refuse you the properest and most reasonable ones. It is a common but a most mistaken rule at court, to ask for everything, in order to get something: you do get something by it, it is true; but that something is refusals and ridicule.
There is a court jargon, a chit-chat, a small talk, which turns singly upon trifles; and which, in a great many words, says little or nothing. It stands fools instead of what they cannot say, and men of sense instead of what they should not say. It is the proper language of levees, drawing-rooms, and ante-chambers; it is necessary to know it.
Whatever a man is at court, he must be genteel and well-bred; that cloak covers as many follies, as that of charity does sins. I knew a man of great quality, and in a great station at court, considered and respected, whose highest character was, that he was humbly proud, and genteelly dull.
It is hard to say which is the greatest fool; he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.
At court, people embrace without acquaintance, serve one another without friendship, and injure one another without hatred. Interest, not sentiment, is the growth of that soil.
A difference of opinion, though in the merest
