a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very
disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of
civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, whom yesterday he
appeared to live in intimacy with. He takes no part in the general
conversation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time,
with some start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said
before) is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it is not
able to bear above one object at a time; or so affected, that it would be
supposed to be wholly engrossed by, and directed to, some very great and
important objects. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or
six more, since the creation of the world, may have had a right to
absence, from that intense thought which the things they were
investigating required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who
has no such avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of
absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned
into an involuntary absence, by his perpetual exclusion out of company.
However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do
not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather
take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of
manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear
more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much
sooner forgotten than an insult. If, therefore, you would rather please
than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than
hated; remember to have that constant attention about you which flatters
every man's little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his
pride, never fails to excite his resentment, or at least his ill will.
For instance, most people (I might say all people) have their weaknesses;
they have their aversions and their likings, to such or such things; so
that, if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat, or cheese
(which are common antipathies), or, by inattention and negligence, to let