And this Crites was the Substance of our second Conversation, in which if I have done Justice to the Persons who made up the Discourse, and come up to your Notions of the Matter, I am satisfy'd that I am not far from the Truth. The End of the Second Dialogue. JOHN HUGHES I. OF STYLE. Written at the Request of a FRIEND, in the Year MDCXCVIII. WHEN, by the Help of Study, a sufficient Stock of solid Learning is acquired, the next Business is to consider how to make use of it to the best Advantage. (There is nothing more necessary to this, than Good Sense and Polite Learning) for as a Man may have the first without the latter, so 'tis possible one may have the latter, and yet be rather the worse than the better for it, at least to others, if not to himself. A plain unletter'd Man is always more agreeable Company, than a Fool in several Languages. For a Pedant, tho' he may take himself for a Philosopher, is far more prejudiced than an illiterate Man; and Sufficiency (the chief Part of his Character,) besides the Ill-manners of it, is really (as Sir William Temple observes,) the worst Composition out of the Pride and Ignorance of Mankind. Besides, Affectation, its usual Attendant, is every Body's Aversion, from the natural Hatred we have to all manner of Imposture. So that if there was nothing else to recommend Polite Learning, yet methinks this were enough, that it files off the Rust of the Academy, and is the same to the Mind, as Dancing to the Body a Means of giving it a free Air and genteel Motion. In a Word, it adds the Gentleman to the Scholar, and when these two meet, they challenge all Mens Respect and Love. |