MR. LOCKE.
Alas, your Lordship is not to be told, that the reverse of wrong is not always right. Even in the instance your Lordship puts, a young man may be polished indeed out of his rusticity; yet, if he have no better rule to go by, than the fashion of the place where he lives, he may easily wear himself into the contrary defect, an effeminate and unmanly foppery. And, for the probability of such miscarriage, your Lordship is again referred to your own experience and observation.
As to what I take to be the proper remedy for these barbarities, that is another question, which I may afterwards find occasion to explain to you more at large. For the present, I must take leave to conclude, that, under the circumstances here supposed, foreign travel is generally an insufficient, always an improper, cure for them.
Your Lordship indeed goes further. You contend, that, if these sordid and dirty habits could by any means be expelled, still our English education is so essentially bad, that no liberal or graceful manners could be derived from it. And here your Lordship’s rhetoric expatiates in full security. You seem confident that, though a method might be found out for making reasonable men, yet our home-breeding is absolutely incapable of furnishing fine gentlemen.
On this occasion it was, that the servile discipline of our schools, and the pedant tutorage of our colleges, afforded ample scope to your resentment. From an over-charged picture of both these, your Lordship finds means to dress up such a prodigy of ill manners, as must be the scorn, or pity, of all good company: which, to move our pity, or our scorn the more, your Lordship, I remember, took care to contrast to the easy, the assured, the all-sufficient air of a finished traveller.
To this triumphant part of your harangue, I have only to oppose some plain and simple truths.
The awkward bashfulness of a young man is a sin which, I know, admits of no expiation, in good company. However, what good company will not pardon, it will soon remove. And, till that blessed time comes, let it first be considered that the modesty of ingenuous youth, though a terrible vice in itself, is yet favourable to some virtues. It is full of deference and respect; it preserves innocence; nourishes emulation; and, till reason be of age to take the rein into her hands, suspends and controuls all the passions. Nay, if it did nothing more than dispose a young man to observe much and talk little; even this advantage might be some recompence for the ill figure it gives him in the eyes of your Lordship’s good company.
Have a care, my Lord, lest by taking off this restraint too soon, you emancipate your favoured youth from every principle of honour, and let him run headlong into worthlessness, dissolution, and ruin!
I know what the world is ready to think of this talk. But a truce with the world. I am a Philosopher, your Lordship knows: nay, your Lordship, too, is a Philosopher. Let us for once then hazard an unfashionable truth, that modesty in a young man is his grace and ornament; and that a confident young booby, not a bashful one, is the prodigy that needs the expiation.
Consider, further, my Lord, that bashfulness is not so much the effect of an ill education, as the proper gift and provision of wise nature. Every stage of life has its own set of manners, that is suited to it, and best becomes it. Each is beautiful in its season; and you might as well quarrel with the child’s rattle, and advance him directly to the boy’s top and span-farthing, as expect from diffident youth the manly confidence of riper age.