How often have I, in the course of my life, found myself in this situation, with regard to many of my acquaintance, whom I have honored and respected, without being able to love.  I did not know why, because, when one is young, one does not take the trouble, nor allow one’s self the time, to analyze one’s sentiments and to trace them up to their source.  But subsequent observation and reflection have taught me why.  There is a man, whose moral character, deep learning, and superior parts, I acknowledge, admire, and respect; but whom it is so impossible for me to love, that I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company.  His figure (without being deformed) seems made to disgrace or ridicule the common structure of the human body.  His legs and arms are never in the position which, according to the situation of his body, they ought to be in, but constantly employed in committing acts of hostility upon the Graces.  He throws anywhere, but down his throat, whatever he means to drink, and only mangles what he means to carve.  Inattentive to all the regards of social life, he mistimes or misplaces everything.  He disputes with heat, and indiscriminately, mindless of the rank, character, and situation of those with whom he disputes; absolutely ignorant of the several gradations of familiarity or respect, he is exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurd to two of the three.  Is it possible to love such a man?  No.  The utmost I can do for him, is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.—­[This ‘mot’ was aimed at Dr. Johnson in retaliation for his famous letter.]

I remember, that when I came from Cambridge, I had acquired, among the pedants of that illiberal seminary, a sauciness of literature, a turn to satire and contempt, and a strong tendency to argumentation and contradiction.  But I had been but a very little while in the world, before I found that this would by no means do; and I immediately adopted the opposite character; I concealed what learning I had; I applauded often, without approving; and I yielded commonly without conviction.  ‘Suaviter in modo’ was my law and my prophets; and if I pleased (between you and me) it was much more owing to that, than to any superior knowledge or merit of my own.  Apropos, the word pleasing puts one always in mind of Lady Hervey; pray tell her, that I declare her responsible to me for your pleasing; that I consider her as a pleasing Falstaff, who not only pleases, herself, but is the cause of pleasing in others; that I know she can make anything of anybody; and that, as your governess, if she does not make you please, it must be only because she will not, and not because she cannot.  I hope you are ‘dubois don’t on en fait’; and if so, she is so good a sculptor, that I am sure she can give you whatever form she pleases.  A versatility of manners is as necessary in social, as a versatility of parts is in political life.  One must often yield, in order to prevail; one must humble one’s self, to be exalted; one must, like St. Paul, become all things to all men, to gain some; and, by the way, men are taken by the same means, ‘mutatis mutandis’, that women are gained—­by gentleness, insinuation, and submission:  and these lines of Mr. Dryden will hold to a minister as well as to a mistress: