ities.

12. How many excellent speeches and honest actions are lost, for want of
being indifferent where we ought! Men are oppressed with regard to their
way of speaking and acting, instead of having their thoughts bent upon
what they should do or say; and by that means bury a capacity for great
things, by their fear of failing in indifferent things. This, perhaps,
cannot be called affectation; but it has some tincture of it, at least
so far, as that their fear of erring in a thing of no consequence argues
they would be too much pleased in performing it.

13. It is only from a thorough disregard to himself in such particulars,
that a man can act with a laudable sufficiency; his heart is fixed upon
one point in view; and he commits no errors, because he thinks nothing
an error but what deviates from that intention.

The wild havock affectation makes in that part of the world which should
be most polite, is visible wherever we turn our eyes; it pushes men not
only into impertinences in conversation, but also in their premeditated
speeches.

14. At the bar it torments the bench, whose business it is to cut off
all superfluities in what is spoken before it by the practitioner; as
well as several little pieces of injustice which arise from the law
itself. I have seen it make a man run from the purpose before a judge,
who at the bar himself, so close and logical a pleader, that with all
the pomp of eloquence in his power, he never spoke a word too much.

15. It might be borne even here, but it often ascends the pulpit itself;
and the declaimer, in that sacred place, is frequently so impertinently
witty, speaks of the last day itself with so many quaint phrases, that
there is no man who understands raillery, but must resolve to sin no
more; nay, you may behold him sometimes in prayer, for a proper delivery
of the great truths he is to utter, humble himself with a very well
turned phrase, and mention his unworthiness in a way so very becoming,
that the air of the pretty gentleman is preserved, under the lowliness
of the preacher.

16. I shall end this with a short letter I wrote the other day to a very
witty man, over-run with the fault I am now speaking of.

'DEAR SIR,

I spent some time with you the other day, and must take the liberty of a
friend to tell you of the insufferable affectation you are guilty of in
all you say and do.

17. When I gave you a hint of it, you asked me whether a man is to be
cold to what h