LETTER LXXXIII

London, September 27, O. S. 1749.

Dear boy:  A vulgar, ordinary way of thinking, acting, or speaking, implies a low education, and a habit of low company.  Young people contract it at school, or among servants, with whom they are too often used to converse; but after they frequent good company, they must want attention and observation very much, if they do not lay it quite aside; and, indeed, if they do not, good company will be very apt to lay them aside.  The various kinds of vulgarisms are infinite; I cannot pretend to point them out to you; but I will give some samples, by which you may guess at the rest.

A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles.  He suspects himself to be slighted, thinks everything that is said meant at him:  if the company happens to laugh, he is persuaded they laugh at him; he grows angry and testy, says something very impertinent, and draws himself into a scrape, by showing what he calls a proper spirit, and asserting himself.  A man of fashion does not suppose himself to be either the sole or principal object of the thoughts, looks, or words of the company; and never suspects that he is either slighted or laughed at, unless he is conscious that he deserves it.  And if (which very seldom happens) the company is absurd or ill-bred enough to do either, he does not care twopence, unless the insult be so gross and plain as to require satisfaction of another kind.  As he is above trifles, he is never vehement and eager about them; and, wherever they are concerned, rather acquiesces than wrangles.  A vulgar man’s conversation always savors strongly of the lowness of his education and company.  It turns chiefly upon his domestic affairs, his servants, the excellent order he keeps in his own family, and the little anecdotes of the neighborhood; all which he relates with emphasis, as interesting matters.  He is a man gossip.

Vulgarism in language is the next and distinguishing characteristic of bad company and a bad education.  A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that.  Proverbial expressions and trite sayings are the flowers of the rhetoric of a vulgar man.  Would he say that men differ in their tastes; he both supports and adorns that opinion by the good old saying, as he respectfully calls it, that what is one man’s meat, is another man’s poison.  If anybody attempts being smart, as he calls it, upon him, he gives them tit for Tat, aye, that he does.  He has always some favorite word for the time being; which, for the sake of using often, he commonly abuses.  Such as vastly angry, vastly kind, vastly handsome, and vastly ugly.  Even his pronunciation of proper words carries the mark of the beast along with it.  He calls the earth YEARTH; he is OBLEIGED,