my cause always deserved. I
continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining
only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never
using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the
words _certainly_, _undoubtedly_, or any others that give the air of
positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a
thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or _I should think it so or
so_, for such and such reasons; or _I imagine it to be so_; or _it is
so, if I am not mistaken_. This habit, I believe, has been of great
advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinion, and
persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged
in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to _inform_ or
to be _informed_, to _please_ or to _persuade_, I wish well-meaning,
sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive,
assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create
opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech
was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure.
For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing
your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid
attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of
others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fixed in
your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love
disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of
your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend
yourself in _pleasing_ your hearers, or to persuade those whose
concurrence you desire. Pope says, judiciously:

"Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot";

farther recommending to us

"To speak, tho' sure, with seeming diffidence."

And he might have coupled with this line that which he has coupled with
another, I think, less properly:

"For want of modesty is want of sense."

If you ask, Why less properly? I must repeat the lines:

"Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of modesty is want of sense."

Now, is not _want of sense_ (where a man is so unfortunate as to want
it) some apology for his _want of modesty_? and would not the lines
stand more justly thus?

"Immodest words admit _but_ this defense,