On the other hand, learning has been as great a loser by being
shut up in colleges and cells, and secluded from the world and
good company. By that means, every thing of what we call
Belles Lettres became totally barbarous, being cultivated by
men without any taste of life or manners, and without that
liberty and facility of thought and expression, which can only
be acquired by conversation. Even philosophy went to wrack by
this moaping recluse method of study, and became as chimerical
in her conclusions as she was unintelligible in her stile and
manner of delivery. And indeed, what could be expected from
men who never consulted experience in any of their reasonings,
or who never searched for that experience, where alone it is
to be found, in common life and conversation?
'Tis with great pleasure I observe, that men of letters, in
this age, have lost, in a great measure, that shyness and
bashfulness of temper, which kept them at a distance from
mankind; and, at the same time, that men of the world are
proud of borrowing from books their most agreeable topics of
conversation.
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