I have this moment received a packet, sealed with your seal, though not directed by your hand, for Lady Hervey.  No letter from you!  Are you not well?

LETTER CLXXXVII

London, May 27, O. S. 1753.

My dear friend:  I have this day been tired, jaded, nay, tormented, by the company of a most worthy, sensible, and learned man, a near relation of mine, who dined and passed the evening with me.  This seems a paradox, but is a plain truth; he has no knowledge of the world, no manners, no address; far from talking without book, as is commonly said of people who talk sillily, he only talks by book; which in general conversation is ten times worse.  He has formed in his own closet from books, certain systems of everything, argues tenaciously upon those principles, and is both surprised and angry at whatever deviates from them.  His theories are good, but, unfortunately, are all impracticable.  Why? because he has only read and not conversed.  He is acquainted with books, and an absolute stranger to men.  Laboring with his matter, he is delivered of it with pangs; he hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses himself inelegantly.  His actions are all ungraceful; so that, with all his merit and knowledge, I would rather converse six hours with the most frivolous tittle-tattle woman who knew something of the world, than with him.  The preposterous notions of a systematical man who does not know the world, tire the patience of a man who does.  It would be endless to correct his mistakes, nor would he take it kindly:  for he has considered everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right.  Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never-failing one, of these people.  Regardless, because ignorant, of customs and manners, they violate them every moment.  They often shock, though they never mean to offend:  never attending either to the general character, or the particular distinguishing circumstances of the people to whom, or before whom they talk; whereas the knowledge of the world teaches one, that the very same things which are exceedingly right and proper in one company, time and place, are exceedingly absurd in others.  In short, a man who has great knowledge, from experience and observation, of the characters, customs, and manners of mankind, is a being as different from, and as superior to, a man of mere book and systematical knowledge, as a well-managed horse is to an ass.  Study, therefore, cultivate, and frequent men and women; not only in their outward, and consequently, guarded, but in their interior, domestic, and consequently less disguised, characters and manners.  Take your notions of things, as by observation and experience you find they really are, and not as you read that they are or should be; for they never are quite what they should be.  For this purpose do not content yourself with general and common acquaintance; but