FASHIONABLE IGNORANCE. (Globe.)

Waikato Times, Volume III, Issue 127, 27 February 1873, Page 2

FASHIONABLE IGNORANCE. (Globe.)

Fashionable ignorance, like logic, is partly a science awl partly an art. It iB the science of aecummulating or neglecting a particular body of facts It is the art of using a judicious reticence in dealing with these facts. It is difficult to describe it, for it v.inea with the age aud Wiih every country ; it is impossible to define it, for *fr AS a bundle of anomalies — Protean, endless, and lnmnmsiabii^ It must not, however, be confounded with ignorance uM the abstract. It is one thing to bo generally i ? mormt ; 1^ is quite another to be fashionably ignorant. The first is a disgrace ; the second an accomplishment A thoroughly ignorant man is, as we all know, a decidedly objectionable character ; a fashionably ignorant man h a fascinating and delightful companion. He is not only a happy corrective to that terrible omniscience common just now, but a delicate stimulant to the other extreme of gentle dulness and down 1 ight inanity. He will never say anything that shocks or surprises. The thousand httlt: secrets of society of which everybody is aware, and no on« I cares to talk about, ate perfectly safe with him. You will | hear nothing disagreeable from him. He knows as it were i the skeleton in every one's clipboard — has had a good look lat it— has locked it up and put the key in his pocket, ami I walking off lo3t his memory on the way. He knows for I instance all about that unfortunate affur in .jonos'a family, but he can make Jones bsheve that he is tiic only man m the world who is ignorant of it. He has learned by heart the theories society loves to discuss, he knows exactly how mucl to say about them and at what point he is eipected to break down, and at that point down he breaks, to the surprise, perhaps, of the uninitiated, and to the infinite satisfaction of everybody else. He is difficult to understand, for if you are ignorant of wh*t society has presci ibed since he had the honour of entering it. you might think he had completely lost his memory. He left you an accomplished classic and devoted fcdmiror of the ; he now " really knows nothing about them," talks of them as " old fogies," and informs yon that " they ase all very well in their way." You remember the time when he had a taste for botany and entomology, buty but he tella you with an incredulous smile that you mua^T be mistaken. He was wont to quote extensively from old poetry, aud had a happy knack of classical illustration t but will now stare in the rudest way at a friend, who. repeats a passage from one of them, and marvels ' ' how he can remember it : " while to a youth who pointed a very good joke the other day with a p&t allusion to Horace, he said, with a Very blank expression, he "'couldn't iee the point of it ;" andinvaiiably replies to a quotation in Greek or Latin which an unguarded acquaintance knowing him to be a scholar, may sometimes make, with, " 1 cannot construe it." This kind of ignorance is commonest among university men, and seems to be daily gaining ground lfc may be employed with great effuct in drawing-rooms and in the presence of ladies, but it is not so effective as the ignorance of accurac}', or the art of throwing the definite into the indefinite form. This consists in forgetting names, and in attributing to one the merits of another. If, for ir&tance, you are telling an anecdote, or repeating a repartee, always attribute it either to the author who happensto be popular at the time, or to some friend of your own. Soctity cares nothing for fie post. If you are cjuotmg r it is more elegant to say, "Somebody very prettily puts it," than to say who- the somebody may be. Society hates names, especially of people who are alive, or who have long been dead, but it is very gratilied with a graceful allusion to those who have receutly quitted it. " Poor Jones used to say." or "I Amomber poor Jones saying just before he died," are most effective ways of prefacing any observations yon may wish to make. To be accurate is to be insufferably dull. We know what Lord Bacon said "doth ever add pleasure" — and what was true in his time is true in our own. A mvn once ruined himself for a vhole evening by knowing the exact position of a town in Siberia He had certainly prepared the way for his downfall by saying somcting about ancient Carthage, but it was the Siberia that finished him. It never does to allude definitely to the classics, or any language. " When I was a boy, they used to tell us at Eaton " — or, "I learned at school " — may be an elegant pei iphrasis, but it is safest to avoid them altogeter. Horace, liowever, you can mention, if you cm manage to do it vaguely, and an allusion to Vii ifil has been excused, but it was dangerous ground, I and the speaker fortunately recovered himself by forgetting the name of some foreign painter. The most impoiUnt, perhaps, of all the varieties off fashionable ignorance is topographical ignortmce, which is a science in itself, and should be carefully cultivated. It is most telliug. A man has been known to make himself in attempting to understand the situation of the lodging of an aristocratic but ignorant friend, who had just come to town for the first time ; and the completed extinguisher a man ever suffered was managed through th& medium of a topographic.il allusion. But the subject is endless, and he who has thoroughly mastered it may be said to have attained the one necessary accomplishment for making a figure in sociatyr- and to have acquired a, mysterious virtue hmted at by Horace, and described as being as useful to the rich as to tho poor, to the old as to the young, when attained, and as injurious to the one as to the other when neglected.