“Keep thy lips with all diligence.”
“A man that speaketh too much, and museth but little and lightly,
Wasteth his mind in words, and is counted a fool among men:
But thou when thou hast thought, weave charily the web of meditation,
And clothe the ideal spirit in the suitable garments of speech.”
Note well the discretion of silence. What man ever involved himself in difficulties through silence? Who thinks another a fool because he does not talk? Keep quiet, and you may be looked upon as a wise man; open your mouth and all may see at once that you are a simpleton. Ben Jonson, speaking of one who was taken for a man of judgment while he was silent, says, “This man might have been a Counsellor of State, till he spoke; but having spoken, not the beadle of the ward.”
Lord Lytton tells of a groom who married a rich lady, and was in fear as to how he might be treated by the guests of his new household, on the score of his origin and knowledge: to whom a clergyman gave this advice, “Wear a black coat, and hold your tongue.” The groom acted on the advice, and was considered a gentlemanly and wise man.
The same author speaks of a man of “weighty name,” with whom he once met, but of whom he could make nothing in conversation. A few days after, a gentleman spoke to him about this “superior man,” when he received for a reply, “Well, I don’t think much of him. I spent the other day with him, and found him insufferably dull.” “Indeed,” said the gentleman, with surprise; “why, then I see how it is: Lord – has been positively talking to you.”
This reminds one of the story told of Coleridge. He was once sitting at a dinner-table admiring a fellow guest opposite as a wise man, keeping himself in solemn and stately reserve, and resisting all inducements to join in the conversation of the occasion, until there was placed on the table a steaming dish of apple-dumplings, when the first sight of them broke the seal of the wise man’s intelligence, exclaiming with enthusiasm, “Them be the jockeys for me.”
Gay, in his fables, addressing himself to one of these talkers, says, —
“Had not thy forward, noisy tongue
Proclaim’d thee always in the wrong,
Thou might’st have mingled with the rest,
And ne’er thy foolish sense confess’d;
But fools, to talking ever prone,
Are sure to make their follies known.”
Mr. Monopolist, can you refrain a little longer while I say a few more words? I have in my possession several recipes for the cure of much talking, that I have gathered in the course of my reading, four of which I will kindly lay before you for consideration.
1. Give yourself to private writing; and thus pour out by the hand the floods which may drown the head. If the humour for much talking was partly drawn forth in this way, that which remained would be sufficient to drop out from the tongue.
2. In company with your superiors in wisdom, gravity, and circumstances, restrain your unreasonable indulgence of the talking faculty. It is thought this might promote modest and becoming silence on all other occasions. “One of the gods is within,” said Telemachus; upon occasion of which his father reproved his talking. “Be thou silent and say little; let thy soul be in thy hand, and under command; for this is the rite of the gods above.”
3. Read and ponder the words of Solomon, “He that hath knowledge spareth his words; and a man of understanding is of excellent spirit. Even a fool when he holdeth his peace is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding” (Prov. xvii. 27, 28). Also the words of the Son of Sirach, “Be swift to hear, and if thou hast understanding, answer thy neighbour; if not, lay thy hand upon thy mouth. A wise man will hold his tongue till he see opportunity; but a babbler and a fool will regard no time. He that useth many words shall be abhorred; and he that taketh to himself authority therein shall be hated” (Ecclesiasticus v. 11-13). “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin” (Prov. x. 19).
4. Attend more to business and action. It is thought that a diligent use of the muscles in physical labour may detract from the disposition, time, and power of excessive speech. Paul gives a similar suggestion, “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you” (1 Thes. iv. 11).
With these few words of advice I now leave you, my friend Monopolist, hoping they may have their due effect upon your talking faculty, and that when I meet you again in company I shall find you a “new edition, much amended and abridged:” “the half better than the whole.”
II.
THE FALSE HUMOURIST
“There are more faults in the humour than in the mind.”
Among the various kinds of talk there is, perhaps, none in which talkers are more liable to fail than in humour. It is that in which most persons like to excel, but which comparatively few attain. It is not the man whose imagination teems with monsters, whose head is filled with extravagant conceptions, that furnishes innocent pleasure by humour. And yet there are those who claim to be humourists, whose humour consists only in wild irregular fancies and distortions of thought. They speak nonsense, and think they are speaking humour. When they have put together a round of absurd, inconsistent ideas, and produce them, they cannot do it without laughing. I have sometimes met with a portion of this class that have endeavoured to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humourists by such monstrous conceits as almost qualified them for Bedlam, rather than refined and intelligent society. They did not consider that humour should always lie under the check of reason; and requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more it indulges in unrestrained freedoms. There is a kind of nature in this sort of conversation, as well as in other; and a certain regularity of thought which must discover the speaker to be a man of sense, at the same time he appears a man given up to caprice. For my part, when I hear the delirious mirth of an unskilful talker, I cannot be so barbarous as to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity the man than laugh at anything he speaks.
“It is indeed much easier,” says Addison, “to describe what is not humour than what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it, I would deliver them after Plato’s manner, in a kind of allegory – and by supposing humour to be a person, deduce to him all his qualifications, according to the following genealogy. Truth was the founder of the family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had issue, Humour. Humour, therefore, being the youngest of this illustrious family, and descendant from parents of such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his temper: sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour, and fantastic in his dress; inasmuch that at different times he appears as serious as a judge, and as jocular as a merry-andrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his constitution, whatever mood he is in, he never fails to make his company laugh.”
In carrying on the allegory farther, he says of the false humourists, “But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world: to the end that well-meaning persons may not be imposed upon by cheats, I would desire my readers, when they meet with this pretender, to look into his parentage and examine him strictly, whether or no he be remotely allied to truth, and lineally descended from good sense; if not, they may conclude him a counterfeit. They may likewise distinguish him by a loud and excessive laughter, in which he seldom gets his company to join with him. For as true Humour generally looks serious, while everybody laughs about him; false Humour is always laughing, while everybody about him looks serious. I shall only add, if he has not in him a mixture