is to take all possible care to throw off the love of it upon
occasions that are not in themselves laudable, but as it appears we hope
for no praise from them. Of this nature are all graces in men's persons,
dress, and bodily deportment, which will naturally be winning and
attractive if we think not of them, but lose their force in proportion
to our endeavour to make them such.

"When our consciousness turns upon the main design of life, and our
thoughts are employed upon the chief purpose either in business or
pleasure, we shall never betray an affectation, for we cannot be guilty
of it; but when we give the passion for praise an unbridled liberty, our
pleasure in little perfections robs us of what is due to us for great
virtues and worthy qualities. How many excellent speeches and honest
actions are lost for want of being indifferent when we ought! Men are
oppressed with regard to their way of speaking and acting, instead of
having their thoughts bent upon what they should do or say; and by that
means bury a capacity for great things. This, perhaps, cannot be called
affectation; but it has some tincture of it, at least, so far as that
their fear of erring in a thing of no consequence argues they would be
too much pleased in performing it.

"It is only from a thorough disregard to himself in such particulars
that a man can act with a laudable sufficiency; his heart is fixed upon
one point in view, and he commits no errors, because he thinks nothing
an error but what deviates from that intention.

"The wild havoc affectation makes in that part of the world which should
be most polite is visible wherever we turn our eyes: it pushes men not
only into impertinencies in conversation, but also in their premeditated
speeches. At the bar it torments the bench, whose business it is to cut
off all superfluities in what is spoken before it by the practitioner,
as well as several little pieces of injustice which arise from the law
itself. I have seen it make a man run from the purpose before a judge,
who was, when at the bar himself, so close and logical a pleader, that
with all the pomp of eloquence in his power, he never spoke a word too
much.

"It might be borne even here, but it often ascends the pulpit itself,
and the declaimer in that sacred place is frequently so impertinently
witty, speaks of the last day itself with so many quaint phrases, that
there is no man who understands raillery but must resolve to sin no
more.