice virtue, o as to deter others from Imitation.

No. LXXXVIII. Saturday, September 8. 1753.

Semperque relinqui,

Sola fibi, femper longam incomitata videtur
Ire viam.

-She feems alone,

To wander in her sleep, thro' ways unknown,
Guileless and dark.

VIRG..

DRYDEN.

NEWTON, whose power of investigating nature few will deny to have been superior to their own, confefses, that he cannot account for gravity, the first principles of his system, as a property communicable to matter; or conceive the phenomena supposed to be the effects of such a principle, to be otherwise produced, than by the immediate and perpetual influence of the ALMIGHTY: and, perhaps, those who most attentively confider the phenomena of the moral and natural world, will be most inclined to admit the agency of invifible beings.