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Good-breeding then, or the art of pleasing in conversation, is expressed two different ways, viz., in our actions and our words, and our conduct in both may be reduced to that concise, comprehensive rule in scripture–Do unto all men as you would they should do unto you. Indeed, concise as this rule is, and plain as it appears, what are all treatises on ethics but comments upon it? and whoever is well read in the book of nature, and hath made much observation on the actions of men, will perceive so few capable of judging or rightly pursuing their own happiness, that he will be apt to conclude that some attention is necessary (and more than is commonly used) to enable men to know truly what they would have done unto them, or, at least, what it would be their interest to have done.

If therefore men, through weakness or inattention, often err in their conceptions of what would produce their own happiness, no wonder they should miss in the application of what will contribute to that of others; and thus we may, without too severe a censure on their inclinations, account for that frequent failure in true good-breeding which daily experience gives us instances of.

Besides, the commentators have well paraphrased on the above-mentioned divine rule, that it is, to do unto men what you would they (if they were in your situation and circumstances, and you in theirs) should do unto you; and, as this comment is necessary to be observed in ethics, so it is particularly useful in this our art, where the degree of the person is always to be considered, as we shall explain more at large hereafter.

We see then a possibility for a man well disposed to this golden rule, without some precautions, to err in the practice; nay, even good-nature itself, the very habit of mind most essential to furnish us with true good-breeding, the latter so nearly resembling the former, that it hath been called, and with the appearance at least of propriety, artificial good-nature. This excellent quality itself sometimes shoots us beyond the mark, and shews the truth of those lines in Horace:

Insani sapiens nomen ferat, sequus iniqui,
Ultra quam satis est, Virtutem si petal ipsam.

Instances of this will be naturally produced where we shew the deviations from those rules which we shall now attempt to lay down.

As this good-breeding is the art of pleasing, it will be first necessary with the utmost caution to avoid hurting or giving any offence to those with whom we converse. And here we are surely to shun any kind of actual disrespect, or affront to their persons, by insolence, which is the severest attack that can be made on the pride of man, and of which Florus seems to have no inadequate opinion when, speaking of the second Tarquin, he says; in omnes superbid (qua crudelitate gravior est BONIS) grassatus; “He trod on all with insolence, which sits heavier on men of great minds than cruelty itself.” If there is any temper in man which more than all others disqualifies him for society, it is this insolence or haughtiness, which, blinding a man to his own imperfections, and giving him a hawk’s quicksightedness to those of others, raises in him that contempt for his species which inflates the cheeks, erects the head, and stiffens the gaite of those strutting animals who sometimes stalk in assemblies, for no other reason but to shew in their gesture and behaviour the disregard they have for the company. Though to a truly great and philosophical mind it is not easy to conceive a more ridiculous exhibition than this puppet, yet to others he is little less than a nuisance; for contempt is a murtherous weapon, and there is this difference only between the greatest and weakest man when attacked by it, that, in order to wound the former, it must be just; whereas, without the shields of wisdom and philosophy, which God knows are in the possession of very few, it wants no justice to point it, but is certain to penetrate, from whatever corner it comes. It is this disposition which inspires the empty Cacus to deny his acquaintance, and overlook men of merit in distress; and the little silly, pretty Phillida, or Foolida, to stare at the strange creatures round her. It is this temper which constitutes the supercilious eye, the reserved look, the distant bowe, the scornful leer, the affected astonishment, the loud whisper, ending in a laugh directed full in the teeth of another. Hence spring, in short, those numberless offences given too frequently, in public and private assemblies, by persons of weak understandings, indelicate habits, and so hungry and foul-feeding a vanity that it wants to devour whatever comes in its way. Now, if good-breeding be what we have endeavoured to prove it, how foreign, and indeed how opposite to it, must such a behaviour be! and can any man call a duke or a dutchess who wears it well-bred? or are they not more justly entitled to those inhuman names which they themselves allot to the lowest vulgar? But behold a more pleasing picture on the reverse. See the earl of C—-, noble in his birth, splendid in his fortune, and embellished with every endowment of mind; how affable! how condescending! himself the only one who seems ignorant that he is every way the greatest person in the room.