_Ostentation of Knowledge._
LXXII. Science is a treasure that should be expended with œconomy, and
not squandered away profusely. It is of great value to the possessor
who lays it out sparingly, but if squandered and made ostentation of,
it becomes trifling and ridiculous; and indeed upon a strict enquiry,
it will be found that they very seldom possess it, who boast or make
parade of being masters of it. They who know but little, are the only
people, who in all places, are fond of exposing their whole stock of
knowledge to view. They never enter into a conversation, that without
waiting a fit opportunity for doing it, they don’t exhibit their whole
scanty budget of informations. Between those who are truly learned, and
men of but slender literary acquisitions, there is the same difference,
that there is between merchants who keep great stocks of goods, and
pedlars who go about with a pack. The first in their warehouses, lay
up large assortments of things, where all people may resort, and be
furnished with what they have occasion for; the others carry their
miserable scanty shop of wares at their backs, and there is neither
street, alley, or corner, where they don’t cry them about, and expose
and offer them to sale.
LXXIII. Some are so simple, as among all classes of people, to
introduce, or as we may say lug-in by the head and shoulders, a
conversation, on the subject of the profession they were bred to. The
abbé Bellegarde, tells a story of a military man, who in a visit he
made to some ladies, without being asked to do it by any body, set
himself about relating very circumstantially, all the particulars of
a siege he had been employed in, which he did in all the technical
terms of military art, taking care also, to mention the regiments
and officers that assisted at it, and to describe minutely, all the
manoeuvres both of the besiegers and the besieged, from the time
of investing the place to the day of its surrender; which tedious
relation, must without doubt have been very entertaining to the
ladies. But Moliere’s comic description of these sort of people, which
he gives us in the character of a young practitioner in surgery, is
more laughable still; who in one of his first visits to a lady he
paid his addresses to, after having exhausted all his compliments, in
anatomical phrases and chyrurgical terms of art, invited her to see
the dissection of a dead body, and expressed how greatly he should
be obliged to her for her company; for that he himself was to be the
operator. This undoubtedly could not fail of affording a pleasing
entertainment to a delicate and tender-hearted lady.
LXXIV. One of the most essential instructions that can be acquired by
true Urbanity, is that of learning upon all occurrences, to accommodate
yourself and your conversation, to the genius and capacities of your
company; and of leaving to the choice of others, the subject-matter of
discourse, and in following them in the pursuit of it, as far as they
shall find it pleasing and agreeable to carry it. He is not more absurd
and extravagant who talks to another on a subject or faculty he does
not understand, than he, who talks to him in a language he is an utter
stranger to.