“The most successful talker is the man that has most to say that is sensible and entertaining on the greatest number of subjects. A specialist can never make a good conversationist; his mind runs always in one groove.
“Swift comments upon two faults in conversation that appear very different, yet spring from the same root and are equally blamable; the first, an impatience to interrupt others; the second, a great uneasiness when we are ourselves interrupted. The chief objects of all conversation, whether conversation proper or small talk, are to entertain and improve our companions, and in our own persons to be improved and entertained. If we steadily aim at these objects, we shall certainly escape the two faults indicated by the dean. If any man speak in company, we may suppose he does it for his hearers’ sake, and not for his own; so that common discretion will teach him not to force their attention if they are unwilling to lend it, nor, on the other hand, to interrupt him who is in possession, because that is the grossest manner to indicate his conviction of his own superiority.
“There are some people,” says Swift, “whose good manners will not suffer them to interrupt you; but, what is almost as bad, they will discover abundance of impatience, and be upon the watch until you have done, because they have started something in their own thoughts that they long to be delivered of. Meantime, they are so far from regarding what passes that their imaginations are wholly turned upon what they have in reserve, for fear it should slip out of their memory; and thus they confine their invention, which might otherwise range over a hundred things fully as good and that might be much more naturally introduced.
“I think that wit must be introduced into conversation with great reserve. Such a caution seems, however, little called for, considering the limited number of persons to whom it applies; but there is a cheap form of wit that most ill-natured persons can plagiarize, and in a mixed company its effects are not seldom disagreeable; that is, the repartee, or smart answer, which assuredly does not turn away wrath; the epigrammatic impertinence that young speakers suppose to be wit. ‘It now passes for raillery,’ says Swift, ‘to run a man down in discourse, to put him out of countenance and make him ridiculous; sometimes to expose the defects of his person or understanding; on all which occasions he is obliged not to be angry, to avoid the imputation of not being able to take a jest. It is admirable to observe one who is dexterous at this art singling out a weak adversary, getting the laugh on his side, and then carrying all before him. The French, whence we borrow the word ‘raillery,’ have a quite different idea of the thing, and so had we in the politer ages of our fathers. Raillery was to say something that at first appeared a reproach or reflection, but by some turn of wit, unexpected and surprising, ended always in a compliment, and to the advantage of the person it was addressed to. And, surely, one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing that any of the company can reasonably wish we had left unsaid; nor can there well be anything more contrary to the ends for which people meet together than to part dissatisfied with one another or with themselves.