LETTER XVII. ON THE EFFECT OF LEARNING UPON THE TWO lines of Ovid are quoted in Lilly's Syntaxis, which deserve the attention of every scholar, Adde quod ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, There is in most tempers a natural ferocity which wants to be softened; and the study of liberal arts and sciences will generally have this happy effect in polishing the manners. When the mind is daily attentive to useful learning, a man is detached from his passions, and taken as it were out of himself; and the habit of being so abstracted makes the mind more manageable, because the passions are out of practice. Besides, the arts of learning are the arts of peace, and furnish no encouragements to an hostile disposition. There is a dreadful mistake too current among young people, and which their own inexperience is apt. to cherish and commend in one another, that a boy is of no consequence, and makes no figure, unless he is quarrelsome, and renders himself a terror to his com panions. They call this honour and spirit: but it is false honour, and an evil spirit: it does not command any respect, but begets hatred and aversion; and as it cannot well consist with the purposes of society, it leads a person into a sort of solitude, like that of the wild beast in the desert, who must spend his time by himself, because he is not fit for company. If any difference arises, it should be conducted with reason and moderation: scholars should contend with wit and argument, which are the weapons proper to their profession. Their science is a science of defence; it is like that of fencing with the foil, which has a guard or button upon the point, that no offence may be given when the sword is taken up instead of the foil, fencing is no longer an exercise of the school, but of the field. If a gentleman with a foil in his hand appears heated, and in a passion with his adversary, he exposes himself by acting out of character; because this is a trial of art aud not of passion. The reason why people are soon offended, is only this, that they set too high a value upon themselves: a slight reflection can never be a great offence, but when it is offered to a great person; and if a man is such in his own opinion, he will measure an offence, as he measures himself, far beyond its value. If we consult our religion upon this subject, it teaches us, that no man is to value himself for any qualifications of mind or body; that he has numberless sins for which he ought to humble himself daily in the sight of God; and that it is his duty to think all others better than himself. If God humbled himself to exalt us, true greatness must consist in abasing ourselves, and giving honour to our company. What we call complaisance, gentility, or good breeding, affects to do this; and is the imitation of a most excellent virtue. If we obtain the good opinion of men by the shadow of a virtue, the reality will entitle us to the praise of God, which is the only true and lasting honour. LETTER XVIII. ON TRUE AND FALSE HONOUR. YOU wonder I should speak against honour, whers it is the principle upon which every gentleinan ought to act. I grant it; but there are two sorts of honour; the one genuine, the other spurious; the one is the honour of wise men, the other of fools. Honour, in its best sense, is the regard which a virtuous man hath to the preservation of his character: it is, properly speaking, the modesty of the mind, or moral modesty, which is shocked with the imputation of an unworthy action. But then you will observe, that the person who pretends to be a man of honour, must first be well informed concerning the nature of good and evil; without which he may be shocked at any appear-. ance of goodness in himself, and glory in his shame; which is a very common case. False honour may al ways be distinguished by these two marks; first, that it is a very irritable principle; and secondly, that it makes the opinion or fashion of the world the only rule of its conduct. The honour which preserves a man is good; the honour which infames him is bad; and if he has no rule, but the custom of his company, whereby to judge of good and evil, his company may be very bad, and very much mistaken, and then he will be led into great absurdities, and act more like a madian than a gentleman. According to this idea of honour, a man hates what his company hates; and thus it happens, that we find a sort of honour among thieves and pick-pockets, who, like other societies, are a rule to one another. Without these necessary distinctions, that sense of honour, which you take to be the security of your character, will endanger the loss of it: because you will be tempted either to mean or rash actions, for fear of losing the esteem of those whose judgment is of no value. Suppose a man, whose birth and fortune put him amongst gentlemen, is a scandalous and notorious liar. When such a person is charged with his fault before company, he ought to confess and repent of it, by all the laws of conscience, virtue, and religion. But what saith honour? It bids him persist in the denial of his guilt, and murder his accuser, if it is in his power; when the voice of reason and justice would have thanked him for the admonition. First, a man tells a lie, to defame the character of another; then he tells a second by denying the first; then he fights in defence of his denial: and the vulgar notion of honour not only acquits him, but obliges him to it. Between this honour and the frantic fury of actual madness, there is no difference but in the name: if there is any difference, it is only this, that honour acts deliberately upon principle, and madness raves by accident and misfortune. The devil would be better pleased if the world were full of such-honour; but God and all good men must detest it, as one of the greatest plagues that ever prevailed upon earth. 1 .1... LETTER XIX. ON LITERARY COMPOSITION.}. COMPOSITION is not only a difficult task, but is indeed a miserable drudgery, when you have neither rules to direct you, nor matter to work upon; which is the case with many poor boys, who are obliged to squeeze out of their brains an exercise against the time appointed... To store the mind with good matter, you must accustom yourself to the reading of good authors, such as historians, poets, orators, philosophers, and controversialists; the last are particularly to be studied for the well managing of an argument. The political and theological controversialists are best; but they seldom fall in the way of the younger sort of readers. When you are to write upon any subject, the best way of entering upon it, is to set down what your own mind furnishes, and say all you can, before you descend to consult books and read upon it: for if you apply to books before you have laid your plan, your own thoughts will be dissipated, and you will dwindle from a composer to a transcriber. In thinking upon a subject, you are to consider, that every proposition is an answer to some question: so that if you can answer all the questions that can be put to you concerning it, you have a thorough understanding of it: and in order to compose, you have no thing to do but to ask yourself those questions; by which you will raise from your mind the latent matter, |