Resolution, is in a great
measure lost amongst us: There hath been a long Endeavour to transform
us into Foreign Manners and Fashions, and to bring us to a servile
Imitation of none of the best of our Neighbours in some of the worst
of their Qualities. The Dialect of Conversation is now-a-days so
swelled with Vanity and Compliment, and so surfeited (as I may say) of
Expressions of Kindness and Respect, that if a Man that lived an Age
or two ago should return into the World again he would really want a
Dictionary to help him to understand his own Language, and to know the
true intrinsick Value of the Phrase in Fashion, and would hardly at
first believe at what a low Rate the highest Strains and Expressions
of Kindness imaginable do commonly pass in current Payment; and when
he should come to understand it, it would be a great while before he
could bring himself with a good Countenance and a good Conscience to
converse with Men upon equal Terms, and in their own way.

And in truth it is hard to say, whether it should more provoke our
Contempt or our Pity, to hear what solemn Expressions of Respect and
Kindness will pass between Men, almost upon no Occasion; how great
Honour and Esteem they will declare for one whom perhaps they never
saw before, and how entirely they are all on the sudden devoted to his
Service and Interest, for no Reason; how infinitely and eternally
obliged to him, for no Benefit; and how extreamly they will be
concerned for him, yea and afflicted too, for no Cause. I know it is
said, in Justification of this hollow kind of Conversation, that there
is no Harm, no real Deceit in Compliment, but the Matter is well
enough, so long as we understand one another; _et Verba valent ut
Nummi: Words are like Money_; and when the current Value of them is
generally understood, no Man is cheated by them. This is something, if
such Words were any thing; but being brought into the Account, they
are meer Cyphers. However, it is still a just Matter of Complaint,
that Sincerity and Plainness are out of Fashion, and that our Language
is running into a Lie; that Men have almost quite perverted the use of
Speech, and made Words to signifie nothing, that the greatest part of
the Conversation of Mankind is little else but driving a Trade of
Dissimulation; insomuch that it would make a Man heartily sick and
weary of the World, to see the little Sincerity tha