I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.
Horace Walpole, John Wright, George Agar-Ellis Dover (1st baron) (1840). “The letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford: including numerous letters now first published from the original manuscripts”, p.198