half an hour, without
being able to cut it off, and your sleeve all the time in another dish, I
must rise from the table to escape the fever you would certainly give me.
Good God! how I should be shocked, if you came into my room, for the
first time, with two left legs, presenting yourself with all the graces
and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hanging upon you, like those in
Monmouth street, upon tenter-hooks! whereas, I expect, nay, require, to
see you present yourself with the easy and genteel air of a man of
fashion, who has kept good company. I expect you not only well dressed
but very well dressed; I expect a gracefulness in all your motions, and
something particularly engaging in your address, All this I expect, and
all this it is in your power, by care and attention, to make me find; but
to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it, we shall not converse
very much together; for I cannot stand inattention and awkwardness; it
would endanger my health. You have often seen, and I have as often made
you observe L----'s distinguished inattention and awkwardness. Wrapped
up, like a Laputan, in intense thought, and possibly sometimes in no
thought at all (which, I believe, is very often the case with absent
people), he does not know his most intimate acquaintance by sight, or
answers them as if he were at cross purposes. He leaves his hat in one
room, his sword in another, and would leave his shoes in a third, if his
buckles, though awry, did not save them: his legs and arms, by his
awkward management of them, seem to have undergone the question
extraordinaire; and his head, always hanging upon one or other of his
shoulders, seems to have received the first stroke upon a block. I
sincerely value and esteem him for his parts, learning, and virtue; but,
for the soul of me, I cannot love him in company. This will be
universally the case, in common life, of every inattentive, awkward man,
let his real merit and knowledge be ever so great. When I was of your
age, I desired to shine, as far as I was able, in every part of life; and
was as attentive to my manners, my dress, and my air, in company of
evenings, as to my books and my tutor in the mornings. A young fellow
should be ambitious to shine in everything--and, of the two, always
rather overdo than underdo. These things are by no means trifles: they
are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great
world, and who would make a figure or a for