The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [327]
8. But an exterior decency and dignity of manners will keep even such a man longer from sinking, than otherwise he would be.
9. Pray read frequently, and with the utmost attention, even learn by heart, that incomparable chapter in Cicero’s Offices, upon decorum. It contains whatever is necessary for the dignity of manners.
10. A vulgar, ordinary way of thinking, acting or speaking implies a low education, and a habit of low company.
11. Young people contract it at school, or on the street, if they are too often used to converse there;
12. But if they are to frequent good company, they need attention and observation very much, if they are to lay bad habits aside;
13. And, indeed, if they do not, good company will be very apt to lay them aside.
14. The various kinds of vulgarisms are infinite; some samples may help one guess at the rest.
15. A vulgar man is captious and jealous, eager and impetuous about trifles.
16. He suspects himself to be slighted, thinks everything that is said is meant at him:
17. If the company happens to laugh, he is persuaded they laugh at him;
18. He grows angry and testy, says something very impertinent, and draws himself into a scrape,
19. By showing what he likes to call a strong character, and asserting himself.
20. A sensible man, by contrast, does not suppose himself to be either the sole or principal object of the thoughts, looks or words of the company;
21. And never suspects that he is either slighted or laughed at, unless he is conscious that he deserves it.
22. And if, which very seldom happens, the company is absurd or ill-bred enough to do either, he does not care,
23. Unless the insult be so gross and plain as to require satisfaction of another kind.
24. As he is above trifles, he is never vehement and eager about them; and, wherever they are concerned, rather acquiesces than wrangles.
25. A vulgar man’s conversation always savours strongly of the lowness of his education and company.
26. It turns chiefly upon his domestic affairs, daily work, the excellent order he keeps in his own family and the little anecdotes of the neighbourhood;
27. All which he relates with emphasis, as interesting matters. He is a man of gossip.
28. Vulgarism in language is the next and distinguishing characteristic of bad company and a bad education.
29. A reflective man avoids nothing with more care than platitude.
30. Proverbial expressions and trite sayings are the rhetorical flowers of the vulgar man.
31. Would he say that men differ in their tastes, he both supports and adorns that opinion by a good old saying, as he respectfully calls it, that ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’.
32. If anybody attempts to ‘get smart’ with him, as he calls it, he gives them ‘tit for tat’ – aye, that he does.
33. He has always some favourite word for the time being; which, for the sake of using often, he commonly abuses,
34. Such as ‘vastly’ angry, ‘vastly’ kind, ‘vastly’ handsome and ‘vastly’ ugly.
35. He sometimes affects hard words, by way of ornament, which he always mangles.
36. An educated man never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms; he uses neither favourite words nor hard words;
37. But takes care to use the instrument of language well.
38. Graces of manner and speech are as necessary to adorn and introduce a person’s intrinsic merit, as the polish is to the diamond;
39. Which, without that polish, would never be worn, whatever it might weigh.
Epistle 11
1. I have often asserted, my son, that the profoundest learning and the politest manners were by no means incompatible, though seldom united in the same person.
2. Every rational being, I take it for granted, proposes to himself some object more important than mere respiration and obscure animal existence.
3. He desires to distinguish himself among his fellow-creatures. Pliny leaves mankind only this alternative:
4. Either of doing what deserves to be written about, or of writing what deserves to be read.
5. You have, I am convinced, one or both of these objects in view; but you must know and use the