but reaps an acceptance from the pardon
he gives to other men's faults: and the ingenuous sort of men with whom
he converses, have so just a regard for him, that he rather is an
example, than a check to their behaviour. For this reason, as Senecio
never pretends to be a man of pleasure before youth, so young men never
set up for wisdom before Senecio; so that you never meet, where he is,
those monsters of conversation, who are grave or gay above their years.
He never converses but with followers of nature and good sense, where
all that is uttered is only the effect of a communicable temper, and not
of emulation to excel their companions; all desire of superiority being
a contradiction to that spirit which makes a just conversation, the very
essence of which is mutual goodwill. Hence it is, that I take it for a
rule, that the natural, and not the acquired man, is the companion.
Learning, wit, gallantry, and good breeding, are all but subordinate
qualities in society, and are of no value, but as they are subservient
to benevolence, and tend to a certain manner of being or appearing equal
to the rest of the company; for conversation is composed of an assembly
of men, as they are men, and not as they are distinguished by fortune:
therefore he that brings his quality with him into conversation, should
always pay the reckoning; for he came to receive homage, and not to meet
his friends--But the din about my ears from the clamour of the people I
was with this evening, has carried me beyond my intended purpose, which
was to explain upon the Order of Merry Fellows; but I think I may
pronounce of them, as I heard good Senecio, with a spice of wit of the
last age, say, viz. that a Merry Fellow is the Saddest Fellow in the
world.

[Footnote 437: See No. 44. Blackall was a bishop; and the University of
Oxford had declared publicly in his favour.]

[Footnote 438: See No. 11.]

[Footnote 439: A meeting for conferring degrees, when speeches, &c., are
delivered.]

[Footnote 440: An undergraduate who made extempore speeches at the Act,
often of a very satirical kind. Sometimes there were two _terrae filii_,
who carried on a dialogue. In 1721, Amberst published a periodical with
the title "Terrae-Filius: or, The Secret History of the University of
Oxford," and these papers were reprinted in two volumes in 1726, with a
curious engraving of the Theatre at Oxford, by Hogarth, as
frontispiece.]

[Footnote 441: See No. 26.]

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