13.  It is only from a thorough disregard to himself in such particulars, that a man can act with a laudable sufficiency; his heart is fixed upon one point in view; and he commits no errors, because he thinks nothing an error but what deviates from that intention.

The wild havock affectation makes in that part of the world which should be most polite, is visible wherever we turn our eyes; it pushes men not only into impertinences in conversation, but also in their premeditated speeches.

14.  At the bar it torments the bench, whose business it is to cut off all superfluities in what is spoken before it by the practitioner; as well as several little pieces of injustice which arise from the law itself.  I have seen it make a man run from the purpose before a judge, who at the bar himself, so close and logical a pleader, that with all the pomp of eloquence in his power, he never spoke a word too much.

15.  It might be borne even here, but it often ascends the pulpit itself; and the declaimer, in that sacred place, is frequently so impertinently witty, speaks of the last day itself with so many quaint phrases, that there is no man who understands raillery, but must resolve to sin no more; nay, you may behold him sometimes in prayer, for a proper delivery of the great truths he is to utter, humble himself with a very well turned phrase, and mention his unworthiness in a way so very becoming, that the air of the pretty gentleman is preserved, under the lowliness of the preacher.

16.  I shall end this with a short letter I wrote the other day to a very witty man, over-run with the fault I am now speaking of.

’DEAR SIR,

I spent some time with you the other day, and must take the liberty of a friend to tell you of the insufferable affectation you are guilty of in all you say and do.

17.  When I gave you a hint of it, you asked me whether a man is to be cold to what his friends think of him?  No, but praise is not to be the entertainment of every moment:  he that hopes for it must be able to suspend the possession of it till proper periods of life, or death itself.  If you would not rather be commended than be praiseworthy, contemn little merits; and allow no man to be so free with you, as to praise you to your face.

18.  Your vanity by this means will want its food.  At the same time your passion for esteem will be more fully gratified; men will praise you in their actions:  where you now receive one compliment you will then receive twenty civilities.  Till then you will never have of either, further than,

SIR,

Your humble servant.’

SPECTATOR, Vol. 1.  No. 38.

19.  Nature does nothing in vain; the Creator of the Universe has appointed every thing to a certain use and purpose, and determined it to a settled course and sphere of action, from which, if it in the least deviates, it becomes unfit to answer those ends for which it was designed.