The Tatlers, whose pliable pipes are admirably adapted to the "soft parts of conversation," and sweetly "prattling out of fashion," make very pretty music for a beautiful face, and a female: tongue: but from a rough manly voice, and coarse features, mere nonsense is as harsh and dissonant as a jig from an hurdy-gurdy. The swearers I have spoken of in a former paper; but the halfswearers, who split, and mince, and fritter their oaths into god's but, ad's-fish, and demme; the Gothic humbuggers, and those who "nick-name God's creatures," and call a man a cabbage, a crab, a queer cub, an odd fish, and an unaccountable muskin, should never come into company without an interpreter. But I will not tire my reader's patience by pointing out all the pests of conversation; nor dwell particularly on the sensibles, who pronounce dogmatically on the most trivial points, and speak in sentences; the wonderers, who are always wondering what o'clock it is, or wondering whether it will rain or no, or wondering when the moon changes; the phraseologists who explain a thing by all that, or enter into particulars with this, that, and t'other; and lastly, the silent men, who seem afraid of opening their mouths, least they should catch cold, and literally observe the precept of the Gospel, by letting their conversation be only yea yea, and nay nay. The rational intercourse kept up by conversation, is one of our principal distinctions from brutes. We should therefore endea vour vour to turn this peculiar talent to our advantage, and consider the organs of speech as the instruments of understanding. We should be very careful not to use them as the weapons of vice, or tools of folly, and do our utmost to unlearn any trivial or ridiculous habits, which tend to lessen the value of such an inestimable prerogative. It is, indeed, imagined by some philosophers, that even birds and beasts (though without the power of articulation) perfectly understand one another by the sounds they utter; and that dogs and cats, &c. have each a particular language to themselves, like different nations. Thus it Thus it may be supposed that the nightingales of Italy have as fine an ear for their own native wood-notes, as any signor or signora for an Italian air; that the boars of Westphalia gruntle as expressively through the nose, as the inhabitants in HighGerman; and that the frogs in the dykes of Holland croak as intelligibly as the natives jabber their Low-Dutch. However this may be, we may consider those whose tongues hardly seem to be under the influence of reason, and do not keep up the proper conversation of human creatures, as imitating the language of different animals: Thus, for instance, the affinity between chatterers and monkeys, and praters and parrots, is too obvious not to occur at once; Grunters and growlers may be justly compared to hogs: snarlers are curs; and the spitfire passionate are a sort of wild cats that will not bear stroaking, but will pur when they are pleased. Complainers are screech owls; and story tellers, always repeating the same dull note, note, are cuckows. Poets, that prick up their ears at their own hideous braying, are no better than asses: Critics in general are venomous serpents, that delight in hissing; and some of them who have got by heart a few technical terms, without knowing their meaning, are no other than magpies. I myself, who have crowed to the whole town for near three years past, may perhaps put my readers in mind of a dunghill cock: but as I must acquaint them, that they will hear the last of me on this day fortnight, I hope they will then consider me as a swan, who is supposed to sing sweetly in his dying moments. MOTTO |