Conversation

In "Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Professional Skill", the eighth discourse of the first portion of The Idea of a University, Newman quotes at some length from John Davison, who argued against The Edinburgh Review's advocacy of strictly useful education. Among the passages,

In short, a man is to be usurped by his profession. He is to be clothed in its garb from head to foot. His virtues, his science, and his ideas are all to be put into a gown or uniform, and the whole man to be shaped, pressed, and stiffened, in the exact mould of his technical character.

and

Now of all the those who furnish their share to rational conversation, a mere adept in his own art is universally admitted to be the worst. The sterility and uninstructiveness of such a person's social hours are quite proverbial

reminded me of a passage in The Book of the Courtier, First Book, section 17, which recounts

what in polite society a worthy lady said to a certain man (whom I do not now wish to name) whom she sought to honor by inviting him to dance, and who not only declined this but would not listen to music or take part in any other entertainments offered him, but kept saying that such trifles were not his business. And when finally the lady said to him, 'What then is your business?' he answered with a scowl: 'Fighting.' Whereupon the lady replied at once, 'I should think it a good thing, now that you are not away at war or engaged at fighting, for you to have yourself greased all over and stowed away in a closet along with all your battle harness, so that you won't grow any rustier than you already are': and so, amid much laughter from those present, she ridiculed him in his stupid presumption.