It ought at least to be the care of learning, when
she quits her exaltation, to descend with dignity.
Nothing is more despicable than the airiness and
jocularity of a man bred to severe science, and
solitary meditation. To trifle agreeably is a secret
which schools cannot impart; that gay negligence
and vivacious levity, which charm down resistance
whenever they appear, are never attainable by him
who, having spent his first years among the dust
of libraries, enters late into the gay world with an
unpliant attention and established habits.

It is observed in the panegyrick on Fabricus the
mechanist, that, though forced by publick employments
into mingled conversation, he never lost the
modesty and seriousness of the convent, nor drew
ridicule upon himself by an affected imitation of
fashionable life. To the same praise every man
devoted to learning ought to aspire. If he attempts
the softer arts of pleasing, and endeavours to learn
the graceful bow and the familiar embrace, the
insinuating accent and the general smile, he will
lose the respect due to the character of learning,
without arriving at the envied honour of doing any
thing with elegance and facility.

Theophrastus was discovered not to be a native
of Athens, by so strict an adherence to the Attick
dialect, as shewed that he had learned it not by
custom, but by rule. A man not early formed to habitual