Maxims and Hints on Angling, Chess, Shooting, and Other Matters Part 10

Do not think yourself an accomplished traveller merely because you have visited places where you _might_ have acquired much information. Many a man has pa.s.sed some time in a foreign town without learning more about the beauties of its cathedral or the manners and customs of its inhabitants than was previously known to others through the instructive medium of a book and pair of spectacles at home; and therefore although you may have really been at Rome, and may have actually seen with your own eyes both the Apollo Belvidere and Raphael's Transfiguration, you must not, on that account only, consider yourself qualified to take a leading part in every conversation on subjects connected with the fine arts.

x.x.xVIII.

Many persons who are possessed of much information have a tedious and unconnected way of imparting it. Such men are like dictionaries, very instructive if opened in the right place, but rather fatiguing to read throughout.

x.x.xIX.

The foundation of good breeding is the absence of selfishness. By acting always on this principle--by showing forbearance and moderation in argument when you feel sure that you are right, and a becoming diffidence when you are in doubt, you will avoid many of the errors which other men are apt to fall into.

XL.

Artists, medical men, and engineers are much to be feared by those persons who are apt to talk a little sometimes on matters which they do not very well understand. If, reader, you are, like me, subject to this infirmity, mind what you are about when any professional men are present.

R. P.

_Whitehall, February, 1842._

London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS, Stamford Street

FOOTNOTES:

[G] Acting on this principle, I was once supposed to have killed a brace less than nothing, viz., I went out partridge shooting with two other persons. At the end of the day one of these said that he had killed twelve brace, and the other claimed eleven brace. When the birds were afterwards counted, the number of them was forty-four. I therefore conclude that the brace which was wanting must have been considered as my share of the day's sport.

[H]

"Whose iron scourge and torturing hour The bad _extract, and clean_ the best."

[I]

"Thus fell two heroes, one the pride of Thrace, And one the leader of the Epeian race; Death's sable shade at once o'ercast their eyes: _In dish_, the vanquish'd and the victor lies."

_Pope says_, "In dust."

[J] _e. g._ Vide quotation, p. 56.