Choice of Company.

1.  The next thing to the choice of friends is the choice of your company.

Endeavour as much as you can to keep good company, and the company of your superiors:  for you will be held in estimation according to the company you keep.  By superiors I do not mean so much with regard to birth, as merit and the light in which they are considered by the world.

2.  There are two sorts of good company; the one consists of persons of birth, rank, and fashion; the other of those who are distinguished by some peculiar merit, in any liberal art or science; as men of letters, &c. and a mixture of these is what I would have understood by good company; for it is not what particular sets of people shall call themselves, but what the people in general acknowledge to be so, and are the accredited good company of the place.

3.  Now and then, persons without either birth, rank, or character, will creep into good company, under the protection of some considerable personage; but, in general, none are admitted of mean degree, or infamous moral character.

In this fashionable good company alone, can you learn the best manners and the best language, for, as there is no legal standard to form them by, ’tis here they are established.

It may possibly be questioned whether a man has it always in his power to get into good company:  undoubtedly, by deserving it, he has; provided he is in circumstances which enable him to live and appear in the style of a gentleman.  Knowledge, modesty, and good-breeding, will endear him to all that see him; for without politeness, the scholar is no better than a pedant, the philosopher than a cynic, the soldier than a brute, nor any man than a clown.

4.  Though the company of men of learning and genius is highly to be valued, and occasionally coveted, I would by no means have you always found in such company.  As they do not live in the world, they cannot have that easy manner and address which I would wish you to acquire.  If you can bear a part in such company, it is certainly adviseable to be in it sometimes, and you will be the more esteemed in other company by being so; but let it not engross you, lest you be considered as one of the literati, which, however respectable in name, is not the way to rise or shine in the fashionable world.

5.  But the company, which, of all others, you should carefully avoid, is that, which, in every sense of the word, may be called low; low in birth, low in rank, low in parts, and low in manners; that company, who, insignificant and contemptible in themselves, think it an honour to be seen with you, and who will flatter your follies, nay, your very vices, to keep you with them.

6.  Though you may think such a caution unnecessary, I do not; for many a young gentleman of sense and rank has been led by his vanity to keep such company, till he has been degraded, villified and undone.