perusal; I am not sure that I have not mentioned them before, but that is no matter, if you have not got them. ‘Memoires pour servir a l’Histoire du 17ieme Siecle’, is a most useful book for you to recur to for all the facts and chronology of that country: it is in four volumes octavo, and very correct and exact. If I do not mistake, I have formerly recommended to you, ‘Les Memoires du Cardinal de Retz’; however, if you have not yet read them, pray do, and with the attention which they deserve. You will there find the best account of a very interesting period of the minority of Lewis XIV. The characters are drawn short, but in a strong and masterly manner; and the political reflections are the only just and practical ones that I ever saw in print: they are well worth your transcribing. ‘Le Commerce des Anciens, par Monsieur Huet. Eveque d’Avranche’, in one little volume octavo, is worth your perusal, as commerce is a very considerable part of political knowledge. I need not, I am sure, suggest to you, when you read the course of commerce, either of the ancients or of the moderns, to follow it upon your map; for there is no other way of remembering geography correctly, but by looking perpetually in the map for the places one reads of, even though one knows before, pretty near, where they are.
Adieu! As all the accounts which I receive of you grow better and better, so I grow more and more affectionately, Yours.
LETTER XLIX
LONDON, September 5, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I have received yours, with the inclosed German letter to Mr. Gravenkop, which he assures me is extremely well written, considering the little time that you have applied yourself to that language. As you have now got over the most difficult part, pray go on diligently, and make yourself absolutely master of the rest. Whoever does not entirely possess a language, will never appear to advantage, or even equal to himself, either in speaking or writing it. His ideas are fettered, and seem imperfect or confused, if he is not master of all the words and phrases necessary to express them. I therefore desire, that you will not fail writing a German letter once every fortnight to Mr. Gravenkop; which will make the writing of that language familiar to you; and moreover, when you shall have left Germany and be arrived at Turin, I shall require you to write even to me in German; that you may not forget with ease what you have with difficulty learned. I likewise desire, that while you are in Germany, you will take all opportunities of conversing in German, which is the only way of knowing that, or any other language, accurately. You will also desire your German master to teach you the proper titles and superscriptions to be used to people of all ranks; which is a point so material, in Germany, that I have known many a letter returned unopened, because one title in twenty has been omitted in the direction.
St. Thomas’s day now draws near, when you are to leave Saxony and go to Berlin; and I take it for granted, that if anything is yet wanting to complete your knowledge of the state of that electorate, you will not fail to procure it before you go away. I do not mean, as you will easily believe, the number of churches, parishes, or towns; but I mean the constitution, the revenues, the troops, and the trade of that electorate. A few questions, sensibly asked, of sensible people, will produce you the necessary informations; which I desire you will enter in your little book, Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions will therefore be more necessary. Pleasing in company is the only way of being pleased in it yourself. Sense and knowledge are the first and necessary foundations for pleasing in company; but they will by no means do alone, and they will never be perfectly welcome if they are not accompanied with manners and attentions. You will best acquire these by frequenting the companies of people of fashion; but then you must resolve to acquire them, in those companies, by proper care and observation; for I have known people, who, though they have frequented good company all their lifetime, have done it in so inattentive and unobserving a manner, as to be never the better for it, and to remain as disagreeable, as awkward, and as vulgar, as if they had never seen any person of fashion. When you go into good company (by good company is meant the people of the first fashion of the place) observe carefully their turn, their manners, their address; and conform your own to them. But this is not all neither; go deeper still; observe their characters, and pray, as far as you can, into both their hearts and their heads. Seek for their particular merit, their predominant passion, or their prevailing weakness; and you will then know what to bait your hook with to catch them. Man is a composition of so many, and such various ingredients, that it requires both time and care to analyze him: for though we have all the same ingredients in our general composition, as reason, will, passions, and appetites; yet the different proportions and combinations of them in each individual, produce that infinite variety of characters, which, in some particular or other, distinguishes every individual from another. Reason ought to direct the whole, but seldom does. And he who addresses himself singly to another man’s reason, without endeavoring to engage his heart in his interest also, is no more likely to succeed, than a man who should apply only to a king’s nominal minister, and neglect his favorite. I will recommend to your attentive perusal, now that you are going into the world, two books, which will let you as much into the characters of men, as books can do. I mean, ‘Les Reflections Morales de Monsieur de la Rochefoucault, and Les Caracteres de la Bruyere’: but remember, at the same time, that I only recommend them to you as the best general maps to assist you in your journey, and not as marking out every particular turning and winding that you will meet with. There your own sagacity and observation must come to their aid. La Rochefoucault, is, I know, blamed, but I think without reason, for deriving all our actions from the source of self-love. For my own part, I see a great deal of truth, and no harm at all, in that opinion. It is certain that we seek our own happiness in everything we do; and it is as certain, that we can only find it in doing well, and in conforming all our, actions to the rule of right reason, which is the great law of nature. It is only a mistaken self-love that is a blamable motive, when we take the immediate and indiscriminate gratification of a passion, or appetite, for real happiness. But am I blamable if I do a good action, upon account of the happiness which that honest consciousness will give me? Surely not. On the contrary, that pleasing consciousness is a proof of my virtue. The reflection which is the most censured in Monsieur de la Rochefoucault’s book as a very ill-natured one, is this, ‘On trouve dans le malheur de son meilleur ami, quelque chose qui ne des plait pas’. And why not? Why may I not feel a very tender and real concern for the misfortune of my friend, and yet at the same time feel a pleasing consciousness at having discharged my duty to him, by comforting and assisting him to the utmost of my power in that misfortune? Give me but virtuous actions, and I will not quibble and chicane about the motives. And I will give anybody their choice of these two truths, which amount to the same thing: He who loves himself best is the honestest man; or, The honestest man loves himself best.
The characters of La Bruyere are pictures from the life; most of them finely drawn, and highly colored. Furnish your mind with them first, and when you meet with their likeness, as you will every day, they will strike you the more. You will compare every feature with the original; and both will reciprocally help you to discover the beauties and the blemishes.
As women are a considerable, or, at least a pretty numerous part of company; and as their suffrages go a great way toward establishing a man’s character in the fashionable part of the world (which is of great importance to the fortune and figure he proposes to make in it), it is necessary to please them. I will therefore, upon this subject, let you into certain Arcana that will be very useful for you to know, but which you must, with the utmost care, conceal and never seem to know. Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid reasoning, good sense, I never knew in my life one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together. Some little passion or humor always breaks upon their best resolutions. Their beauty neglected or controverted, their age increased, or their supposed understandings depreciated, instantly kindles their little passions, and overturns any system of consequential conduct, that in their most reasonable moments they might have been capable of forming. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with serious matters; though he often makes them believe that he does both; which is the thing in the world that they are proud of; for they love mightily to be dabbling in business (which by the way they always spoil); and being justly distrustful that men in general look upon them in a trifling light, they almost adore that man who talks more seriously to them, and who seems to consult and trust them; I say, who seems; for weak men really do, but wise ones only seem to do it. No flattery is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the highest, and gratefully accept of the lowest; and you may safely flatter any woman from her understanding down to the exquisite taste of her fan. Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered, upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity, are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome; but not hearing often that she is so, is the more grateful and the more obliged to the few who tell her so; whereas a decided and conscious beauty looks upon every tribute paid to her beauty only as her due; but wants to shine, and to be considered on the side of her understanding; and a woman who is ugly enough to know that she is so, knows that she has nothing left for it but her understanding, which is consequently and probably (in more senses than one) her weak side. But these are secrets which you must keep inviolably, if you would not, like Orpheus, be torn to pieces by the whole sex; on the contrary, a man who thinks of living in the great world, must be gallant, polite, and attentive to please the women. They have, from the weakness of men, more or less influence in all courts; they absolutely stamp every man’s character in the beau monde, and make it either current, or cry it down, and stop it in payments. It is, therefore; absolutely necessary to manage, please, and flatter them and never to discover the least marks of contempt, which is what they never forgive; but in this they are not singular, for it is the same with men; who will much sooner forgive an injustice than an insult. Every man is not ambitious, or courteous, or passionate; but every man has pride enough in his composition to feel and resent the least slight and contempt. Remember, therefore, most carefully to conceal your contempt, however just, wherever you would riot make an implacable enemy. Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes; and if you hint to a man that you think him silly, ignorant, or even ill-bred, or awkward, he will hate you more and longer, than if you tell him plainly, that you think him a rogue. Never yield to that temptation, which to most young men is very strong; of exposing other people’s weaknesses and infirmities, for the sake either of diverting the company, or showing your own superiority. You may get the laugh on your side by it for the present; but you will make enemies by it forever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, upon reflection, fear; and consequently hate you; besides that it is ill- natured, and a good heart desires rather to conceal than expose other people’s weaknesses or misfortunes. If you have wit, use it to please, and not to hurt: you may shine, like the sun in the temperate zones, without scorching. Here it is wished for; under the Line it is dreaded.
These are some of the hints which my long experience in the great world enables me to give you; and which, if you attend to them, may prove useful to you in your journey through it. I wish it may be a prosperous one; at least, I am sure that it must be your own fault if it is not.
Make my compliments to Mr. Harte, who, I am very sorry to hear, is not well. I hope by this time he is recovered. Adieu!
LETTER L
LONDON, September 13, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I have more than once recommended to you the “Memoirs” of the Cardinal de Retz, and to attend particularly to the political reflections interspersed in that excellent work. I will now preach a little upon two or three of those texts.
In the disturbances at Paris, Monsieur de Beaufort, who was a very popular, though a very weak man, was the Cardinal’s tool with the populace.
Proud of his popularity, he was always for assembling the people of Paris together, thinking that he made a great figure at the head of them. The Cardinal, who was factious enough, was wise enough at the same time to avoid gathering the people together, except when there was occasion, and when he had something particular for them to do. However, he could not always check Monsieur de Beaufort; who having assembled them once very unnecessarily, and without any determined object, they ran riot, would not be kept within bounds by their leaders, and did their cause a great deal of harm: upon which the Cardinal observes most judiciously, ‘Que Monsieur de Beaufort me savoit pas, que qui assemble le peuple, l’emeut’. It is certain, that great numbers of people met together, animate each other, and will do something, either good or bad, but oftener bad; and the respective individuals, who were separately very quiet, when met together in numbers, grow tumultuous as a body, and ripe for any mischief that may be pointed out to them by the leaders; and, if their leaders have no business for them, they will find some for themselves. The demagogues, or leaders of popular factions, should therefore be very careful not to assemble the people unnecessarily, and without a settled and well-considered object. Besides that, by making those popular assemblies too frequent, they make them likewise too familiar, and consequently less respected by their enemies. Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers: when the numbers are very great, all sense and reason seem to subside, and one sudden frenzy to seize on all, even the coolest of them.
Another very just observation of the Cardinal’s is, That, the things which happen in our own times, and which we see ourselves, do not surprise us near so much as the things which we read of in times past, though not in the least more extraordinary; and adds, that he is persuaded that when Caligula made his horse a Consul, the people of Rome, at that time, were not greatly surprised at it, having necessarily been in some degree prepared for it, by an insensible gradation of extravagances from the same quarter. This is so true that we read every day, with astonishment, things which we see every day without surprise. We wonder at the intrepidity of a Leonidas, a Codrus, and a Curtius; and are not the least surprised to hear of a sea-captain, who has blown up his ship, his crew, and himself, that they might not fall into the hands of the enemies of his country. I cannot help reading of Porsenna and Regulus, with surprise and reverence, and yet I remember that I saw, without either, the execution of Shepherd,–[James Shepherd, a coach- painter’s apprentice, was executed at Tyburn for high treason, March 17, 1718, in the reign of George I.]–a boy of eighteen years old, who intended to shoot the late king, and who would have been pardoned, if he would have expressed the least sorrow for his intended crime; but, on the contrary, he declared that if he was pardoned he would attempt it again; that he thought it a duty which he owed to his country, and that he died with pleasure for having endeavored to perform it. Reason equals Shepherd to Regulus; but prejudice, and the recency of the fact, make Shepherd a common malefactor and Regulus a hero.
Examine carefully, and reconsider all your notions of things; analyze them, and discover their component parts, and see if habit and prejudice are not the principal ones; weigh the matter upon which you are to form your opinion, in the equal and impartial scales of reason. It is not to be conceived how many people, capable of reasoning, if they would, live and die in a thousand errors, from laziness; they will rather adopt the prejudices of others, than give themselves the trouble of forming opinions of their own. They say things, at first, because other people have said them, and then they persist in them, because they have said them themselves.
The last observation that I shall now mention of the Cardinal’s is, “That a secret is more easily kept by a good many people, than one commonly imagines.” By this he means a secret of importance, among people interested in the keeping of it. And it is certain that people of business know the importance of secrecy, and will observe it, where they are concerned in the event. To go and tell any friend, wife, or mistress, any secret with which they have nothing to do, is discovering to them such an unretentive weakness, as must convince them that you will tell it to twenty others, and consequently that they may reveal it without the risk of being discovered. But a secret properly communicated only to those who are to be concerned in the thing in question, will probably be kept by them though they should be a good many. Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones are generally kept. Adieu!
LETTER LI
LONDON, September 20, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I wait with impatience for your accurate history of the ‘Chevaliers Forte Epees’, which you promised me in your last, and which I take to be the forerunner of a larger work that you intend to give the public, containing a general account of all the religious and military orders of Europe. Seriously, you will do well to have a general notion of all those orders, ancient and modern; both as they are frequently the subjects of conversation, and as they are more or less interwoven with the histories of those times. Witness the Teutonic Order, which, as soon as it gained strength, began its unjust depredations in Germany, and acquired such considerable possessions there; and the Order of Malta also, which continues to this day its piracies upon the Infidels. Besides one can go into no company in Germany, without running against Monsieur le Chevalier, or Monsieur le Commandeur de l’ Ordre Teutonique. It is the same in all the other parts of Europe with regard to the Order of Malta, where you never go into company without meeting two or three Chevaliers or Commandeurs, who talk of their ‘Preuves’, their ‘Langues’, their ‘Caravanes’, etc., of all which things I am sure you would not willingly be ignorant. On the other hand, I do not mean that you should have a profound and minute knowledge of these matters, which are of a nature that a general knowledge of them is fully sufficient. I would not recommend you to read Abbe Vertot’s “History of the Order of Malta,” in four quarto volumes; that would be employing a great deal of good time very ill. But I would have you know the foundations, the objects, the INSIGNIA, and the short general history of them all.
As for the ancient religious military orders, which were chiefly founded in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as Malta, the Teutonic, the Knights Templars, etc., the injustice and the wickedness of those establishments cannot, I am sure, have escaped your observation. Their pious object was, to take away by force other people’s property, and to massacre the proprietors themselves if they refused to give up that property, and adopt the opinions of these invaders. What right or pretense had these confederated Christians of Europe to the Holy Land? Let them produce their grant of it in the Bible. Will they say, that the Saracens had possessed themselves of it by force, and that, consequently, they had the same right? Is it lawful then to steal goods because they were stolen before? Surely not. The truth is, that the wickedness of many, and the weakness of more, in those ages of ignorance and superstition, concurred to form those flagitious conspiracies against the lives and properties of unoffending people. The Pope sanctified the villany, and annexed the pardon of sins to the perpetration of it. This gave rise to the Crusaders, and carried such swarms of people from Europe to the conquests of the Holy Land. Peter the Hermit, an active and ambitious priest, by his indefatigable pains, was the immediate author of the first crusade; kings, princes, all professions and characters united, from different motives, in this great undertaking, as every sentiment, except true religion and morality, invited to it. The ambitious hoped for kingdoms; the greedy and the necessitous for plunder; and some were enthusiasts enough to hope for salvation, by the destruction of a considerable number of their fellow creatures, who had done them no injury. I cannot omit, upon this occasion, telling you that the Eastern emperors at Constantinople (who, as Christians, were obliged at least to seem to favor these expeditions), seeing the immense numbers of the ‘Croisez’, and fearing that the Western Empire might have some mind to the Eastern Empire too, if it succeeded against the Infidels, as ‘l’appetit vient en mangeant’; these Eastern emperors, very honestly, poisoned the waters where the ‘Croisez’ were to pass, and so destroyed infinite numbers of them.
The later orders of knighthood, such as the Garter in England; the Elephant in Denmark; the Golden Fleece in Burgundy; the St. Esprit, St. Michel, St. Louis, and St. Lazare, in France etc., are of a very different nature and were either the invitations to, or the rewards of; brave actions in fair war; and are now rather the decorations of the favor of the prince, than the proofs of the merit of the subject. However, they are worth your inquiries to a certain degree, and conversation will give you frequent opportunities for them. Wherever you are, I would advise you to inquire into the respective orders of that country, and to write down a short account of them. For example, while you are in Saxony, get an account of l’Aigle Blanc and of what other orders there may be, either Polish or Saxon; and, when you shall be at Berlin, inform yourself of three orders, l’Aigle Noir, la Generosite et le Vrai Merite, which are the only ones that I know of there. But whenever you meet with straggling ribands and stars, as you will with a thousand in Germany, do not fail to inquire what they are, and to take a minute of them in your memorandum book; for it is a sort of knowledge that costs little to acquire, and yet it is of some use. Young people have frequently an incuriousness about them, arising either from laziness, or a contempt of the object, which deprives them of several such little parts of knowledge, that they afterward wish they had acquired. If you will put conversation to profit, great knowledge may be gained by it; and is it not better (since it is full as easy) to turn it upon useful than upon useless subjects? People always talk best upon what they know most, and it is both pleasing them and improving one’s self, to put them upon that subject. With people of a particular profession, or of a distinguished eminency in any branch of learning, one is not at a loss; but with those, whether men or women, who properly constitute what is called the beau monde, one must not choose deep subjects, nor hope to get any knowledge above that of orders, ranks, families, and court anecdotes; which are therefore the proper (and not altogether useless) subjects of that kind of conversation. Women, especially, are to be talked to as below men and above children. If you talk to them too deep, you only confound them, and lose your own labor; if you talk to them too frivolously, they perceive and resent the contempt. The proper tone for them is, what the French call the ‘Entregent’, and is, in truth, the polite jargon of good company. Thus, if you are a good chemist, you may extract something out of everything.
A propos of the beau monde, I must again and again recommend the Graces to you: There is no doing without them in that world; and, to make a good figure in that world, is a great step toward making one in the world of business, particularly that part of it for which you are destined. An ungraceful manner of speaking, awkward motions, and a disagreeable address, are great clogs to the ablest man of business, as the opposite qualifications are of infinite advantage to him. I am told there is a very good dancing-master at Leipsig. I would have you dance a minuet very well, not so much for the sake of the minuet itself (though that, if danced at all, ought to be danced, well), as that it will give you a habitual genteel carriage and manner of presenting yourself.
Since I am upon little things, I must mention another, which, though little enough in itself, yet as it occurs at, least once in every day, deserves some attention; I mean Carving. Do you use yourself to carve ADROITLY and genteelly, without hacking half an hour across a bone; without bespattering the company with the sauce; and without overturning the glasses into your neighbor’s pockets? These awkwardnesses are extremely disagreeable; and, if often repeated, bring ridicule. They are very easily avoided by a little attention and use.
How trifling soever these things may seem, or really be in themselves, they are no longer so when above half the world thinks them otherwise. And, as I would have you ‘omnibus ornatum–excellere rebus’, I think nothing above or below my pointing out to you, or your excelling in. You have the means of doing it, and time before you to make use of them. Take my word for it, I ask nothing now but what you will, twenty years hence, most heartily wish that you had done. Attention to all these things, for the next two or three years, will save you infinite trouble and endless regrets hereafter. May you, in the whole course of your life, have no reason for any one just regret! Adieu.
Your Dresden china is arrived, and I have sent it to your Mamma.
LETTER LII
LONDON, September 27, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I have received your Latin “Lecture upon War,” which though it is not exactly the same Latin that Caesar, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid spoke, is, however, as good Latin as the erudite Germans speak or write. I have always observed that the most learned people, that is, those who have read the most Latin, write the worst; and that distinguishes the Latin of gentleman scholar from that of a pedant. A gentleman has, probably, read no other Latin than that of the Augustan age; and therefore can write no other, whereas the pedant has read much more bad Latin than good, and consequently writes so too. He looks upon the best classical books, as books for school-boys, and consequently below him; but pores over fragments of obscure authors, treasures up the obsolete words which he meets with there, and uses them upon all occasions to show his reading at the expense of his judgment. Plautus is his favorite author, not for the sake of the wit and the vis comica of his comedies, but upon account of the many obsolete words, and the cant of low characters, which are to be met with nowhere else. He will rather use ‘olli’ than ‘illi’, ‘optume’ than ‘optima’, and any bad word rather than any good one, provided he can but prove, that strictly speaking, it is Latin; that is, that it was written by a Roman. By this rule, I might now write to you in the language of Chaucer or Spenser, and assert that I wrote English, because it was English in their days; but I should be a most affected puppy if I did so, and you would not understand three words of my letter. All these, and such like affected peculiarities, are the characteristics of learned coxcombs and pedants, and are carefully avoided by all men of sense.
I dipped accidentally, the other day, into Pitiscus’s preface to his “Lexicon,” where I found a word that puzzled me, and which I did not remember ever to have met with before. It is the adverb ‘praefiscine’, which means, IN A GOOD HOUR; an expression which, by the superstition of it, appears to be low and vulgar. I looked for it: and at last I found that it is once or twice made use of in Plautus, upon the strength of which this learned pedant thrusts it into his preface. Whenever you write Latin, remember that every word or phrase which you make use of, but cannot find in Caesar, Cicero, Livy, Horace, Virgil; and Ovid, is bad, illiberal Latin, though it may have been written by a Roman.
I must now say something as to the matter of the “Lecture,” in which I confess there is one doctrine laid down that surprises me: It is this, ‘Quum vero hostis sit lenta citave morte omnia dira nobis minitans quocunque bellantibus negotium est; parum sane interfuerit quo modo eum obruere et interficere satagamus, si ferociam exuere cunctetur. Ergo veneno quoque uti fas est’, etc., whereas I cannot conceive that the use of poison can, upon any account, come within the lawful means of self- defense. Force may, without doubt, be justly repelled by force, but not by treachery and fraud; for I do not call the stratagems of war, such as ambuscades, masked batteries, false attacks, etc., frauds or treachery: They are mutually to be expected and guarded against; but poisoned arrows, poisoned waters, or poison administered to your enemy (which can only be done by treachery), I have always heard, read, and thought, to be unlawful and infamous means of defense, be your danger ever so great: But ‘si ferociam exuere cunctetur’; must I rather die than poison this enemy? Yes, certainly, much rather die than do a base or criminal action; nor can I be sure, beforehand, that this enemy may not, in the last moment, ‘ferociam exuere’. But the public lawyers, now, seem to me rather to warp the law, in order to authorize, than to check, those unlawful proceedings of princes and states; which, by being become common, appear less criminal, though custom can never alter the nature of good and ill.
Pray let no quibbles of lawyers, no refinements of casuists, break into the plain notions of right and wrong, which every man’s right reason and plain common sense suggest to him. To do as you would be done by, is the plain, sure, and undisputed rule of morality and justice. Stick to that; and be convinced that whatever breaks into it, in any degree, however speciously it may be turned, and however puzzling it may be to answer it, is, notwithstanding, false in itself, unjust, and criminal. I do not know a crime in the world, which is not by the casuists among the Jesuits (especially the twenty-four collected, I think, by Escobar) allowed, in some, or many cases, not to be criminal. The principles first laid down by them are often specious, the reasonings plausible, but the conclusion always a lie: for it is contrary, to that evident and undeniable rule of justice which I have mentioned above, of not doing to anyone what you would not have him do to you. But, however, these refined pieces of casuistry and sophistry, being very convenient and welcome to people’s passions and appetites, they gladly accept the indulgence, without desiring to detect the fallacy or the reasoning: and indeed many, I might say most people, are not able to do it; which makes the publication of such quibblings and refinements the more pernicious. I am no skillful casuist nor subtle disputant; and yet I would undertake to justify and qualify the profession of a highwayman, step by step, and so plausibly, as to make many ignorant people embrace the profession, as an innocent, if not even a laudable one; and puzzle people of some degree of knowledge, to answer me point by point. I have seen a book, entitled ‘Quidlibet ex Quolibet’, or the art of making anything out of anything; which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits certain plain truths, obvious in gross to every understanding, in order to run after the ingenious refinements of warm imaginations and speculative reasonings. Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, a very worthy, ingenious, and learned man, has written a book, to prove that there is no such thing as matter, and that nothing exists but in idea: that you and I only fancy ourselves eating, drinking, and sleeping; you at Leipsig, and I at London: that we think we have flesh and blood, legs, arms, etc., but that we are only spirit. His arguments are, strictly speaking, unanswerable; but yet I am so far from being convinced by them, that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that MATTER, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible. Common sense (which, in truth, very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it, it will counsel you best. Read and hear, for your amusement, ingenious systems, nice questions subtilly agitated, with all the refinements that warm imaginations suggest; but consider them only as exercitations for the mind, and turn always to settle with common sense.
I stumbled, the other day, at a bookseller’s, upon “Comte Gabalis,” in two very little volumes, which I had formerly read. I read it over again, and with fresh astonishment. Most of the extravagances are taken from the Jewish Rabbins, who broached those wild notions, and delivered them in the unintelligible jargon which the Caballists and Rosicrucians deal in to this day. Their number is, I believe, much lessened, but there are still some; and I myself have known two; who studied and firmly believed in that mystical nonsense. What extravagancy is not man capable of entertaining, when once his shackled reason is led in triumph by fancy and prejudice! The ancient alchemists give very much into this stuff, by which they thought they should discover the philosopher’s stone; and some of the most celebrated empirics employed it in the pursuit of the universal medicine. Paracelsus, a bold empiric and wild Caballist, asserted that he had discovered it, and called it his ‘Alkahest’. Why or wherefore, God knows; only that those madmen call nothing by an intelligible name. You may easily get this book from The Hague: read it, for it will both divert and astonish you, and at the same time teach you ‘nil admirari’; a very necessary lesson.
Your letters, except when upon a given subject, are exceedingly laconic, and neither answer my desires nor the purpose of letters; which should be familiar conversations, between absent friends. As I desire to live with you upon the footing of an intimate friend, and not of a parent, I could wish that your letters gave me more particular accounts of yourself, and of your lesser transactions. When you write to me, suppose yourself conversing freely with me by the fireside. In that case, you would naturally mention the incidents of the day; as where you had been, who you had seen, what you thought of them, etc. Do this in your letters: acquaint me sometimes with your studies, sometimes with your diversions; tell me of any new persons and characters that you meet with in company, and add your own observations upon them: in short, let me see more of you in your letters. How do you go on with Lord Pulteney, and how does he go on at Leipsig? Has he learning, has he parts, has he application? Is he good or ill-natured? In short, What is he? at least, what do you think him? You may tell me without reserve, for I promise you secrecy. You are now of an age that I am desirous to begin a confidential correspondence with you; and as I shall, on my part, write you very freely my opinion upon men and things, which I should often be very unwilling that anybody but you and Mr. Harte should see, so, on your part, if you write me without reserve, you may depend upon my inviolable secrecy. If you have ever looked into the “Letters” of Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, Madame de Grignan, you must have observed the ease, freedom, and friendship of that correspondence; and yet, I hope and I believe, that they did not love one another better than we do. Tell me what books you are now reading, either by way of study or amusement; how you pass your evenings when at home, and where you pass them when abroad. I know that you go sometimes to Madame Valentin’s assembly; What do you do there? Do you play, or sup, or is it only ‘la belle conversation?’ Do you mind your dancing while your dancing-master is with you? As you will be often under the necessity of dancing a minuet, I would have you dance it very well. Remember, that the graceful motion of the arms, the giving your hand, and the putting on and pulling off your hat genteelly, are the material parts of a gentleman’s dancing. But the greatest advantage of dancing well is, that it necessarily teaches you to present yourself, to sit, stand, and walk, genteelly; all of which are of real importance to a man of fashion.
I should wish that you were polished before you go to Berlin; where, as you will be in a great deal of good company, I would have you have the right manners for it. It is a very considerable article to have ‘le ton de la bonne compagnie’, in your destination particularly. The principal business of a foreign minister is, to get into the secrets, and to know all ‘les allures’ of the courts at which he resides; this he can never bring about but by such a pleasing address, such engaging manners, and such an insinuating behavior, as may make him sought for, and in some measure domestic, in the best company and the best families of the place. He will then, indeed, be well informed of all that passes, either by the confidences made him, or by the carelessness of people in his company, who are accustomed to look upon him as one of them, and consequently are not upon their guard before him. For a minister who only goes to the court he resides at, in form, to ask an audience of the prince or the minister upon his last instructions, puts them upon their guard, and will never know anything more than what they have a mind that he should know. Here women may be put to some use. A king’s mistress, or a minister’s wife or mistress, may give great and useful informations; and are very apt to do it, being proud to show that they have been trusted. But then, in this case, the height of that sort of address, which, strikes women, is requisite; I mean that easy politeness, genteel and graceful address, and that ‘exterieur brilliant’ which they cannot withstand. There is a sort of men so like women, that they are to be taken just in the same way; I mean those who are commonly called FINE MEN; who swarm at all courts; who have little reflection, and less knowledge; but, who by their good breeding, and ‘train-tran’ of the world, are admitted into all companies; and, by the imprudence or carelessness of their superiors, pick up secrets worth knowing, which are easily got out of them by proper address. Adieu.
LETTER LIII
BATH, October 12, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I came here three days ago upon account of a disorder in my stomach, which affected my head and gave me vertigo. I already find myself something better; and consequently do not doubt but that the course of these waters will set me quite right. But however and wherever I am, your welfare, your character, your knowledge, and your morals, employ my thoughts more than anything that can happen to me, or that I can fear or hope for myself. I am going off the stage, you are coming upon it; with me what has been, has been, and reflection now would come too late; with you everything is to come, even, in some manner, reflection itself; so that this is the very time when my reflections, the result of experience, may be of use to you, by supplying the want of yours. As soon as you leave Leipsig, you will gradually be going into the great world; where the first impressions that you shall give of yourself will be of great importance to you; but those which you shall receive will be decisive, for they always stick. To keep good company, especially at your first setting out, is the way to receive good impressions. If you ask me what I mean by good company, I will confess to you that it is pretty difficult to define; but I will endeavor to make you understand it as well as I can.
Good company is not what respective sets of company are pleased either to call or think themselves, but it is that company which all the people of the place call, and acknowledge to be, good company, notwithstanding some objections which they may form to some of the individuals who compose it. It consists chiefly (but by no means without exception) of people of considerable birth, rank, and character; for people of neither birth nor rank are frequently, and very justly admitted into it, if distinguished by any peculiar merit, or eminency in any liberal art or science. Nay, so motly a thing is good company, that many people, without birth, rank, or merit, intrude into it by their own forwardness, and others slide into it by the protection of some considerable person; and some even of indifferent characters and morals make part of it. But in the main, the good part preponderates, and people of infamous and blasted characters are never admitted. In this fashionable good company, the best manners and the best language of the place are most unquestionably to be learned; for they establish and give the tone to both, which are therefore called the language and manners of good company: there being no legal tribunal to ascertain either.
A company, consisting wholly of people of the first quality, cannot, for that reason, be called good company, in the common acceptation of the phrase, unless they are, into the bargain, the fashionable and accredited company of the place; for people of the very first quality can be as silly, as ill-bred, and as worthless, as people of the meanest degree. On the other hand, a company consisting entirely of people of very low condition, whatever their merit or parts may be, can never be called good company; and consequently should not be much frequented, though by no means despised.
A company wholly composed of men of learning, though greatly to be valued and respected, is not meant by the words GOOD COMPANY; they cannot have the easy manners and, ‘tournure’ of the world, as they do not live in it. If you can bear your part well in such a company, it is extremely right to be in it sometimes, and you will be but more esteemed in other companies, for having a place in that. But then do not let it engross you; for if you do, you will be only considered as one of the ‘literati’ by profession; which is not the way either, to shine, or rise in the world.
The company of professed wits and pests is extremely inviting to most young men; who if they have wit themselves, are pleased with it, and if they have none, are sillily proud of being one of it: but it should be frequented with moderation and judgment, and you should by no means give yourself up to it. A wit is a very unpopular denomination, as it carries terror along with it; and people in general are as much afraid of a live wit, in company, as a woman is of a gun, which she thinks may go off of itself, and do her a mischief. Their acquaintance is, however, worth seeking, and their company worth frequenting; but not exclusively of others, nor to such a degree as to be considered only as one of that particular set.
But the company, which of all others you should most carefully avoid, is that low company, which, in every sense of the word, is low indeed; low in rank, low in parts, low in manners, and low in merit. You will, perhaps, be surprised that I should think it necessary to warn you against such company, but yet I do not think it wholly, unnecessary, from the many instances which I have seen of men of sense and rank, discredited, verified, and undone, by keeping such company.
Vanity, that source of many of our follies, and of some of our crimes, has sunk many a man into company, in every light infinitely, below himself, for the sake of being the first man in it. There he dictates, is applauded, admired; and, for the sake of being the Coryphceus of that wretched chorus, disgraces and disqualifies himself soon for any better company. Depend upon it, you will sink or rise to the level of the company which you commonly keep: people will judge of you, and not unreasonably, by that. There is good sense in the Spanish saying, “Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.” Make it therefore your business, wherever you are, to get into that company which everybody in the place allows to be the best company next to their own; which is the best definition that I can give you of good company. But here, too, one caution is very necessary, for want of which many young men have been ruined, even in good company.
Good company (as I have before observed) is composed of a great variety of fashionable people, whose characters and morals are very different, though their manners are pretty much the same. When a young man, new in the world, first gets into that company, he very rightly determines to conform to, and imitate it. But then he too often, and fatally, mistakes the objects of his imitation. He has often heard that absurd term of genteel and fashionable vices. He there sees some people who shine, and who in general are admired and esteemed; and observes that these people are whoremasters, drunkards, or gamesters, upon which he adopts their vices, mistaking their defects for their perfections, and thinking that they owe their fashions and their luster to those genteel vices. Whereas it is exactly the reverse; for these people have acquired their reputation by their parts, their learning, their good-breeding, and other real accomplishments: and are only blemished and lowered, in the opinions of all reasonable people, and of their own, in time, by these genteel and fashionable vices. A whoremaster, in a flux, or without a nose, is a very genteel person, indeed, and well worthy of imitation. A drunkard, vomiting up at night the wine of the day, and stupefied by the headache all the next, is, doubtless, a fine model to copy from. And a gamester, tearing his hair, and blaspheming, for having lost more than he had in the world, is surely a most amiable character. No; these are alloys, and great ones too, which can never adorn any character, but will always debase the best. To prove this, suppose any man, without parts and some other good qualities, to be merely a whoremaster, a drunkard, or a gamester; how will he be looked upon by all sorts of people? Why, as a most contemptible and vicious animal. Therefore it is plain, that in these mixed characters, the good part only makes people forgive, but not approve, the bad.
I will hope and believe that you will have no vices; but if, unfortunately, you should have any, at least I beg of you to be content with your own, and to adopt no other body’s.
The adoption of vice has, I am convinced, ruined ten times more young men than natural inclinations.
As I make no difficulty of confessing my past errors, where I think the confession may be of use to you, I will own that when I first went to the university, I drank and smoked, notwithstanding the aversion I had to wine and tobacco, only because I thought it genteel, and that it made me look like a man. When I went abroad, I first went to The Hague, where gaming was much in fashion, and where I observed that many people of shining rank and character gamed too. I was then young enough, and silly enough, to believe that gaming was one of their accomplishments; and, as I aimed at perfection, I adopted gaming as a necessary step to it. Thus I acquired by error the habit of a vice which, far from adorning my character, has, I am conscious, been a great blemish in it.
Imitate then, with discernment and judgment, the real perfections of the good company into which you may get; copy their politeness, their carriage, their address, and the easy and well-bred turn of their conversation; but remember that, let them shine ever so bright, their vices, if they have any, are so many spots which you would no more imitate, than you would make an artificial wart upon your face, because some very handsome man had the misfortune to have a natural one upon his: but, on the contrary, think how much handsomer he would have been without it.
Having thus confessed some of my ‘egaremens’, I will now show you a little of my right side. I always endeavored to get into the best company wherever I was, and commonly succeeded. There I pleased to some degree by showing a desire to please. I took care never to be absent or ‘distrait’; but on the contrary, attended to everything that was said, done, or even looked, in company; I never failed in the minutest attentions and was never ‘journalier’. These things, and not my ‘egaremens’, made me fashionable. Adieu! This letter is full long enough.
LETTER LIV
BATH, October 19, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: Having in my last pointed out what sort of company you should keep, I will now give you some rules for your conduct in it; rules which my own experience and observation enable me to lay down, and communicate to you, with some degree of confidence. I have often given you hints of this kind before, but then it has been by snatches; I will now be more regular and methodical. I shall say nothing with regard to your bodily carriage and address, but leave them to the care of your dancing-master, and to your own attention to the best models; remember, however, that they are of consequence.
Talk often, but never long: in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers. Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company; this being one of the very few cases in which people do not care to be treated, everyone being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.
Tell stories very seldom, and absolutely never but where they are very apt and very short. Omit every circumstance that is not material, and beware of digressions. To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.
Never hold anybody by the button or the hand, in order to be heard out; for, if people are not willing to hear you, you had much better hold your tongue than them.
Most long talkers single out some one unfortunate man in company (commonly him whom they observe to be the most silent, or their next neighbor) to whisper, or at least in a half voice, to convey a continuity of words to. This is excessively ill-bred, and in some degree a fraud; conversation-stock being a joint and common property. But, on the other hand, if one of these unmerciful talkers lays hold of you, hear him with patience (and at least seeming attention), if he is worth obliging; for nothing will oblige him more than a patient hearing, as nothing would hurt him more than either to leave him in the midst of his discourse, or to discover your impatience under your affliction.
Take, rather than give, the tone of the company you are in. If you have parts, you will show them, more or less, upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people’s than of your own choosing.
Avoid as much as you can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose for a time the contending parties toward each other; and, if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavor to put an end to it by some genteel levity or joke. I quieted such a conversation-hubbub once, by representing to them that, though I was persuaded none there present would repeat, out of company, what passed in it, yet I could not answer for the discretion of the passengers in the street, who must necessarily hear all that was said.
Above all things, and upon all occasions, avoid speaking of yourself, if it be possible. Such is the natural pride and vanity of our hearts, that it perpetually breaks out, even in people of the best parts, in all the various modes and figures of the egotism.
Some, abruptly, speak advantageously of themselves, without either pretense or provocation. They are impudent. Others proceed more artfully, as they imagine; and forge accusations against themselves, complain of calumnies which they never heard, in order to justify themselves, by exhibiting a catalogue of their many virtues. They acknowledge it may, indeed, seem odd that they should talk in that manner of themselves; it is what they do not like, and what they never would have done; no; no tortures should ever have forced it from them, if they had, not been thus unjustly and monstrously accused. But, in these cases; justice is surely due to one’s self, as well as to others; and when our character is attacked, we may say in our own justification, what otherwise we never would have said. This thin veil of Modesty drawn before Vanity, is much too transparent to conceal it, even from very moderate discernment.
Others go more modestly and more slyly still (as they think) to work; but in my mind still more ridiculously. They confess themselves (not without some degree of shame and confusion) into all the Cardinal Virtues, by first degrading them into weaknesses and then owning their misfortune in being made up of those weaknesses. They cannot see people suffer without sympathizing with, and endeavoring to help them. They cannot see people want, without relieving them, though truly their own circumstances cannot very well afford it. They cannot help speaking truth, though they know all the imprudence of it. In short, they know that, with all these weaknesses, they are not fit to live in the world, much less to thrive in it. But they are now too old to change, and must rub on as well as they can. This sounds too ridiculous and ‘outre’, almost, for the stage; and yet, take my word for it, you will frequently meet with it upon the common stage of the world. And here I will observe, by the bye, that you will often meet with characters in nature so extravagant, that a discreet dramatist would not venture to set them upon the stage in their true and high coloring.
This principle of vanity and pride is so strong in human nature that it descends even to the lowest objects; and one often sees people angling for praise, where, admitting all they say to be true (which, by the way, it seldom is), no just praise is to be caught. One man affirms that he has rode post an hundred miles in six hours; probably it is a lie: but supposing it to be true, what then? Why he is a very good post-boy, that is all. Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out of charity, I will believe him a liar; for, if I do not, I must think him a beast.
Such, and a thousand more, are the follies and extravagances, which vanity draws people into, and which always defeat their own purpose; and as Waller says, upon another subject,–
“Make the wretch the most despised, Where most he wishes to be prized.”
The only sure way of avoiding these evils, is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, you are obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause. Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will take it upon your own word. Never imagine that anything you can say yourself will varnish your defects, or add lustre to your perfections! but, on the contrary, it may, and nine times in ten, will, make the former more glaring and the latter obscure. If you are silent upon your own subject, neither envy, indignation, nor ridicule, will obstruct or allay the applause which you may really deserve; but if you publish your own panegyric upon any occasion, or in any shape whatsoever, and however artfully dressed or disguised, they will all conspire against you, and you will be disappointed of the very end you aim at.
Take care never to seem dark and mysterious; which is not only a very unamiable character, but a very suspicious one too; if you seem mysterious with others, they will be really so with you, and you will know nothing. The height of abilities is to have ‘volto sciolto’ and ‘pensieri stretti’; that is, a frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior; to be upon your own guard, and yet, by a seeming natural openness, to put people off theirs. Depend upon it nine in ten of every company you are in will avail themselves of every indiscreet and unguarded expression of yours, if they can turn it to their own advantage. A prudent reserve is therefore as necessary as a seeming openness is prudent. Always look people in the face when you speak to them: the not doing it is thought to imply conscious guilt; besides that you lose the advantage of serving by their countenances what impression your discourse makes upon them. In order to know people’s real sentiments, I trust much more to my eyes than to my ears: for they can say whatever they have a mind I should hear; but they can seldom help looking, what they have no intention that I should know.
Neither retail nor receive scandal willingly; defamation of others may for the present gratify the malignity of the pride of our hearts; cool reflection will draw very disadvantageous conclusions from such a disposition; and in the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought, as bad as the thief.
Mimicry, which is the common and favorite amusement of little low minds, is in the utmost contempt with great ones. It is the lowest and most illiberal of all buffoonery. Pray, neither practice it yourself, nor applaud it in others. Besides that the person mimicked is insulted; and, as I have often observed to you before, an insult is never forgiven.
I need not (I believe) advise you to adapt your conversation to the people you are conversing with: for I suppose you would not, without this caution, have talked upon the same subject, and in the same manner, to a minister of state, a bishop, a philosopher, a captain, and a woman. A man of the world must, like the chameleon, be able to take every different hue; which is by no means a criminal or abject, but a necessary complaisance; for it relates only to manners and not to morals.
One word only as to swearing, and that, I hope and believe, is more than is necessary. You may sometimes hear some people in good company interlard their discourse with oaths, by way of embellishment, as they think, but you must observe, too, that those who do so are never those who contribute, in any degree, to give that company the denomination of good company. They are always subalterns, or people of low education; for that practice, besides that it has no one temptation to plead, is as silly and as illiberal as it is wicked.
Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore only seen to smile; but never heard to laugh.
But to conclude this long letter; all the above-mentioned rules, however carefully you may observe them, will lose half their effect, if unaccompanied by the Graces. Whatever you say, if you say it with a supercilious, cynical face, or an embarrassed countenance, or a silly, disconcerted grin, will be ill received. If, into the bargain, YOU MUTTER IT, OR UTTER IT INDISTINCTLY AND UNGRACEFULLY, it will be still worse received. If your air and address are vulgar, awkward, and gauche, you may be esteemed indeed, if you have great intrinsic merit; but you will never, please; and without pleasing you will rise but heavily. Venus, among the ancients, was synonymous with the Graces, who were always supposed to accompany her; and Horace tells us that even Youth and Mercury, the god of Arts and Eloquence, would not do without her:
‘Parum comis sine to Juventas Mercuriusque.’
They are not inexorable Ladies, and may be had if properly, and diligently pursued. Adieu.
LETTER LV
BATH, October 29, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: My anxiety for your success increases in proportion as the time approaches of your taking your part upon the great stage of the world. The audience will form their opinion of you upon your first appearance (making the proper allowance for your inexperience), and so far it will be final, that, though it may vary as to the degrees, it will never totally change. This consideration excites that restless attention with which I am constantly examining how I can best contribute to the perfection of that character, in which the least spot or blemish would give me more real concern, than I am now capable of feeling upon any other account whatsoever.
I have long since done mentioning your great religious and moral duties, because I could not make your understanding so bad a compliment as to suppose that you wanted, or could receive, any new instructions upon those two important points. Mr. Harte, I am sure, has not neglected them; and, besides, they are so obvious to common sense and reason, that commentators may (as they often do) perplex, but cannot make them clearer. My province, therefore, is to supply by my experience your hitherto inevitable inexperience in the ways of the world. People at your age are in a state of natural ebriety; and want rails, and ‘gardefous’, wherever they go, to hinder them from breaking their necks. This drunkenness of youth is not only tolerated, but even pleases, if kept within certain bounds of discretion and decency. These bounds are the point which it is difficult for the drunken man himself to find out; and there it is that the experience of a friend may not only serve, but save him.
Carry with you, and welcome, into company all the gaiety and spirits, but as little of the giddiness, of youth as you can. The former will charm; but the latter will often, though innocently, implacably offend. Inform yourself of the characters and situations of the company, before you give way to what your imagination may prompt you to say. There are, in all companies, more wrong beads than right ones, and many more who deserve, than who like censure. Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some virtue, which some in company notoriously want; or declaim against any vice, which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people. This consideration points out to you, sufficiently, not to be suspicious and captious yourself, nor to suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind, it is much better not to seem to understand, than to reply to it.
Cautiously avoid talking of either your own or other people’s domestic affairs. Yours are nothing to them but tedious; theirs are nothing to you. The subject is a tender one: and it is odds but that you touch somebody or other’s sore place: for, in this case, there is no trusting to specious appearances; which may be, and often are, so contrary to the real situations of things, between men and their wives, parents and their children, seeming friends, etc., that, with the best intentions in the world, one often blunders disagreeably.
Remember that the wit, humor, and jokes, of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting. Every company is differently circumstanced, has its particular cant and jargon; which may give occasion to wit and mirth within that circle, but would seem flat and insipid in any other, and therefore will not bear repeating. Nothing makes a man look sillier than a pleasantry not relished or not understood; and if he meets with a profound silence when he expected a general applause, or, what is worse, if he is desired to explain the bon mot, his awkward and embarrassed situation is easier imagined’ than described. ‘A propos’ of repeating; take great care never to repeat (I do not mean here the pleasantries) in one company what you hear in another. Things, seemingly indifferent, may, by circulation, have much graver consequences than you would imagine. Besides, there is a general tacit trust in conversation, by which a man is obliged not to report anything out of it, though he is not immediately enjoined to secrecy. A retailer of this kind is sure to draw himself into a thousand scrapes and discussions, and to be shyly and uncomfortably received wherever he goes.
You will find, in most good company, some people who only keep their place there by a contemptible title enough; these are what we call VERY GOOD-NATURED FELLOWS, and the French, ‘bons diables’. The truth is, they are people without any parts or fancy, and who, having no will of their own, readily assent to, concur in, and applaud, whatever is said or done in the company; and adopt, with the same alacrity, the most virtuous or the most criminal, the wisest or the silliest scheme, that happens to be entertained by the majority of the company. This foolish, and often criminal complaisance flows from a foolish cause,–the want of any other merit. I hope that you will hold your place in company by a nobler tenure, and that you will hold it (you can bear a quibble, I believe, yet) ‘in capite’. Have a will and an opinion of your own, and adhere to them steadily; but then do it with good humor, good-breeding, and (if you have it) with urbanity; for you have not yet heard enough either to preach or censure.
All other kinds of complaisance are not only blameless, but necessary in good company. Not to seem to perceive the little weaknesses, and the idle but innocent affectations of the company, but even to flatter them, in a certain manner, is not only very allowable, but, in truth, a sort of polite duty. They will be pleased with you, if you do; and will certainly not be reformed by you if you do not.
For instance: you will find, in every group of company, two principal figures, viz., the fine lady and the fine gentleman who absolutely give the law of wit, language, fashion, and taste, to the rest of that society. There is always a strict, and often for the time being, a tender alliance between these two figures. The lady looks upon her empire as founded upon the divine right of beauty (and full as good a divine right it is as any king, emperor, or pope, can pretend to); she requires, and commonly meets with, unlimited passive obedience. And why should she not meet with it? Her demands go no higher than to have her unquestioned preeminence in beauty, wit, and fashion, firmly established. Few sovereigns (by the way) are so reasonable. The fine gentleman’s claims of right are, ‘mutatis mutandis’, the same; and though, indeed, he is not always a wit ‘de jure’, yet, as he is the wit ‘de facto’ of that company, he is entitled to a share of your allegiance, and everybody expects at least as much as they are entitled to, if not something more. Prudence bids you make your court to these joint sovereigns; and no duty, that I know of, forbids it. Rebellion here is exceedingly dangerous, and inevitably punished by banishment, and immediate forfeiture of all your wit, manners, taste, and fashion; as, on the other hand, a cheerful submission, not without some flattery, is sure to procure you a strong recommendation and most effectual pass, throughout all their, and probably the neighboring, dominions. With a moderate share of sagacity, you will, before you have been half an hour in their company, easily discover those two principal figures: both by the deference which you will observe the whole company pay them, and by that easy, careless, and serene air, which their consciousness of power gives them. As in this case, so in all others, aim always at the highest; get always into the highest company, and address yourself particularly to the highest in it. The search after the unattainable philosopher’s stone has occasioned a thousand useful discoveries, which otherwise would never have been made.
What the French justly call ‘les manieres nobles’ are only to be acquired in the very best companies. They are the distinguishing characteristics of men of fashion: people of low education never wear them so close, but that some part or other of the original vulgarism appears. ‘Les manieres nobles’ equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy. Low people, in good circumstances, fine clothes, and equipages, will insolently show contempt for all those who cannot afford as fine clothes, as good an equipage, and who have not (as their term is) as much money in their pockets: on the other hand, they are gnawed with envy, and cannot help discovering it, of those who surpass them in any of these articles; which are far from being sure criterions of merit. They are likewise jealous of being slighted; and, consequently, suspicious and captious; they are eager and hot about trifles because trifles were, at first, their affairs of consequence. ‘Les manieres nobles’ imply exactly the reverse of all this. Study them early; you cannot make them too habitual and familiar to you.
Just as I had written what goes before, I received your letter of the 24th, N. S., but I have not received that which you mention for Mr. Harte. Yours is of the kind that I desire; for I want to see your private picture, drawn by yourself, at different sittings; for though, as it is drawn by yourself, I presume you will take the most advantageous likeness, yet I think that I have skill enough in that kind of painting to discover the true features, though ever so artfully colored, or thrown into skillful lights and shades.
By your account of the German play, which I do not know whether I should call tragedy or comedy, the only shining part of it (since I am in a way of quibbling) seems to have been the fox’s tail. I presume, too, that the play has had the same fate with the squib, and has gone off no more. I remember a squib much better applied, when it was made the device of the colors of a French regiment of grenadiers; it was represented bursting, with this motto under it: ‘Peream dum luceam’.
I like the description of your PIC-NIC; where I take it for granted, that your cards are only to break the formality of a circle, and your SYMPOSION intended more to promote conversation than drinking. Such an AMICABLE COLLISION, as Lord Shaftesbury very prettily calls it, rubs off and smooths those rough corners which mere nature has given to the smoothest of us. I hope some part, at least, of the conversation is in German. ‘A propos’: tell me do you speak that language correctly, and do you write it with ease? I have no doubt of your mastering the other modern languages, which are much easier, and occur much oftener; for which reason, I desire that you will apply most diligently to German, while you are in Germany, that you may speak and write that language most correctly.
I expect to meet Mr. Eliot in London, in about three weeks, after which you will soon see him at Leipsig. Adieu.
LETTER LVI
LONDON, November 18, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: Whatever I see or whatever I hear, my first consideration is, whether it can in any way be useful to you. As a proof of this, I went accidentally the other day into a print-shop, where, among many others, I found one print from a famous design of Carlo Maratti, who died about thirty years ago, and was the last eminent painter in Europe: the subject is ‘il Studio del Disegno’; or “The School of Drawing.” An old man, supposed to be the master, points to his scholars, who are variously employed in perspective, geometry, and the observation of the statues of antiquity. With regard to perspective, of which there are some little specimens, he has wrote, ‘Tanto che basti’, that is, “As much as is sufficient”; with regard to geometry, ‘Tanto che basti’ again; with regard to the contemplation of the ancient statues, there is written, ‘Non mai a bastanza’,–“There never can be enough.” But in the clouds, at the top of the piece, are represented the three Graces, with this just sentence written over them, ‘Senza di noi ogni fatica e vana’, that is, “Without us, all labor is vain.” This everybody allows to be true in painting; but all people do not seem to consider, as I hope you will, that this truth is full as applicable to every other art or science; indeed to everything that is to be said or done. I will send you the print itself by Mr. Eliot, when he returns; and I will advise you to make the same use of it that the Roman Catholics say they do of the pictures and images of their saints, which is, only to remind them of those; for the adoration they disclaim. Nay, I will go further, as the transition from Popery to Paganism is short and easy, I will classically end poetically advise you to invoke, and sacrifice to them every day, and all the day. It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and, I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.
Since barbarism drove them out of Greece and Rome, they seem to have taken refuge in France, where their temples are numerous, and their worship the established one. Examine yourself seriously, why such and such people please and engage you, more than such and such others, of equal merit; and you will always find that it is because the former have the Graces and the latter not. I have known many a woman with an exact shape, and a symmetrical assemblage of beautiful features, please nobody; while others, with very moderate shapes and features, have charmed everybody. Why? because Venus will not charm so much, without her attendant Graces, as they will without her. Among men, how often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for want of them! While flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired. Even virtue, which is moral beauty, wants some of its charms if unaccompanied by them.
If you ask me how you shall acquire what neither you nor I can define or ascertain, I can only answer, BY OBSERVATION. Form yourself, with regard to others, upon what you feel pleases you in them. I can tell you the importance, the advantage, of having the Graces; but I cannot give them you: I heartily wish I could, and I certainly would; for I do not know a better present that I could make you. To show you that a very wise, philosophical, and retired man thinks upon that subject as I do, who have always lived in the world, I send you, by Mr. Eliot, the famous Mr. Locke’s book upon education; in which you will end the stress that he lays upon the Graces, which he calls (and very truly) good-breeding. I have marked all the parts of that book that are worth your attention; for as he begins with the child, almost from its birth, the parts relative to its infancy would be useless to you. Germany is, still less than England, the seat of the Graces; however, you had as good not say so while you are there. But the place which you are going to, in a great degree, is; for I have known as many well-bred, pretty men come from Turin, as from any part of Europe. The late King Victor Amedee took great pains to form such of his subjects as were of any consideration, both to business and manners; the present king, I am told, follows his example: this, however, is certain, that in all courts and congresses, where there are various foreign ministers, those of the King of Sardinia are generally the ablest, the politest, and ‘les plus delies’. You will therefore, at Turin, have very good models to form yourself upon: and remember, that with regard to the best models, as well as to the antique Greek statues in the print, ‘non mai a bastanza’. Observe every word, look, and motion of those who are allowed to be the most accomplished persons there. Observe their natural and careless, but genteel air; their unembarrassed good-breeding; their unassuming, but yet unprostituted dignity. Mind their decent mirth, their discreet frankness, and that ‘entregent’ which, as much above the frivolous as below the important and the secret, is the proper medium for conversation in mixed companies. I will observe, by the bye, that the talent of that light ‘entregent’ is often of great use to a foreign minister; not only as it helps him to domesticate himself in many families, but also as it enables him to put by and parry some subjects of conversation, which might possibly lay him under difficulties both what to say and how to look.
Of all the men that ever I knew in my life (and I knew him extremely well), the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them; and indeed he got the most by them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes for great events), to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough’s greatness and riches to those graces. He was eminently illiterate; wrote bad English and spelled it still worse. He had no share of what is commonly called PARTS: that is, he had no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly, an excellent good plain understanding with sound judgment. But these alone, would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him; which was page to King James the Second’s queen. There the Graces protected and promoted him; for while he was an ensign of the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favorite mistress to King Charles the Second, struck by those very Graces, gave him five thousand pounds, with which he immediately bought an annuity for his life of five hundred pounds a year, of my grandfather Halifax; which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune. His figure was beautiful; but his manner was irresistible, by either man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he was enabled, during all his war, to connect the various and jarring powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and wrongheadednesses. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones), he as constantly prevailed, and brought them into his measures. The Pensionary Heinsius, a venerable old minister, grown gray in business, and who had governed the republic of the United Provinces for more than forty years, was absolutely governed by the Duke of Marlborough, as that republic feels to this day. He was always cool; and nobody ever observed the least variation in his countenance; he could refuse more gracefully than other people could grant; and those who went away from him the most dissatisfied as to the substance of their business, were yet personally charmed with him and, in some degree, comforted by his manner. With all his gentleness and gracefulness, no man living was more conscious of his situation, nor maintained his dignity better.
With the share of knowledge which you have already gotten, and with the much greater which I hope you will soon acquire, what may you not expect to arrive at, if you join all these graces to it? In your destination particularly, they are in truth half your business: for, if you once gain the affections as well as the esteem of the prince or minister of the court to which you are sent, I will answer for it, that will effectually do the business of the court that sent you; otherwise it is up-hill work. Do not mistake, and think that these graces which I so often and so earnestly recommend to you, should only accompany important transactions, and be worn only ‘les jours de gala’; no, they should, if possible, accompany every, the least thing you do or say; for, if you neglect them in little things, they will leave you in great ones. I should, for instance, be extremely concerned to see you even drink a cup of coffee ungracefully, and slop yourself with it, by your awkward manner of holding it; nor should I like to see your coat buttoned, or your shoes buckled awry. But I should be outrageous, if I heard you mutter your words unintelligibly, stammer, in your speech, or hesitate, misplace, and mistake in your narrations; and I should run away from you with greater rapidity, if possible, than I should now run to embrace you, if I found you destitute of all those graces which I have set my heart upon their making you one day, ‘omnibus ornatum excellere rebus’.
This subject is inexhaustible, as it extends to everything that is to be said or done: but I will leave it for the present, as this letter is already pretty long. Such is my desire, my anxiety for your perfection, that I never think I have said enough, though you may possibly think that I have said too much; and though, in truth, if your own good sense is not sufficient to direct you, in many of these plain points, all that I or anybody else can say will be insufficient. But where you are concerned, I am the insatiable man in Horace, who covets still a little corner more to complete the figure of his field. I dread every little corner that may deform mine, in which I would have (if possible) no one defect.
I this moment receive yours of the 17th, N. S., and cannot condole with you upon the secession of your German ‘Commensaux’; who both by your and Mr. Harte’s description, seem to be ‘des gens d’une amiable absence’; and, if you can replace them by any other German conversation, you will be a gainer by the bargain. I cannot conceive, if you understand German well enough to read any German book, how the writing of the German character can be so difficult and tedious to you, the twenty-four letters being very soon learned; and I do not expect that you should write yet with the utmost purity and correctness, as to the language: what I meant by your writing once a fortnight to Grevenkop, was only to make the written character familiar to you. However, I will be content with one in three weeks or so.
I believe you are not likely to see Mr. Eliot again soon, he being still in Cornwall with his father; who, I hear, is not likely to recover. Adieu.
LETTER LVII
LONDON, November 29, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I delayed writing to you till I could give you some account of the motions of your friend Mr. Eliot; for whom I know you have, and very justly, the most friendly concern. His father and he came to town together, in a post-chaise a fortnight ago, the rest of the family remaining in Cornwall. His father, with difficulty, survived the journey, and died last Saturday was seven-night. Both concern and decency confined your friend, till two days ago, when I saw him; he has determined, and I think very prudently, to go abroad again; but how soon, it is yet impossible for him to know, as he must necessarily put his own private affairs in some order first; but I conjecture that he may possibly join you at Turin; sooner, to be sure, not. I am very sorry that you are likely to be so long without the company and the example of so valuable a friend; and therefore I hope that you will make it up to yourself, as well as you can at this distance, by remembering and following his example. Imitate that application of his, which has made him know all thoroughly, and to the bottom. He does not content himself with the surface of knowledge; but works in the mine for it, knowing that it lies deep. Pope says, very truly, in his “Essay on Criticism”:–
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
I shall send you by a ship that goes to Hamburg next week (and by which Hawkins sends Mr. Harte some things that he wrote for) all those which I propose sending you by Mr. Eliot, together with a very little box that I am desired to forward to Mr. Harte. There will be, likewise, two letters of recommendation for you to Monsieur Andrie and Comte Algarotti, at Berlin, which you will take care to deliver to them, as soon as you shall be rigged and fitted out to appear there. They will introduce you into the best company, and I depend upon your own good sense for your avoiding of bad. If you fall into bad and low company there, or anywhere else, you will be irrecoverably lost; whereas, if you keep good company, and company above yourself, your character and your fortune will be immovably fixed.
I have not time to-day, upon account of the meeting of the parliament, to make this letter of the usual length; and indeed, after the volumes that I have written to you, all I can add must be unnecessary. However, I shall probably, ‘ex abundanti’, return soon to my former prolixity; and you will receive more and more last words from, Yours.
LETTER LVIII
LONDON, December 6, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I am at present under very great concern for the loss of a most affectionate brother, with whom I had always lived in the closest friendship. My brother John died last Friday night, of a fit of the gout, which he had had for about a month in his hands and feet, and which fell at last upon his stomach and head. As he grew, toward the last, lethargic, his end was not painful to himself. At the distance which you are at from hence, you need not go into mourning upon this occasion, as the time of your mourning would be near over, before you could put it on.
By a ship which sails this week for Hamburg, I shall send you those things which I proposed to have sent you by Mr. Eliot, viz., a little box from your Mamma; a less box for Mr. Harte; Mr. Locke’s book upon education; the print of Carlo Maratti, which I mentioned to you some time ago; and two letters of recommendation, one to Monsieur Andrie and the other to Comte Algarotti, at Berlin. Both those gentlemen will, I am sure, be as willing as they are able to introduce you into the best company; and I hope you will not (as many of your countrymen are apt to do) decline it. It is in the best companies only; that you can learn the best manners and that ‘tournure’, and those graces, which I have so often recommended to you, as the necessary means of making a figure in the world.
I am most extremely pleased with the account which Mr. Harte gives me of your progress in Greek, and of your having read Hesiod almost critically. Upon this subject I suggest but one thing to you, of many that I might suggest; which is, that you have now got over the difficulties of that language, and therefore it would be unpardonable not to persevere to your journey’s end, now that all the rest of your way is down hill.
I am also very well pleased to hear that you have such a knowledge of, and taste for curious books and scarce and valuable tracts. This is a kind of knowledge which very well becomes a man of sound and solid learning, but which only exposes a man of slight and superficial reading; therefore, pray make the substance and matter of such books your first object, and their title-pages, indexes, letter, and binding, but your second. It is the characteristic of a man of parts and good judgment to know, and give that degree of attention that each object deserves. Whereas little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribes of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious. He applies himself intensely to the former; he only amuses himself with the latter. Of this little sort of knowledge, which I have just hinted at, you will find at least as much as you need wish to know, in a superficial but pretty French book, entitled, ‘Spectacle de la Nature’; which will amuse you while you read it, and give you a sufficient notion of the various parts of nature. I would advise you to read it, at leisure hours. But that part of nature, which Mr. Harte tells me you have begun to study with the Rector magnificus, is of much greater importance, and deserves much more attention; I mean astronomy. The vast and immense planetary system, the astonishing order and regularity of those innumerable worlds, will open a scene to you, which not only deserves your attention as a matter of curiosity, or rather astonishment; but still more, as it will give you greater, and consequently juster, ideas of that eternal and omnipotent Being, who contrived, made, and still preserves that universe, than all the contemplation of this, comparatively, very little orb, which we at present inhabit, could possibly give you. Upon this subject, Monsieur Fontenelle’s ‘Pluralite des Mondes’, which you may read in two hours’ time, will both inform and please you. God bless you! Yours.
LETTER LIX
LONDON, December 13, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: The last four posts have brought me no letters, either from you or from Mr. Harte, at which I am uneasy; not as a mamma would be, but as a father should be: for I do not want your letters as bills of health; you are young, strong, and healthy, and I am, consequently, in no pain about that: moreover, were either you or Mr. Harte ill, the other would doubtless write me word of it. My impatience for yours or Mr. Harte’s letters arises from a very different cause, which is my desire to hear frequently of the state and progress of your mind. You are now at that critical period of life when every week ought to produce fruit or flowers answerable to your culture, which I am sure has not been neglected; and it is by your letters, and Mr. Harte’s accounts of you, that, at this distance, I can only judge at your gradations to maturity; I desire, therefore, that one of you two will not fail to write to me once a week. The sameness of your present way of life, I easily conceive, would not make out a very interesting letter to an indifferent bystander; but so deeply concerned as I am in the game you are playing, even the least move is to me of importance, and helps me to judge of the final event.
As you will be leaving Leipsig pretty soon after you shall have received this letter, I here send you one inclosed to deliver to Mr. Mascow. It is to thank him for his attention and civility to you, during your stay with him: and I take it for granted, that you will not fail making him the proper compliments at parting; for the good name that we leave behind at one place often gets before us to another, and is of great use. As Mr. Mascow is much known and esteemed in the republic of letters, I think it would be of advantage to you, if you got letters of recommendation from him to some of the learned men at Berlin. Those testimonials give a lustre, which is not to be despised; for the most ignorant are forced to seem, at least, to pay a regard to learning, as the most wicked are to virtue. Such is their intrinsic worth.
Your friend Duval dined with me the other day, and complained most grievously that he had not heard from you above a year; I bid him abuse you for it himself; and advised him to do it in verse, which, if he was really angry, his indignation would enable him to do. He accordingly brought me, yesterday, the inclosed reproaches and challenge, which he desired me to transmit to you. As this is his first essay in English poetry, the inaccuracies in the rhymes and the numbers are very excusable. He insists, as you will find, upon being answered in verse; which I should imagine that you and Mr. HARTE, together, could bring about; as the late Lady Dorchester used to say, that she and Dr. Radcliffe, together, could cure a fever. This is however sure, that it now rests upon you; and no man can say what methods Duval may take, if you decline his challenge. I am sensible that you are under some disadvantages in this proffered combat. Your climate, at this time of the year especially, delights more in the wood fire, than in the poetic fire; and I conceive the Muses, if there are any at Leipsig, to be rather shivering than singing; nay, I question whether Apollo is even known there as god of Verse, or as god of Light: perhaps a little as god of Physic. These will be fair excuses, if your performance should fall something short; though I do not apprehend that it will.
While you have been at Leipsig, which is a place of study more than of pleasure or company, you have had all opportunities of pursuing your studies uninterruptedly; and have had, I believe, very few temptations to the contrary. But the case will be quite different at Berlin, where the splendor and dissipation of a court and the ‘beau monde’, will present themselves to you in gaudy shapes, attractive enough to all young people. Do not think, now, that like an old fellow, I am going to advise you to reject them, and shut yourself up in your closet: quite the contrary; I advise you to take your share, and enter into them with spirit and pleasure; but then I advise you, too, to allot your time so prudently, as that learning may keep pace with pleasures; there is full time, in the course of the day, for both, if you do but manage that time right and like a good economist. The whole morning, if diligently and attentively devoted to solid studies, will go a great way at the year’s end; and the evenings spent in the pleasures of good company, will go as far in teaching you a knowledge, not much less necessary than the other, I mean the knowledge of the world. Between these two necessary studies, that of books in the morning, and that of the world in the evening, you see that you will not have one minute to squander or slattern away. Nobody ever lent themselves more than I did, when I was young, to the pleasures and dissipation of good company. I even did it too much. But then, I can assure you, that I always found time for serious studies; and, when I could find it no other way, I took it out of my sleep, for I resolved always to rise early in the morning, however late I went to bed at night; and this resolution I have kept so sacred, that, unless when I have been confined to my bed by illness, I have not, for more than forty years, ever been in bed at nine o’clock in the morning but commonly up before eight.
When you are at Berlin, remember to speak German as often as you can, in company; for everybody there will speak French to you, unless you let them know that you can speak German, which then they will choose to speak. Adieu.
LETTER LX
LONDON, December 20, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I received last Saturday by three mails, which came in at once, two letters from Mr. Harte, and yours of the 8th, N. S.
It was I who mistook your meaning, with regard to your German letters, and not you who expressed it ill. I thought it was the writing of the German character that took up so much of your time, and therefore I advised you, by the frequent writing of that character, to make it easy and familiar to you: But, since it is only the propriety and purity of the German language which make your writing it so tedious and laborious, I will tell you I shall not be nice upon that article; and did not expect that you should yet be master of all the idioms, delicacies, and peculiarities of that difficult language. That can only come by use, especially frequent speaking; therefore, when you shall be at Berlin, and afterward at Turin, where you will meet many Germans, pray take all opportunities of conversing in German, in order not only to keep what you have got of that language, but likewise to improve and perfect yourself in it. As to the characters, you form them very well, and as you yourself own, better than your English ones; but then let me ask you this question: Why do you not form your Roman characters better? for I maintain, that it is in every man’s power to write what hand he pleases; and, consequently, that he ought to write a good one. You form, particularly, your ‘ee’ and your ‘ll’ in zigzag, instead of making them straight, as thus, ‘ee’, ‘ll’; a fault very easily mended. You will not, I
believe, be angry with this little criticism, when I tell you, that by all the accounts I have had of late from Mr. Harte and others, this is the only criticism that you give me occasion to make. Mr. Harte’s last letter, of the 14th, N. S., particularly, makes me extremely happy, by assuring me that, in every respect, you do exceedingly well. I am not afraid, by what I now say, of making you too vain; because I do not think that a just consciousness and an honest pride of doing well, can be called vanity; for vanity is either the silly affectation of good qualities which one has not, or the sillier pride of what does not deserve commendation in itself. By Mr. Harte’s account, you are got very near the goal of Greek and Latin; and therefore I cannot suppose that, as your sense increases, your endeavors and your speed will slacken in finishing the small remains of your course. Consider what lustre and ‘eclat’ it will give you, when you return here, to be allowed to be the best scholar, for a gentleman, in England; not to mention the real pleasure and solid comfort which such knowledge will give you throughout your whole life. Mr. Harte tells me another thing, which, I own, I did not expect: it is, that when you read aloud, or repeat parts of plays, you speak very properly and distinctly. This relieves me from great uneasiness, which I was under upon account of your former bad enunciation. Go on, and attend most diligently to this important article. It is, of all Graces (and they are all necessary), the most necessary one.
Comte Pertingue, who has been here about a fortnight, far from disavowing, confirms all that Mr. Harte has said to your advantage. He thinks that he shall be at Turin much about the time of your arrival there, and pleases himself with the hopes of being useful to you. Though, should you get there before him, he says that Comte du Perron, with whom you are a favorite, will take that care. You see, by this one instance, and in the course of your life you will see by a million of instances, of what use a good reputation is, and how swift and advantageous a harbinger it is, wherever one goes. Upon this point, too, Mr. Harte does you justice, and tells me that you are desirous of praise from the praiseworthy. This is a right and generous ambition; and without which, I fear, few people would deserve praise.
But here let me, as an old stager upon the theatre of the world, suggest one consideration to you; which is, to extend your desire of praise a little beyond the strictly praiseworthy; or else you may be apt to discover too much contempt for at least three parts in five of the world, who will never forgive it you. In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and, knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable. And a man who will show every knave or fool that he thinks him such, will engage in a most ruinous war, against numbers much superior to those that he and his allies can bring into the field. Abhor a knave, and pity a fool in your heart; but let neither of them, unnecessarily, see that you do so. Some complaisance and attention to fools is prudent, and not mean; as a silent abhorrence of individual knaves is often necessary and not criminal.
As you will now soon part with Lord Pulteney, with whom, during your stay together at Leipsig, I suppose you have formed a connection, I imagine that you will continue it by letters, which I would advise you to do. They tell me that he is good-natured, and does not want parts; which are of themselves two good reasons for keeping it up; but there is also a third reason, which, in the course of the world, is not to be despised: His father cannot live long, and will leave him an immense fortune; which, in all events will make him of some consequence; and, if he has parts into the bargain, of very great consequence; so that his friendship, may be extremely well worth your cultivating, especially as it will not cost you above one letter in one month.
I do not know whether this letter will find you at Leipsig: at least, it is the last that I shall direct there. My, next to either you or Mr. Harte will be directed to Berlin; but as I do not know to what house or street there, I suppose it will remain at the posthouse till you send for it. Upon your arrival at Berlin you will send me your particular direction; and also, pray be minute in your accounts of your reception there, by those whom I recommend you to, as well as by those to whom they present you. Remember, too, that you are going to a polite and literate court, where the Graces will best introduce you.
Adieu. God bless you, and may you continue to deserve my love, as much as you now enjoy it!
P. S. Lady Chesterfield bids me tell you, that she decides entirely in your favor against Mr. Grevenkop, and even against herself; for she does not think that she could, at this time, write either so good a character or so good German. Pray write her a German letter upon that subject, in which you may tell her, that, like the rest of the world, you approve of her judgment, because it is in your favor; and that you true Germans cannot allow Danes to be competent judges of your language, etc.
LETTER LXI
LONDON, December 30, O. S. 1748.
DEAR BOY: I direct this letter to Berlin, where, I suppose, it will either find you, or at least wait but a very little time for you. I cannot help being anxious for your success, at this your first appearance upon the great stage of the world; for, though the spectators are always candid enough to give great allowances, and to show great indulgence to a new actor; yet, from the first impressions which he makes upon them, they are apt to decide, in their own minds, at least, whether he will ever be a good one, or not. If he seems to understand what he says, by speaking it properly; if he is attentive to his part, instead of staring negligently about him; and if, upon the whole, he seems ambitious to please, they willingly pass over little awkwardnesses and inaccuracies, which they ascribe to a commendable modesty in a young and inexperienced actor. They pronounce that he will be a good one in time; and, by the encouragement which they give him, make him so the sooner. This, I hope, will be your case: you have sense enough to understand your part; a constant attention, and ambition to excel in it, with a careful observation of the best actors, will inevitably qualify you, if not for the first, at least for considerable parts.
Your dress (as insignificant a thing as dress is in itself) is now become an object worthy of some attention; for, I confess, I cannot help forming some opinion of a man’s sense and character from his dress; and I believe most people do as well as myself. Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding. Most of our young fellows here display some character or other by their dress; some affect the tremendous, and wear a great and fiercely cocked hat, an enormous sword, a short waistcoat and a black cravat; these I should be almost tempted to swear the peace against, in my own defense, if I were not convinced that they are but meek asses in lions’ skins. Others go in brown frocks, leather breeches, great oaken cudgels in their hands, their hats uncocked, and their hair unpowdered; and imitate grooms, stage- coachmen, and country bumpkins so well in their outsides, that I do not make the least doubt of their resembling them equally in their insides. A man of sense carefully avoids any particular character in his dress; he is accurately clean for his own sake; but all the rest is for other people’s. He dresses as well, and in the same manner, as the people of sense and fashion of the place where he is. If he dresses better, as he thinks, that is, more than they, he is a fop; if he dresses worse, he is unpardonably negligent. But, of the two, I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine, where others are fine; and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made, and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. When you are once well dressed for the day think no more of it afterward; and, without any stiffness for fear of discomposing that dress, let all your motions be as easy and natural as if you had no clothes on at all. So much for dress, which I maintain to be a thing of consequence in the polite world.
As to manners, good-breeding, and the Graces, I have so often entertained you upon those important subjects, that I can add nothing to what I have formerly said. Your own good sense will suggest to you the substance of them; and observation, experience, and good company, the several modes of them. Your great vivacity, which I hear of from many people, will be no hindrance to your pleasing in good company: on the contrary, will be of use to you, if tempered by good-breeding and accompanied by the Graces. But then, I suppose your vivacity to be a vivacity of parts, and not a constitutional restlessness; for the most disagreeable composition that I know in the world, is that of strong animal spirits, with a cold genius. Such a fellow is troublesomely active, frivolously busy, foolishly lively; talks much with little meaning, and laughs more, with less reason whereas, in my opinion, a warm and lively genius with a cool constitution, is the perfection of human nature.
Do what you will at Berlin, provided you do but do something all day long. All that I desire of you is, that you will never slattern away one minute in idleness and in doing of nothing. When you are (not)in company, learn what either books, masters, or Mr. Harte, can teach you; and when you are in company, learn (what company can only teach you) the characters and manners of mankind. I really ask your pardon for giving you this advice; because, if you are a rational creature and thinking being, as I suppose, and verily believe you are, it must be unnecessary, and to a certain degree injurious. If I did not know by experience, that some men pass their whole time in doing nothing, I should not think it possible for any being, superior to Monsieur Descartes’ automatons, to squander away, in absolute idleness, one single minute of that small portion of time which is allotted us in this world.
I have lately seen one Mr. Cranmer, a very sensible merchant, who told me that he had dined with you, and seen you often at Leipsig. And yesterday I saw an old footman of mine, whom I made a messenger, who told me that he had seen you last August. You will easily imagine, that I was not the less glad to see them because they had seen you; and I examined them both narrowly, in their respective departments; the former as to your mind, the latter, as to your body. Mr. Cranmer gave me great satisfaction, not only by what he told me of himself concerning you, but by what he was commissioned to tell me from Mr. Mascow. As he speaks German perfectly himself, I asked him how you spoke it; and he assured me very well for the time, and that a very little more practice would make you perfectly master of it. The messenger told me that you were much grown, and, to the best of his guess, within two inches as tall as I am; that you were plump, and looked healthy and strong; which was all that I could expect, or hope, from the sagacity of the person.
I send you, my dear child (and you will not doubt it), very sincerely, the wishes of the season. May you deserve a great number of happy New- years; and, if you deserve, may you have them. Many New-years, indeed, you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These, virtue, honor, and knowledge, alone can merit, alone can procure, ‘Dii tibi dent annos, de te nam cetera sumes’, was a pretty piece of poetical flattery, where it was said: I hope that, in time, it may be no flattery when said to you. But I assure you, that wherever I cannot apply the latter part of the line to you with truth, I shall neither say, think, or wish the former. Adieu!
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Above all things, avoid speaking of yourself Above the frivolous as below the important and the secret Abroad but they stay at home all that while Absolute command of your temper
Abstain from learned ostentation
Absurd term of genteel and fashionable vices Advice is seldom welcome
Affectation whatsoever in dress
Always look people in the face when you speak to them Ancients and Moderns
Argumentative, polemical conversations As willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody Authority
Better not to seem to understand, than to reply Bruyere
Cannot understand them, or will not desire to understand them Cardinal de Retz
Cardinal Virtues, by first degrading them into weaknesses Cautious how we draw inferences
Chameleon, be able to take every different hue Cheerful in the countenance, but without laughing Common sense (which, in truth, very uncommon) Commonplace observations
Complaisance
Consciousness and an honest pride of doing well Contempt
Conversation will help you almost as much as books Conversation-stock being a joint and common property Converse with his inferiors without insolence Deriving all our actions from the source of self-love Deserve a little, and you shall have but a little Desirous of praise from the praiseworthy Dexterity enough to conceal a truth without telling a lie Difficulties seem to them, impossibilities Distinguish between the useful and the curious Do as you would be done by
Do what you will but do something all day long Either do not think, or do not love to think Equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful Every virtue, has its kindred vice or weakness Fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with the Flattery of women
Forge accusations against themselves Forgive, but not approve, the bad
Frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior Gain the affections as well as the esteem Generosity often runs into profusion
Go to the bottom of things
Good company
Graces: Without us, all labor is vain Great learning; which, if not accompanied with sound judgment Great numbers of people met together, animate each other Habit and prejudice
Half done or half known
Hardly any body good for every thing Have a will and an opinion of your own, and adhere Have but one set of jokes to live upon
He will find it out of himself without your endeavors Heart has such an influence over the understanding Helps only, not as guides
Historians
Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed Honestest man loves himself best
How much you have to do; and how little time to do it in I hope, I wish, I doubt, and fear alternately I shall always love you as you shall deserve If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself Impertinent insult upon custom and fashion Inaction at your age is unpardonable
Jealous of being slighted
Judge them all by their merits, but not by their ages Keep good company, and company above yourself Know their real value, and how much they are generally overrated Knowledge is like power in this respect
Knowledge of a scholar with the manners of a courtier Laughing, I must particularly warn you against it Lazy mind, and the trifling, frivolous mind Learning
Let me see more of you in your letters Little minds mistake little objects for great ones Livery
Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob Low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter Low company, most falsely and impudently, call pleasure Luther’s disappointed avarice
Make yourself necessary
Manner of doing things is often more important Manners must adorn knowledge
May not forget with ease what you have with difficulty learned Mimicry
More one sees, the less one either wonders or admires More you know, the modester you should be Mortifying inferiority in knowledge, rank, fortune Most long talkers single out some one unfortunate man in compan Much sooner forgive an injustice than an insult Mystical nonsense
Name that we leave behind at one place often gets before us Neglect them in little things, they will leave you in great Negligence of it implies an indifference about pleasing Neither retail nor receive scandal willingly Never quit a subject till you are thoroughly master of it Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are wit Never slattern away one minute in idleness Never to speak of yourself at all
Not one minute of the day in which you do nothing at all Not to admire anything too much
Oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings Out of livery; which makes them both impertinent and useless Overvalue what we do not know
Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company People angling for praise
People never desire all till they have gotten a great deal Plain notions of right and wrong
Planted while young, that degree of knowledge now my refuge Pleased to some degree by showing a desire to please Pleasing in company is the only way of being pleased in yourself Pleasure and business with equal inattention Prefer useful to frivolous conversations Pride remembers it forever
Prudent reserve
Pyrrhonism
Reason ought to direct the whole, but seldom does Reformation
Refuge of people who have neither wit nor invention of their ow Refuse more gracefully than other people could grant Repeating
Represent, but do not pronounce
Rochefoucault
Rough corners which mere nature has given to the smoothest Scandal: receiver is always thought, as bad as the thief Scarcely any body who is absolutely good for nothing Scrupled no means to obtain his ends
Secrets
Seeming frankness with a real reserve Seeming openness is prudent
Self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults Serious without being dull
Shakespeare
Shepherds and ministers are both men Some complaisance and attention to fools is prudent, and not me Some men pass their whole time in doing nothing Something or other is to be got out of everybody Swearing
Take nothing for granted, upon the bare authority of the author Take, rather than give, the tone of the company you are in Talk often, but never long
Talk sillily upon a subject of other people’s Talking of either your own or other people’s domestic affairs Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are Tell stories very seldom
Tenderness and affection with which, while you deserve them The best have something bad, and something little The worst have something good, and sometimes something great Thin veil of Modesty drawn before Vanity Thoroughly, not superficially
To know people’s real sentiments, I trust much more to my eyes Unopened, because one title in twenty has been omitted Value of moments, when cast up, is immense Vanity, that source of many of our follies Weaknesses
What displeases or pleases you in others What you feel pleases you in them
When well dressed for the day think no more of it afterward Will not so much as hint at our follies
Witty without satire or commonplace Women
Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is You had much better hold your tongue than them Your merit and your manners can alone raise you
LETTERS TO HIS SON
1749
By the EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
on the Fine Art of becoming a
MAN OF THE WORLD
and a