LETTER LXXVIII

LONDON, August 20, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY: Let us resume our reflections upon men, their characters, their
manners, in a word, our reflections upon the world. They may help you to
form yourself, and to know others; a knowledge very useful at all ages,
very rare at yours. It seems as if it were nobody's business to
communicate it to young men. Their masters teach them, singly, the
languages or the sciences of their several departments; and are indeed
generally incapable of teaching them the world: their parents are often
so too, or at least neglect doing it, either from avocations,
indifference, or from an opinion that throwing them into the world (as
they call it) is the best way of teaching it them. This last notion is in
a great degree true; that is, the world can doubtless never be well known
by theory: practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great
use to a young man, before he sets out for that country full of mazes,
windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by
some experienced traveler.

There is a certain dignity of manners absolutely necessary, to make even
the most valuable character either respected or respectable.--[Meaning
worthy of respect.]

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, waggery,
and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a
degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry
fellow was never yet a respectable man. Indiscriminate familiarity either
offends your superiors, or else dubbs you their dependent and led
captain. It gives your inferiors just, but troublesome and improper