SECT. XV.
Ostentation of Knowledge.
LXXII. Science is a treasure that should be expended with œconomy, and not squandered away profusely. It is of great value to the possessor who lays it out sparingly, but if squandered and made ostentation of, it becomes trifling and ridiculous; and indeed upon a strict enquiry, it will be found that they very seldom possess it, who boast or make parade of being masters of it. They who know but little, are the only people, who in all places, are fond of exposing their whole stock of knowledge to view. They never enter into a conversation, that without waiting a fit opportunity for doing it, they don’t exhibit their whole scanty budget of informations. Between those who are truly learned, and men of but slender literary acquisitions, there is the same difference, that there is between merchants who keep great stocks of goods, and pedlars who go about with a pack. The first in their warehouses, lay up large assortments of things, where all people may resort, and be furnished with what they have occasion for; the others carry their miserable scanty shop of wares at their backs, and there is neither street, alley, or corner, where they don’t cry them about, and expose and offer them to sale.
LXXIII. Some are so simple, as among all classes of people, to introduce, or as we may say lug-in by the head and shoulders, a conversation, on the subject of the profession they were bred to. The abbé Bellegarde, tells a story of a military man, who in a visit he made to some ladies, without being asked to do it by any body, set himself about relating very circumstantially, all the particulars of a siege he had been employed in, which he did in all the technical terms of military art, taking care also, to mention the regiments and officers that assisted at it, and to describe minutely, all the manoeuvres both of the besiegers and the besieged, from the time of investing the place to the day of its surrender; which tedious relation, must without doubt have been very entertaining to the ladies. But Moliere’s comic description of these sort of people, which he gives us in the character of a young practitioner in surgery, is more laughable still; who in one of his first visits to a lady he paid his addresses to, after having exhausted all his compliments, in anatomical phrases and chyrurgical terms of art, invited her to see the dissection of a dead body, and expressed how greatly he should be obliged to her for her company; for that he himself was to be the operator. This undoubtedly could not fail of affording a pleasing entertainment to a delicate and tender-hearted lady.
LXXIV. One of the most essential instructions that can be acquired by true Urbanity, is that of learning upon all occurrences, to accommodate yourself and your conversation, to the genius and capacities of your company; and of leaving to the choice of others, the subject-matter of discourse, and in following them in the pursuit of it, as far as they shall find it pleasing and agreeable to carry it. He is not more absurd and extravagant who talks to another on a subject or faculty he does not understand, than he, who talks to him in a language he is an utter stranger to.