Life is
a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.'
'Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, I think, might be made a very
pretty book. Take out the immorality, and it should be put into the
hands of every young gentleman. An elegant manner and easiness of
behaviour are acquired gradually and imperceptibly. No man can say "I'll
be genteel." There are ten genteel women for one genteel man, because
they are more restrained. A man without some degree of restraint is
insufferable; but we are all less restrained than women. Were a woman
sitting in company to put out her legs before her as most men do, we
should be tempted to kick them in.'
No man was a more attentive and nice observer of behaviour in those in
whose company he happened to be, than Johnson; or, however strange it
may seem to many, had a higher estimation of its refinements. Lord
Eliot informs me, that one day when Johnson and he were at dinner at
a gentleman's house in London, upon Lord Chesterfield's Letters being
mentioned, Johnson surprized the company by this sentence: 'Every man
of any education would rather be called a rascal, than accused of
deficiency in THE GRACES.
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