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It is with justice, therefore, that in an accomplished character, Horace unites just sentiments with the power
of expressing them; and he that has once accumulated learning is next to consider how he shall most widely
diffuse and most agreeably impart it.
A ready man is made by conversation. He that buries himself among his manuscripts besprent, as Pope
expresses it, with learned dust, and wears out his days and nights in perpetual research and solitary
meditation, is too apt to lose in his elocution what he
adds to his wisdom, and when he comes into the world, to appear overloaded with his own notions, like a
man armed with weapons which he cannot wield. He has no facility of inculcating his speculations, of
adapting himself to the various degrees of intellect which the accidents of conversation will present; but will
talk to most unintelligibly, and to all unpleasantly.
I was once present at the lectures of a profound philosopher, a man really skilled in the science which he
professed, who having occasion to explain the terms opacum and pellucidum, told us, after some hesitation,
that opacum was, as one might say opaque, and that pellucidum signified pellucid. Such was the dexterity
with which this learned reader facilitated to his auditors the intricacies of science; and so true is it that a man
may know what he cannot teach.
Boerhaave complains that the writers who have treated of chemistry before him are useless to the greater
part of students; because they presuppose their readers to have such degrees of skill as are not often to be
found. Into the same error are all men apt to fall who have familiarized any subject to themselves in solitude:
they discourse as if they thought every other man had been employed in the same inquiries; and expect that
short hints and obscure allusions will produce in others the same train of ideas which they excite in
themselves.
Nor is this the only inconvenience which the man of study suffers from a recluse life. When he meets with
an opinion that pleases him, he catches it up with eagerness; looks only after such arguments as tend to his
confirmation; or spares himself the trouble of discussion, and adopts it with very little proof; indulges it long
without suspicion, and in time unites it to the general body of his knowledge, and treasures it up among
incontestible truths: but when he comes into the world among men who, arguing upon dissimilar principles,
have been led to different conclusions, and being placed in various situations view the same object on many
sides, he finds his darling position attacked, and himself in no condition to defend it: having thought always
in one train, he is in the state of a man who having fenced with the same master, is perplexed and amazed by
a new posture of his antagonist; he is entangled in unexpected difficulties, he is harassed by sudden
objections, he is unprovided with solutions or replies; his surprise impedes his natural powers of reasoning,
his thoughts are scattered and confounded, and he gratifies the pride of airy petulance with an easy victory.
It is difficult to imagine with what obstinacy truths which one mind perceives almost by intuition will be
rejected by another; and how many artifices must be practised to procure admission for the most evident
propositions into understandings frighted by their novelty, or hardened against them by accidental prejudice;
it can scarcely be conceived how frequently in these extemporaneous controversies the dull will be subtle,
and the acute absurd; how often stupidity will elude the force of argument, by involving itself in its own
gloom; and mistaken ingenuity will weave artful fallacies, which reason can scarcely find means to
disentangle.
In these encounters the learning of the recluse usually fails him: nothing but long habit and frequent
experiments can confer the power of changing a position into various forms, presenting it in different points
of view, connecting it with known and granted truths, fortifying it with intelligible arguments, and
illustrating it by apt similitudes; and he, therefore, that has collected his knowledge in solitude, must learn its
application by mixing with mankind.
But while the various opportunities of conversation invite us to try every mode of argument, and every art of
recommending our sentiments, we are frequently betrayed to the use of such as are not in themselves strictly
defensible: a man heated in talk, and eager of victory, takes advantage of the mistakes or ignorance of his
