Alas, your Lordship is not to be told, that the reverse of wrong is not
always right. Even in the instance your Lordship puts, a young man may
be polished indeed out of his rusticity; yet, if he have no better
rule to go by, than the fashion of the place where he lives, he may
easily wear himself into the contrary defect, an effeminate and unmanly
foppery. And, for the probability of such miscarriage, your Lordship is
again referred to your own experience and observation.
As to what I take to be the proper remedy for these barbarities, that
is another question, which I may afterwards find occasion to explain
to you more at large. For the present, I must take leave to conclude,
that, under the circumstances here supposed, foreign travel is
generally an _insufficient_, always an _improper_, cure for them.
Your Lordship indeed goes further. You contend, that, if these sordid
and dirty habits could by any means be expelled, still our _English_
education is so essentially bad, that no liberal or graceful manners
could be derived from it. And here your Lordship’s rhetoric expatiates
in full security. You seem confident that, though a method might
be found out for making reasonable men, yet our home-breeding is
absolutely incapable of furnishing fine gentlemen.
On this occasion it was, that the servile discipline of our schools,
and the pedant tutorage of our colleges, afforded ample scope to your
resentment. From an over-charged picture of both these, your Lordship
finds means to dress up such a prodigy of ill manners, as must be the
scorn, or pity, of all good company: which, to move our pity, or our
scorn the more, your Lordship, I remember, took care to contrast to the
easy, the assured, the all-sufficient air of a finished traveller.
To this triumphant part of your harangue, I have only to oppose some
plain and simple truths.
The awkward bashfulness of a young man is a sin which, I know, admits
of no expiation, in good company. However, what good company will not
pardon, it will soon remove. And, till that blessed time comes, let
it _first_ be considered that the modesty of ingenuous youth, though
a terrible vice in itself, is yet favourable to some virtues. It is
full of deference and respect; it preserves innocence; nourishes
emulation; and, till reason be of age to take the rein into her hands,
suspends and controuls all the passions. Nay, if it did nothing more
than dispose a young man to observe much and talk little; even this
advantage might be some recompence for the ill figure it gives him in
the eyes of your Lordship’s good company.
Have a care, my Lord, lest by taking off this restraint too soon, you
emancipate your favoured youth from every principle of honour, and let
him run headlong into worthlessness, dissolution, and ruin!
I know what the world is ready to think of this talk. But a truce with
the world. I am a Philosopher, your Lordship knows: nay, your Lordship,
too, is a Philosopher. Let us for once then hazard an unfashionable
truth, that modesty in a young man is his grace and ornament; and that
a confident young booby, not a bashful one, is the prodigy that needs
the expiation.
Consider, _further_, my Lord, that bashfulness is not so much the
effect of an ill education, as the proper gift and provision of wise
nature. Every stage of life has its own set of manners, that is suited
to it, and best becomes it. Each is beautiful in its season; and you
might as well quarrel with the child’s rattle, and advance him directly
to the boy’s top and span-farthing, as expect from diffident youth the
manly confidence of riper age.
Lamentable in the mean time, I am sensible, is the condition of my good
Lady; who, especially if she be a mighty well-bred one, is perfectly
shocked at the boy’s awkwardness, and calls out on the taylor, the
dancing-master, the player, the travelled tutor, any body and every
body, to relieve her from the pain of so disgraceful an object.
She should however be told, if a proper season and words soft enough
could be found to convey the information, that the odious thing,
which disturbs her so much, is one of nature’s signatures impressed
on that age; that bashfulness is but the passage from one season of
life to another; and that as the body is then the least graceful, when
the limbs are making their last efforts and hastening to their just
proportion, so the manners are the least easy and disengaged, when the
mind, conscious and impatient of its imperfections, is stretching all
its faculties to their full growth.
If I had the honour of her Ladyship’s ear, I might further add, for her
comfort, that as to this over-whelming modesty, which muffles merit,
the boy, if she have but patience, will presently outgrow it, as he
does his cloaths; that when this cloak of shame has done its work of
warming and invigorating his young virtue, it may safely be laid aside,
or rather will drop off of itself; and that, as poor and sheepish a
thing as master now is, he may turn out, in the end, as forward a spark
as the best of them.