Notwithstanding all the advantages of youth, few young people please in conversation; the reason is that want of experience makes them positive, and what they say is rather with a design to please themselves than any one else. It is certain that age will make many things pass well enough, which would have been laughed at in the mouth of one much younger. Nothing, however, is more insupportable to men of sense, than an empty, formal use of a proverb, or a decision in all controversies, with a short unmeaning sentence. This piece of stupidity is the more insufferable, as it puts on the air of wisdom. A prudent man will avoid talking much of any particular science for which he is remarkably famous. There is not a handsomer thing than what was said of the famous Mr. Cowley—“That none but his intimate friends ever discovered by his discourse that he was a poet.” Besides the decency of this rule, it is certainly founded on good policy. He who talks of any thing for which he is already famous, has little to get, but a great deal to lose. It might be added, that he who is sometimes silent on a subject where every one is satisfied he could speak, will often be thought no less knowing in other matters, where perhaps he is wholly ignorant. When occasion for commendation is found, it will not be amiss to add the reasons for it, as it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools. Though good humor, sense and discretion can seldom fail to make a man agreeable, it may be no ill policy sometimes to prepare ourselves for particular {772} conversation, by looking a little into what is become a reigning subject. Though the asking questions may plead for itself the specious names of modesty and a desire of information, it affords little pleasure to the rest of the company who are not troubled with the same doubts; besides which, he who asks a question, would do well to consider that he lies wholly at the mercy of another before he receives an answer. Nothing is more silly, more rude or absurd, than the pleasure some people take in what they call speaking their minds. A person of this manner of thinking will say a rude thing merely for the pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune. It is not possible for a man to form to himself as exquisite pleasure in complying with the humor and sentiments of others, as with bringing others over to his own; since it is the certain sign of superior genius which can assume and become whatever dress it pleases. We may add, moreover, that there is something which can never be learnt but in the company of the polite. The virtues of men are catching, as well as their vices; and our own observations added to these, will soon discover what it is that commands attention in one man, and makes us tired and displeased with the discourse of another.