Lamentable in the mean time, I am sensible, is the condition of my good Lady; who, especially if she be a mighty well-bred one, is perfectly shocked at the boy’s awkwardness, and calls out on the taylor, the dancing-master, the player, the travelled tutor, any body and every body, to relieve her from the pain of so disgraceful an object.
She should however be told, if a proper season and words soft enough could be found to convey the information, that the odious thing, which disturbs her so much, is one of nature’s signatures impressed on that age; that bashfulness is but the passage from one season of life to another; and that as the body is then the least graceful, when the limbs are making their last efforts and hastening to their just proportion, so the manners are the least easy and disengaged, when the mind, conscious and impatient of its imperfections, is stretching all its faculties to their full growth.
If I had the honour of her Ladyship’s ear, I might further add, for her comfort, that as to this over-whelming modesty, which muffles merit, the boy, if she have but patience, will presently outgrow it, as he does his cloaths; that when this cloak of shame has done its work of warming and invigorating his young virtue, it may safely be laid aside, or rather will drop off of itself; and that, as poor and sheepish a thing as master now is, he may turn out, in the end, as forward a spark as the best of them.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
Fye, Mr. Locke; what, my philosopher give into this gaiety! he, who reproached me just now for the way of raillery and declamation!
MR. LOCKE.
Your Lordship does well to upbraid me for treating in so light a manner what deserves, indeed, the most indignant reproof. For, what is this endeavour to quench ingenuous shame, but a blasphemous attempt to counteract the designs of Providence, and obliterate, by main force, one of the most natural, as well as most precious, distinctions of early youth? Modesty is the blush of budding reason and virtue: and if art could succeed in the preposterous project of forcing the fruit without the bud, not only this prime grace of the year would be lost, but the production itself, though it might be wondered at as a rarity, could never pretend to the flavour and ripeness of that which is of nature’s own growth.
In plain words, my Lord, modesty is the ornament of youth: and the earnest or rather the proper cause, of all that is excellent in riper age. It graces the boy, and, in due time, forms the man: whereas in suppressing this young virtue, you precipitate, indeed, a sort of manhood; which, yet, in effect, is only a perpetual boyism, or rather a portentous mixture of both states, without the virtues of either.
I am far from meaning by all this, and your Lordship will be as far from suspecting me to mean, that an easy unconstrained manner is not an amiable and agreeable thing. I am only for waiting the proper time of its appearance; which nature makes a little later than our impatient fancies are ready to prescribe to her.
Consider too this polite accomplishment, this supreme finishing of a well-formed character, can only be acquired, except in some extraordinary instances, by long incessant use and habit in conversation; which, besides the unfitness of the thing in other respects, would dissipate the young mind too much, and take it off from those other more important pursuits, which are proper to that age.