scription: we meet with many of Jack Lizard's cast in the Guardian, who will learnedly maintain there is no heat in fire. There is a disputatious precision in these people, which lets nothing pass in free conversation, that is not mathematically true; they will confute a jest by syllogism, canvass a merry tale by cross examination and dates, work every common calculation by X, the unknown quantity, and in the festive sallies of imagination, convict the witty speaker of false grammar, and nonsuit all the merriment of the table. The man of form and ceremony, who has shaped his manners to the model of what is commonly called The Old Court, is another grand defaulter against times and seasons: his entrances and exits are to be performed with a stated regularity; he measures his devoirs with an exactitude that bespeaks him a correct interpreter of The Red Book; pays his compliments with a minuteness, that leaves no one of your family unnamed, enquires after the health of your child who is dead, and desires to be kindly remembered to your wife, from whom you are divorced. Nature formed him in straight lines, habit has stiffened him into an unrelenting rigidity, and no familiarity can bend him out of the upright. The uneducated squire of rustic manners forms a contrast to this character, but he is altogether as great an intruder upon times and seasons, and his total want of form operates to the annoyance of society as effectually as the other's excess. There cannot be in human nature a more terrible thing than vulgar familiarity; a low-bred fellow, who affects to put himself at his ease amongst his superiors, and be pleasant company to them, is a nuisance to society; there is nothing so ill understood by the world in general as familiarity; if it was not for the terror which men have of the very troublesome consequences of condescen sion to their inferiors, there would not be a hundredth part of that pride and holding-back amongst the higher ranks, of which the low are so apt to complain. How few men do we meet with, who when the heart is open and the channel free, know how to keep their course within the buoys and marks, that true good-manners have set up for all men to steer by! Jokes out of season, unpleasant truths touched upon incautiously, plump questions, as they are called, put without any preface or refinement, manual caresses compounded of hugs and slaps and squeezes, more resembling the gambols of a bear than the actions of a gentleman, are sure to follow upon the overflowing ebullitions of a vulgar familiarity broke loose from all restraints. It is a painful necessity men of sensibility are under, when they find themselves compelled to draw back from the eager advances of an honest heart, only because the shock of its good-humour is too violent to be endured; it is very wounding to a social nature to check festivity in any degree, but there is nothing sinks the spirit so effectually as boisterous mirth, nobody so apt to overact his character as a jolly fellow, and stunned with the vociferation of his own tongue to forget that every other man is silent and suffering in short it is a very difficult thing to be properly happy and well pleased with the company we are in, and none but men of good education, great discernment, and nice feelings, know how to be familiar. These rural gentry are great dealers in long stories of their own uninteresting achievements; they require of you to attend to the narrative of their paltry squabbles and bickerings with their neighbours; they are extremely eloquent upon the laws against poachers, upon turnpike roads and new enclosures, and all these topics they will thrust in by the neck and shoulders to the exclusion of all others. : Plain speaking, if we consider it simply as a mark of truth and honesty, is doubtless a very meritorious quality, but experience teaches that it is too frequently under bad managenment, and obtruded on society out of time and season in such a manner as to be highly inconvenient and offensive. People are not always in a fit humour to be told of their faults, and these plain speaking friends sometimes perform their office so clumsily, that we are inclined to suspect they are more interested to bring us to present shame than future reformation. It is a common observation with them, when things turn out amiss, to put us in mind how they dissuaded us from such and such an undertaking, that they foresaw what would happen, and that the event is neither more nor less than they expected and predicted. These retorts, cast in our teeth in the very moment of vexation, are what few tempers, when galled with disappointment, can patiently put up with; they may possibly be the pure result of zeal and sincerity, but they are so void of contrivance, and there is so little delicacy in the timing of them, that it is a very rare case, indeed, when they happen to be well understood and kindly taken. The same want of sensibility towards human infirmities, that will not spare us in the moments of vexation, will make no allowances for the mind's debility in the hours of grief and sorrow. If a friend of this sort surprises us in the weakness of the soul, when death perhaps has robbed us of some beloved object, it is not to contribute a tear, but to read us a lecture, that he comes; when the heart is agonized, the temper is irritable, and as a moralizer of this sort is almost sure to find his admonitions take the contrary effect from what he intended, he is apt to mistake an occasional impatience in us for a natural one, and leaves us with the impression that we are men who are ill-prepared against the common vicissitudes of life, and endowed with a very small share of fortitude and resignation; this early misconception of our character, in the course of time leads him to another, for he no sooner finds us recovered to a proper temper of mind, than he calls to mind our former impatience, and, comparing it with our present tranquillity, concludes upon appearances, that we are men of light and trivial natures, subject, indeed, to fits and starts of passion, but incapable of retention, and as he has then a fine subject for displaying his powers of plain speaking, he reminds us of our former inattention to his good advice, and takes credit for having told us over and over again, that we ought not to give way to violent sorrow, and that we could not change the course of things by our complaining of them. Thus, for want of calculating times and seasons, he begins to think despisingly of us, and we, in spite of all his sincerity, grow tired of him, and dread his company. Before I quit this subject, I must also have a word with the valetudinarians, and I wish from my heart I could cure them of their complaints,-that species I mean which comes under my notice as an Observer, without intruding upon the more important province of the physician. Now, as this island of ours is most happily supplied with a large and learned body of professors under every medical description and character, whether operative or deliberative, and all these stand ready at the call, and devoted to the service of the sick or maimed, whether it be on foot, on horseback, or on wheels, to resort to them in their distresses, it cannot be for want of help that the valetudinarian states his case to all companies so promiscuously. Let the whole family of death be arrayed on one side, and the whole army of physic, regulars and irregulars, be drawn out on the other, and I will venture to say, that for every possible disease in the ranks of a besieger, there shall be a champion in the garrison ready to turn out and give him battle: let all who are upon the sick list in the community be laid out between the camps, and let the respective combatants fight it out over the bodies, but let the forces of life and health have no share in the fray: why should their peace be disturbed, or their society contaminated by the infectious communication? It is as much out of time and place for a man to be giving the diary of his disease in company, who are met for social purposes, as it is for a doctor to be talking politics or scandal in a sick man's chamber; yet so it is, that each party are for ever out of character; the chatterer disgusts his patient by an inattention to his complaints, and the valetudinarian disgusts his company by the enumeration of them, and both are equally out of season. Every man's observation may furnish him with instances not here enumerated, but if what I have said shall seem to merit more consideration than I have been able to give it in the compass of this paper, my readers may improve upon the hint, and society cannot fail to profit by their reflections. |