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A COMPLETE

COLLECTION

Of GENTEEL and INGENIOUS

CONVERSATION,

According to the most

Polite MODE and METHOD

NOW USED

At COURT, and in the BEST COMPANIES of ENGLAND.

IN THREE DIALOGUES.

By SIMON WAGSTAFF, Esq.

AN

INTRODUCTION[n].

AS my life hath been chiefly spent in confulting the honour and welfare of my country

for more than forty years paft, not without anfwerable fuccefs, if the world and my friends have not flattered me; fo there is no point wherein I have fo much laboured, as that of improving and polifhing all parts of converfation between perfons of quality, whether they meet by accident or invitation, at meals, tea, or visits, mornings, noons, or evenings.

I have paffed, perhaps, more time than any other man of my age and country in vifits and affemblies, where the polite perfons of both fexes diftinguish themselves; and could not,

[n] This treatise appears to have been written with the fame view, as the tritical effay on the faculties of the mind, but upon a more general plan : the ridicule, which is there confined to literary compofition, is here extended to conversation, but its object is the fame in both; the repetition of quaint phrafes picked up by rote either from the living or the dead, and applied upon every occafion to conceal ignorance or ftupidity, or to prevent the labour of thoughts to produce native sentiment, and combine fuch words as will precifely exprefs it.

F3

without

without much grief, obferve how frequently both gentlemen and ladies are at a lofs for queftions, anfwers, replies, and rejoinders. However, my concern was much abated, when I found that thefe defects were not occafioned by any want of materials, but becaufe thofe materials were not in every hand: for inftance, one lady can give an answer better than afk a queftion: one gentleman is happy at a reply; another excels in a rejoinder: one can revive a languishing converfation by a fudden furprizing sentence; another is more dextrous in feconding; a third can fill the gap with laughing, or commending what has been faid: thus fresh hints may be started, and the ball of the discourse kept up.

But, alas this is too feldom the cafe, even in the most select companies. How often do we fee at court, at publick vifiting-days, at great men's levees, and other places of general meeting, that the converfation falls and drops to nothing, like a fire without fupply of fuel. This is what we all ought to lament; and against this dangerous evil I take upon me to affirm, that I have, in the following papers, provided an infallible remedy.

It was in the year 1695, and the fixth of his late majefty King WILLIAM the Third, of ever glorious and immortal memory, who refcued three kingdoms from popery and flavery, when, being about the age of fix-andthirty, my judgment mature, of good reputation in the world, and well acquainted with

the