CHAPTER XV - HINTS TOWARDS AN ESSAY ON CONVERSATION.
I HAVE observed few obvious subjects to have been so seldom, or at
least so slightly, handled as this; and, indeed, I know few so
difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there
seemeth so much to be said.
Most things pursued by men for the happiness of public or private
life our wit or folly have so refined, that they seldom subsist but
in idea; a true friend, a good marriage, a perfect form of
government, with some others, require so many ingredients, so good
in their several kinds, and so much niceness in mixing them, that
for some thousands of years men have despaired of reducing their
schemes to perfection. But in conversation it is or might be
otherwise; for here we are only to avoid a multitude of errors,
which, although a matter of some difficulty, may be in every man's
power, for want of which it remaineth as mere an idea as the other.
Therefore it seemeth to me that the truest way to understand
conversation is to know the faults and errors to which it is
subject, and from thence every man to form maxims to himself
whereby it may be regulated, because it requireth few talents to
which most men are not born, or at least may not acquire without
any great genius or study. For nature bath left every man a
capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and
there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both, who, by a
very few faults that they might correct in half an hour, are not so
much as tolerable.
I was prompted to write my thoughts upon this subject by mere
indignation, to reflect that so useful and innocent a pleasure, so
fitted for every period and condition of life, and so much in all
men's power, should be so much neglected and abused.
And in this discourse it will be necessary to note those errors
that are obvious, as well as others which are seldomer observed,
since there are few so obvious or acknowledged into which most men,
some time or other, are not apt to run.
For instance, nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of
talking too much; yet I rarely remember to have seen five people
together where some one among them hath not been predominant in
that kind, to the great constraint and disgust of all the rest.
But among such as deal in multitudes of words, none are comparable
to the sober deliberate talker, who proceedeth with much thought
and caution, maketh his preface, brancheth out into several
digressions, findeth a hint that putteth him in mind of another
story, which he promiseth to tell you when this is done; cometh
back regularly to his subject, cannot readily call to mind some
person's name, holdeth his head, complaineth of his memory; the
whole company all this while in suspense; at length, says he, it is
no matter, and so goes on. And, to crown the business, it perhaps
proveth at last a story the company hath heard fifty times before;
or, at best, some insipid adventure of the relater.
Another general fault in conversation is that of those who affect
to talk of themselves. Some, without any ceremony, will run over
the history of their lives; will relate the annals of their
diseases, with the several symptoms and circumstances of them; will
enumerate the hardships and injustice they have suffered in court,
in parliament, in love, or in law. Others are more dexterous, and
with great art will lie on the watch to hook in their own praise.
They will call a witness to remember they always foretold what
would happen in such a case, but none would believe them; they
advised such a man from the beginning, and told him the
consequences just as they happened, but he would have his own way.
Others make a vanity of telling their faults. They are the
strangest men in the world; they cannot dissemble; they own it is a
folly; they have lost abundance of advantages by it; but, if you
would give them the world, they cannot help it; there is something
in their nature that abhors insincerity and constraint; with many
other unsufferable topics of the same altitude.
Of such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to
think he is so to others, without once making this easy and obvious
reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men
than theirs have with him; and how little that is he is sensible
enough.
Where company hath met, I often have observed two persons discover
by some accident that they were bred together at the same school or
university, after which the rest are condemned to silence, and to
listen while these two are refreshing each other's memory with the
arch tricks and passages of themselves and their comrades.
I know a great officer of the army, who will sit for some time with
a supercilious and impatient silence, full of anger and contempt
for those who are talking; at length of a sudden demand audience;
decide the matter in a short dogmatical way; then withdraw within
himself again, and vouchsafe to talk no more, until his spirits
circulate again to the same point.
There are some faults in conversation which none are so subject to
as the men of wit, nor ever so much as when they are with each
other. If they have opened their mouths without endeavouring to
say a witty thing, they think it is so many words lost. It is a
torment to the hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them upon
the rack for invention, and in perpetual constraint, with so little
success. They must do something extraordinary, in order to acquit
themselves, and answer their character, else the standers by may be
disappointed and be apt to think them only like the rest of
mortals. I have known two men of wit industriously brought
together, in order to entertain the company, where they have made a
very ridiculous figure, and provided all the mirth at their own
expense.
I know a man of wit, who is never easy but where he can be allowed
to dictate and preside; he neither expecteth to be informed or
entertained, but to display his own talents. His business is to be
good company, and not good conversation, and therefore he chooseth
to frequent those who are content to listen, and profess themselves
his admirers. And, indeed, the worst conversation I ever remember
to have heard in my life was that at Will's coffee-house, where the
wits, as they were called, used formerly to assemble; that is to
say, five or six men who had written plays, or at least prologues,
or had share in a miscellany, came thither, and entertained one
another with their trifling composures in so important an air, as
if they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the
fate of kingdoms depended on them; and they were usually attended
with a humble audience of young students from the inns of courts,
or the universities, who, at due distance, listened to these
oracles, and returned home with great contempt for their law and
philosophy, their heads filled with trash under the name of
politeness, criticism, and belles lettres.
By these means the poets, for many years past, were all overrun
with pedantry. For, as I take it, the word is not properly used;
because pedantry is the too front or unseasonable obtruding our own
knowledge in common discourse, and placing too great a value upon
it; by which definition men of the court or the army may be as
guilty of pedantry as a philosopher or a divine; and it is the same
vice in women when they are over copious upon the subject of their
petticoats, or their fans, or their china. For which reason,
although it be a piece of prudence, as well as good manners, to put
men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a
liberty a wise man could hardly take; because, beside the
imputation of pedantry, it is what he would never improve by.
This great town is usually provided with some player, mimic, or
buffoon, who hath a general reception at the good tables; familiar
and domestic with persons of the first quality, and usually sent
for at every meeting to divert the company, against which I have no
objection. You go there as to a farce or a puppet-show; your
business is only to laugh in season, either out of inclination or
civility, while this merry companion is acting his part. It is a
business he hath undertaken, and we are to suppose he is paid for
his day's work. I only quarrel when in select and private
meetings, where men of wit and learning are invited to pass an
evening, this jester should be admitted to run over his circle of
tricks, and make the whole company unfit for any other
conversation, besides the indignity of confounding men's talents at
so shameful a rate.
Raillery is the finest part of conversation; but, as it is our
usual custom to counterfeit and adulterate whatever is too dear for
us, so we have done with this, and turned it all into what is
generally called repartee, or being smart; just as when an
expensive fashion cometh up, those who are not able to reach it
content themselves with some paltry imitation. It now passeth for
raillery to run a man down in discourse, to put him out of
countenance, and make him ridiculous, sometimes to expose the
defects of his person or understanding; on all which occasions he
is obliged not to be angry, to avoid the imputation of not being
able to take a jest. It is admirable to observe one who is
dexterous at this art, singling out a weak adversary, getting the
laugh on his side, and then carrying all before him. The French,
from whom we borrow the word, have a quite different idea of the
thing, and so had we in the politer age of our fathers. Raillery
was, to say something that at first appeared a reproach or
reflection, but, by some turn of wit unexpected and surprising,
ended always in a compliment, and to the advantage of the person it
was addressed to. And surely one of the best rules in conversation
is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably
wish we had rather left unsaid; nor can there anything be well more
contrary to the ends for which people meet together, than to part
unsatisfied with each other or themselves.
There are two faults in conversation which appear very different,
yet arise from the same root, and are equally blamable; I mean, an
impatience to interrupt others, and the uneasiness of being
interrupted ourselves. The two chief ends of conversation are, to
entertain and improve those we are among, or to receive those
benefits ourselves; which whoever will consider, cannot easily run
into either of those two errors; because, when any man speaketh in
company, it is to be supposed he doth it for his hearers' sake, and
not his own; so that common discretion will teach us not to force
their attention, if they are not willing to lend it; nor, on the
other side, to interrupt him who is in possession, because that is
in the grossest manner to give the preference to our own good
sense.
There are some people whose good manners will not suffer them to
interrupt you; but, what is almost as bad, will discover abundance
of impatience, and lie upon the watch until you have done, because
they have started something in their own thoughts which they long
to be delivered of. Meantime, they are so far from regarding what
passes, that their imaginations are wholly turned upon what they
have in reserve, for fear it should slip out of their memory; and
thus they confine their invention, which might otherwise range over
a hundred things full as good, and that might be much more
naturally introduced.
There is a sort of rude familiarity, which some people, by
practising among their intimates, have introduced into their
general conversation, and would have it pass for innocent freedom
or humour, which is a dangerous experiment in our northern climate,
where all the little decorum and politeness we have are purely
forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity. This,
among the Romans, was the raillery of slaves, of which we have many
instances in Plautus. It seemeth to have been introduced among us
by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a
court-entertainment, of which I have heard many particulars; and,
considering all things were turned upside down, it was reasonable
and judicious; although it was a piece of policy found out to
ridicule a point of honour in the other extreme, when the smallest
word misplaced among gentlemen ended in a duel.
There are some men excellent at telling a story, and provided with
a plentiful stock of them, which they can draw out upon occasion in
all companies; and considering how low conversation runs now among
us, it is not altogether a contemptible talent; however, it is
subject to two unavoidable defects: frequent repetition, and being
soon exhausted; so that whoever valueth this gift in himself hath
need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company,
that he may not discover the weakness of his fund; for those who
are thus endowed have seldom any other revenue, but live upon the
main stock.
Great speakers in public are seldom agreeable in private
conversation, whether their faculty be natural, or acquired by
practice and often venturing. Natural elocution, although it may
seem a paradox, usually springeth from a barrenness of invention
and of words, by which men who have only one stock of notions upon
every subject, and one set of phrases to express them in, they swim
upon the superficies, and offer themselves on every occasion;
therefore, men of much learning, and who know the compass of a
language, are generally the worst talkers on a sudden, until much
practice hath inured and emboldened them; because they are
confounded with plenty of matter, variety of notions, and of words,
which they cannot readily choose, but are perplexed and entangled
by too great a choice, which is no disadvantage in private
conversation; where, on the other side, the talent of haranguing
is, of all others, most insupportable.
Nothing hath spoiled men more for conversation than the character
of being wits; to support which, they never fail of encouraging a
number of followers and admirers, who list themselves in their
service, wherein they find their accounts on both sides by pleasing
their mutual vanity. This hath given the former such an air of
superiority, and made the latter so pragmatical, that neither of
them are well to be endured. I say nothing here of the itch of
dispute and contradiction, telling of lies, or of those who are
troubled with the disease called the wandering of the thoughts,
that they are never present in mind at what passeth in discourse;
for whoever labours under any of these possessions is as unfit for
conversation as madmen in Bedlam.
I think I have gone over most of the errors in conversation that
have fallen under my notice or memory, except some that are merely
personal, and others too gross to need exploding; such as lewd or
profane talk; but I pretend only to treat the errors of
conversation in general, and not the several subjects of discourse,
which would be infinite. Thus we see how human nature is most
debased, by the abuse of that faculty, which is held the great
distinction between men and brutes; and how little advantage we
make of that which might be the greatest, the most lasting, and the
most innocent, as well as useful pleasure of life: in default of
which, we are forced to take up with those poor amusements of dress
and visiting, or the more pernicious ones of play, drink, and
vicious amours, whereby the nobility and gentry of both sexes are
entirely corrupted both in body and mind, and have lost all notions
of love, honour, friendship, and generosity; which, under the name
of fopperies, have been for some time laughed out of doors.
This degeneracy of conversation, with the pernicious consequences
thereof upon our humours and dispositions, hath been owing, among
other causes, to the custom arisen, for some time past, of
excluding women from any share in our society, further than in
parties at play, or dancing, or in the pursuit of an amour. I take
the highest period of politeness in England (and it is of the same
date in France) to have been the peaceable part of King Charles
I.'s reign; and from what we read of those times, as well as from
the accounts I have formerly met with from some who lived in that
court, the methods then used for raising and cultivating
conversation were altogether different from ours; several ladies,
whom we find celebrated by the poets of that age, had assemblies at
their houses, where persons of the best understanding, and of both
sexes, met to pass the evenings in discoursing upon whatever
agreeable subjects were occasionally started; and although we are
apt to ridicule the sublime Platonic notions they had, or
personated in love and friendship, I conceive their refinements
were grounded upon reason, and that a little grain of the romance
is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human
nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that
is sordid, vicious, and low. If there were no other use in the
conversation of ladies, it is sufficient that it would lay a
restraint upon those odious topics of immodesty and indecencies,
into which the rudeness of our northern genius is so apt to fall.
And, therefore, it is observable in those sprightly gentlemen about
the town, who are so very dexterous at entertaining a vizard mask
in the park or the playhouse, that, in the company of ladies of
virtue and honour, they are silent and disconcerted, and out of
their element.
There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves
and entertain their company with relating of facts of no
consequence, nor at all out of the road of such common incidents as
happen every day; and this I have observed more frequently among
the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit
the minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of
discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms
and phrases, as well as accent and gesture peculiar to that
country, would be hardly tolerable. It is not a fault in company
to talk much; but to continue it long is certainly one; for, if the
majority of those who are got together be naturally silent or
cautious, the conversation will flag, unless it be often renewed by
one among them who can start new subjects, provided he doth not
dwell upon them, but leaveth room for answers and replies.
