Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford | Page 5

wrote his Dictionary, he had not been
debased by luxurious enjoyments; the rich and powerful had not
caressed him into a slave; his writings then bore the stamp of truth and
independence: but, having been debased by luxury, he who had, while
content with plain fare, been the strenuous advocate of the rights of the
people, became a strenuous advocate for _taxation without
representation_; and, in a work under the title of 'Taxation no Tyranny,'
defended, and greatly assisted to produce, that unjust and bloody war

which finally severed from England that great country the United states
of America, now the most powerful and dangerous rival that this
kingdom ever had. The statue of Dr. JOHNSON was the first that was
put into St. PAUL'S CHURCH! A signal warning to us not to look
upon monuments in honour of the dead as a proof of their virtues; for
here we see St. PAUL'S CHURCH holding up to the veneration of
posterity a man whose own writings, together with the records of the
pension list, prove him to have been 'a slave of state.'
19. Endless are the instances of men of bright parts and high spirit
having been, by degrees, rendered powerless and despicable, by their
imaginary wants. Seldom has there been a man with a fairer prospect of
accomplishing great things and of acquiring lasting renown, than
CHARLES FOX: he had great talents of the most popular sort; the
times were singularly favourable to an exertion of them with success; a
large part of the nation admired him and were his partisans; he had, as
to the great question between him and his rival (PITT), reason and
justice clearly on his side: but he had against him his squandering and
luxurious habits: these made him dependent on the rich part of his
partisans; made his wisdom subservient to opulent folly or selfishness;
deprived his country of all the benefit that it might have derived from
his talents; and, finally, sent him to the grave without a single sigh from
a people, a great part of whom would, in his earlier years, have wept at
his death as at a national calamity.
20. Extravagance in dress, in the haunting of _play-houses_, in horses,
in everything else, is to be avoided, and, in youths and young men,
extravagance in dress particularly. This sort of extravagance, this waste
of money on the decoration of the body, arises solely from vanity, and
from vanity of the most contemptible sort. It arises from the notion, that
all the people in the street, for instance, will be looking at you as soon
as you walk out; and that they will, in a greater or less degree, think the
better of you on account of your fine dress. Never was notion more
false. All the sensible people that happen to see you, will think nothing
at all about you: those who are filled with the same vain notion as you
are, will perceive your attempt to impose on them, and will despise you
accordingly: rich people will wholly disregard you, and you will be
envied and hated by those who have the same vanity that you have
without the means of gratifying it. Dress should be suited to your rank

and station; a surgeon or physician should not dress like a carpenter!
but there is no reason why a tradesman, a merchant's clerk, or clerk of
any kind, or why a shopkeeper or manufacturer, or even a merchant; no
reason at all why any of these should dress in an expensive manner. It is
a great mistake to suppose, that they derive any advantage from
exterior decoration. Men are estimated by other men according to their
capacity and willingness to be in some way or other _useful_; and
though, with the foolish and vain part of women, fine clothes frequently
do something, yet the greater part of the sex are much too penetrating
to draw their conclusions solely from the outside show of a man: they
look deeper, and find other criterions whereby to judge. And, after all,
if the fine clothes obtain you a wife, will they bring you, in that wife,
_frugality, good sense_, and that sort of attachment that is likely to be
lasting? Natural beauty of person is quite another thing: this always has,
it always will and must have, some weight even with men, and great
weight with women. But this does not want to be set off by expensive
clothes. Female eyes are, in such cases, very sharp: they can discover
beauty though half hidden by beard and even by dirt and surrounded by
rags: and, take this as a secret worth half a fortune to you, that women,
however personally vain they may be themselves, despise personal
vanity in men.
21.