SECRETARY OF STATE
Private
HAGUE, AUGUST 31, N.S. 1728
MY LORD,
I cannot omit returning your Lordship my thanks for the honour of your letter apart, of the 13th August, O.S It gave me the utmost satisfaction to see the very friendly manner in which your Lordship not only forgave, but even approved, the liberty I had taken, and flatters me with the continuance of your friendship and protection, which I shall always be equally solicitous to deserve and proud to obtain. It is upon this friendship that I rely when I venture to make, and persuade myself your Lordship will (at least) pardon, the following request. By the death of the Duke of York* there are now two Garters vacant, that probably will not long remain so, and your Lordship knows by the former applications I have troubled you with on that score, how desirous and ambitious I am of that honour. Your Lordship knows too, that, though it is at all times a mark of honour and his Majesty’s favour, yet it can never be of so much (or indeed of any real) use to me, as now, that I have the honour to be in the station I am in. In the first place, the thing itself is much more considered abroad than in England; in the second place, such a mark of favour is much more necessary for those who have the honour of being employed abroad, than for those who have the advantage of being at home; and I am sure every body will agree that I can never have it so advantageously for myself, (especially in this country) as at a time when it must be known to be entirely owing to your Lordship’s friendship and recommendation. It may possibly be owning a great weakness when I confess to your Lordship that 1 would rather have this one mark of his Majesty’s and your favour than any one other thing that your Lordship can recommend to, or the King dispose of; but at the same time I hope it may in some measure excuse the great earnestness with which I beg leave to recommend this request to your protection, which, if it is possible any thing can, will add to the obligations I already have to your Lordship, and to the very great respect with which I have the honour to be, etc.
Private
HAGUE, NOVEMBER 30, N.S., 1728
MY LORD,
I trouble your Lordship with this letter apart, to inform you of the contents of a letter the Pensionary received about a week ago from General Keppell, and which he communicated to me in the utmost confidence* Mr. Keppell tells him that the Queen of Prussia, upon receiving the Queen of England’s letter (of which your Lordship sent me a copy), was in such joy, that she immediately communicated it to him, together with all the steps that had been taken in that affair; that she had told him she was persuaded it would not only bring back the King to a right way of thinking, but even make him continue firm in it. He adds the greatest commendations imaginable of that Princess, and speaks of the match as a thing that he expects will be attended with the best consequences.*
After having talked over this affair with the Pensionary, he asked me whether what he had seen in the newspapers was true, that the Prince of Orange was to have one of the vacant Garters* I told him I knew nothing of it, but that I thought it seemed natural enough, considering the regard the King had for that name and family, and that there had hardly ever been a Prince of Orange without it. He said that was very true, if people would but consider it rightly, but that he doubted they would draw other consequences from it, which might have an ill effect; that his coming here (which by the way is put off till Christmas, upon the account of the ill news of his Governor)* had already given an alarm which would be very much increased, if it were accompanied with that mark of the King’s favour and distinction; that in the present situation of this Republic he did not know which was the most dangerous, to have a Stadtholder or not; that if the Stadtholder had not power sufficient to reform the abuses the Republic groaned under, he would be useless, and that if he had he might commit as many of his own. He concluded with saying that this was not a time to determine either way. Notwithstanding the confidence I live in with the Pensionary, I have always avoided any conversation with him upon the affair of the Stadtholder; being firmly convinced that he will be against one while there is any possibility of carrying on the Government without one; and he had never spoke to me so much on that subject as in this conversation; however, I avoided entering into it upon this occasion by saying that I was not enough informed of the nature of this Government to be able to judge whether a Stadtholder would prove advantageous or prejudicial to it, but that I was persuaded if the Prince of Orange had the Garter it was without any further view, and only as a mark of the consideration the King had for him and his family.
After this I went to M. de Linden* and told him part of the conversation that had passed between the Pensionary and myself about the Prince’s having the Garter, and asked his opinion upon it. He said he thought it highly improper that the Prince should have it, till other things were ready to go along with it; that he was sure it would give an unnecessary alarm, which might prove prejudicial to some things which are now secretly transacting in favour of that Prince here; and which I will inform your lordship of more fully hereafter.
M. de Linden is the only person here to whom I ever speak upon this subject; he is both an honest and an able man, has the same fondness for the Prince that he could have were he his own son; and as he has the utmost confidence in me, and informs me of every step that is taken in that Prince’s affairs, I can with great safety open myself to him whenever occasion shall require it.
I hope your Lordship will do me the justice to believe that I have no view of my own in submitting these considerations to your judgment. I shall neither have the Garter the more nor the less, the sooner nor the later, for the Prince of Orange’s having it or not; but I thought myself obliged for his sake to lay this matter before your Lordship, that you may act in it as you think proper. I own I have his interest a good deal at heart, and hope not to be altogether useless to him during my stay here.
Your Lordship will give me leave to take this opportunity of recommending myself again to your friendship and protection in an affair which I believe is yet pretty remote, but which probably will happen, which is this: If when the match shall be agreed upon between Prince Frederick and the Princess Royal of Prussia, an Ambassador is to be sent to Berlin upon that extraordinary occasion, that your Lordship will be so good as to recommend me to his Majesty’s consideration upon that account, for which I ask no extraordinaries nor additional allowance; so that it will be a considerable saving to the King. I would not be mistaken and be thought to desire to quit this place, but as I take it for granted such a commission would be very short, it would require very little absence from hence.
After so long a letter I will not trouble your Lordship with any professions of my gratitude for the past marks of your friendship, nor of my endeavours to deserve the continuance of it; I will only assure you that it is impossible to be with greater truth and respect
Your Lordship’s, etc.
Very Private
HAGUE, DECEMBER 14, N.S., 1728
MY LORD,
I cannot express how sensible I am of His Majesty’s great goodness and the confidence he is pleased to show he has in me, by not only entrusting me with, but even employing me in, an affair of such secrecy and importance as that contained in your Lordship’s very private letter of the 29th November, O.S., which I have just now received. I wish I were as able as I am desirous to execute his Majesty’s commands to his satisfaction; but, sensible of my own inabilities, I must beg that his Majesty’s indulgence will in favour of my known zeal for his service, excuse what may be wanting on my part, in the means of pursuing it.
I must more particularly beg your Lordship to solicit his Majesty’s indulgence towards me upon this occasion, since I take the liberty of delaying to obey his Majesty’s commands till I have first laid before your Lordship my reasons for so doing; and till I have received further instructions upon them.
I must inform your Lordship then, in the first place, that I believe it is possible that some things might be communicated to the Pensionary in confidence, which he would not tell the Greffier;* but I am firmly persuaded there is no one thing in the world that could be communicated to the Greffier that he would not immediately tell the Pensionary; and therefore I submit it to your Lordship whether such a distinguished confidence in the one would not very much exasperate the other, when he should come to know it, which he certainly would immediately. The Pensionary is extremely averse to the thoughts of that match already, and I doubt this would make him much more so. In talking to me some time ago upon that subject, he told me he would much rather see the match made between Don Carlos and the Arch-Duchess, than between the Princess Royal and the Prince of Orange.* I must observe to your Lordship too, that the sentiments of the Pensionary and Greffier upon the affair of the Stadtholder are extremely changed since your Lordship has seen them; when they inclined to a Stadtholder, Mr. Slingelandt was then but Treasurer, and was opposed and thwarted by the then Pensionary in almost everything; but now that Mr. Slingelandt is Pensionary, and Messrs. Vander Haym and Teinhoven* (both relations and creatures of the Greffier’s) Treasurer and Secretary of State, the Pensionary and Greffier have the whole management of affairs in their own hands, and think they may lose, but cannot get, by a Stadtholder, and consequently, while they can possibly carry on affairs without one, will, in my opinion, be as much against one, as any two people in the Republic. Should this opinion of mine be true, as I have a good deal of reason to believe it is, if I had communicated this affair to the Greffier, I am persuaded he would have given me no answer till he had first consulted the Pensionary upon it; and I am equally persuaded that they would both have done their utmost endeavours to prevent it; that match being considered by everybody, and with reason, as the sure forerunner of the Stadtholdership.
Your Lordship will now give me leave to acquaint you with what passed a month ago between M. de Linden and myself, in conversation upon this subject. I asked M. de Linden when he thought there was any prospect of the Prince of Orange’s being Stadtholder of the Province of Holland? He told me certainly not of two years at soonest; that it could not be attempted till he had taken his place in the Council of State as Stadtholder of Gueldres, which he could not do till next September, not being of age for that Province till then.* I then asked him, whether in case a marriage that had been talked of for that Prince should take place, it would promote or obstruct his arriving at that dignity? He said it would certainly promote it; and indeed I think it is pretty clear that it will, from the dread that all the Anti-Stadtholder party have of that match; which would undoubtedly give spirit and vigour to all the Prince’s friends, and extremely deject the opposite party. He told me afterwards in the utmost secrecy, that there was now a design carrying on of getting that Prince chosen Stadtholder of another Province; which would give him a majority of the Seven Provinces, and extremely facilitate his election in this; that the stroke was to be struck in March next; but that the whole depended upon the secrecy of the affair, and upon a little money properly distributed. Upon which I gave him some hopes, but no promises, that they might meet with some assistance from England as to the last particular. By all that I have been able to observe here, and I have omitted no opportunity of informing myself upon that subject, I think there is no reason to doubt but that that Prince will inevitably be one day Stadtholder of this Province; but how soon, I believe it is impossible for anybody to guess. The Army are nine in ten for him, and the common people unanimously so; his greatest enemies are the town of Amsterdam and the chief Burgomasters of the other towns, whose oppressions, rapines and extortions are now grown so flagrant and grievous, and daily increase so much, that they must, before it is very long, reduce the honest and thinking part of the Republic to fly to a Stadtholder as the only remedy. Or should that fail, the common people themselves, who groan under the oppressions and abuses of the magistrates, will by a general insurrection, impose one upon them. I know that a person in the Government has written to Sir Matthew Decker to acquaint him, that should any steps be taken in favour of the Prince of Orange, that the town of Amsterdam, together with the Nobles and eleven other towns of this Province, would immediately declare the Prince of Nassau-Seigen Stadtholder; and possibly Sir Matthew may have acquainted your Lordship with this; but you need have no apprehensions of it, for I know it to be a poor artifice of Mr. Buys to deter the Prince of Orange’s party from stirring in his favour, and it was wrote into England in the same view*.
After having said all this, I don’t know whether I may take the liberty of offering most humbly my poor opinion upon this affair; but I am persuaded that however erroneous it may be, your Lordship will at least do me the justice to believe it meant for his Majesty’s service.
I should think therefore that if his Majesty is determined to give the Princess Royal to the Prince of Orange, it had better be communicated jointly to the Pensionary and Greffier, as a thing determined, than proposed to them as a thing doubtful; for upon the supposition I go upon, that they will both be extremely averse to it, they will be less offended if it be done without, than against, their consent. I submit it likewise to your Lordship, whether anything of the Stadtholdership should be mentioned to them or no; for I am sure it will startle them extremely, and whether it is mentioned or no, it will undoubtedly be sooner or later the necessary consequence of the match.
I ask a thousand pardons for presuming to communicate my poor thoughts upon this subject, and still more for not immediately executing his Majesty’s orders; but I thought it my duty in an affair of this very great importance, to suggest to your Lordship’s consideration everything that could occur to me; hoping that the little delay of this messenger’s going and coming can be of no great consequence. I am sure it is impossible for anybody to have anything more at heart than I have the success of this affair, and however mistaken I may be now, I am sure of being set right by his Majesty’s further orders, which I shall have from your Lordship by the return of this messenger.
I am, with the greatest truth.
Private
HAGUE, DECEMBER 12, N.S., 1730
SIR,
I beg you will acquaint Lord Harrington that I don’t answer his last letter apart in expectation of his next, that I may give him but one trouble.
I am sorry the answer from the court of Vienna is not satisfactory at first, for I am persuaded it will be so at last, but it is asking too much of the Emperor to ask him to do what none of his family ever could do, agir de bonne grace. For my own part I see no other way of getting out of this scrape. I think it is pretty plain France will not help us out of it, at least, without drawing us into a worse. Monsieur Fénelon takes immense pains to persuade the people here of la droiture scrupuleuse, as he calls it, of his Court, but to very little purpose. I know ‘tis a bold word, but I really think him the silliest Minister in Europe.*
The King of Prussia in the oath he prepared for the Prince to swallow, among many other things, has made him swear that he will never believe the doctrine of Predestination !* A very unnecessary declaration in my mind for any body who has the misfortune of being acquainted with him to make, since he himself is a living proof of free-will, for Providence can never be supposed to have pre-ordained such a creature!
I find I shall have the pleasure of seeing you soon in England. Without pretending to be fatigued with business, I have had enough on’t to desire no more, and to be very glad to be quiet in St. James’s Square* where I shall always have a pleasure in assuring you that I am with real esteem, etc.
HAGUE, DECEMBER 15, N.S., 1730
SIR,
You need not have made any excuse to me for your solicitation; on the contrary, I am proud of being the first person, to whom you have thought it worth the while to apply since those changes, which, you say, drove you into distance and obscurity. I very well know the person you recommend to me, having lodged at his house a whole summer at Richmond.* I have always heard a very good character of him, which alone would incline me to serve him; but your recommendation, I can assure you, will make me impatient to do it. However, that he may not again meet with the common fate of Court-suitors, nor I lie under the imputation of making Court-promises, I will exactly explain to you how far it is likely I may be able to serve him.
When first I had this office, I took the resolution of turning out nobody; so that I shall only have the disposal of those places that the death of the present possessors will procure me. Some old servants, that have served me long and faithfully, have obtained the promises of the first four or five vacancies; and the early solicitations of some of my particular friends have tied me down for about as many more. But, after having satisfied these engagements, I do assure you, Mr. Launcelot shall be my first care. I confess, his prospect is more remote than I could have wished it; but, as it is so remote, he will not have the uneasiness of a disappointment, if he gets nothing; and if he gets something we shall both be pleased.
As for his political principles, I am in no manner of pain about them. Were he a Tory, I would venture to serve him, in the just expectation that, should I ever be charged with having preferred a Tory, the person, who was the author of my crime, would likewise be the author of my vindication.
I am, with real esteem, etc.
24TH JULY, 1739
MY DEAR BOY:
I was pleased with your asking me, the last time I saw you, why I had left off writing; for I looked upon it as a sign that you liked and minded my letters. If that be the case, you shall hear from me often enough; and my letters may be of use, if you will give attention to them; otherwise it is only giving myself trouble to no purpose; for it signifies nothing to read a thing once, if one does not mind and remember it. It is a sure sign of a little mind to be doing one thing, and at the same time to be either thinking of another, or not thinking at all. One should always think of what one is about; when one is learning, one should not think of play; and when one is at play, one should not think of one’s learning. Besides that, if you do not mind your book while you are at it, it will be a double trouble to you, for you must learn it all over again.
One of the most important points’ of life is Decency; which is to do what is proper, and where it is proper; for many things are proper at one time, and in one place, that are extremely improper in another; for example, it is very proper and decent that you should play some part of the day; but you must feel that it would be very improper and indecent, if you were to fly your kite, or play at ninepins, while you are with Mr. Maittaire. It is very proper and decent to dance well; but then you must dance only at balls, and places of entertainment; for you would be reckoned a fool, if you were to dance at church, or at a funeral. I hope, by these examples, you understand the meaning of the word Decency; which in French is Bienséance; in Latin Decorum; and in Greek Πρεπον. Cicero says of it, Sic hoc Decorum, quod elucit in vitâ, movet approbationem eorum quibuscum vivitur, ordine et constantiâ et moderatione dictorum omnium atque factorum.* By which you see how necessary Decency is, to gain the approbation of mankind. And, as I am sure you desire to gain Mr. Mattaire’s* approbation, without which you will never have mine; I dare say you will mind and give attention to whatever he says to you, and behave yourself seriously and decently, while you are with him; afterwards play, run, and jump, as much as ever you please.
NOVEMBER 20, 1739
DEAR BOY:
As you are now reading the Roman History, I hope you do it with that care and attention which it deserves. The utility of History consists principally in the examples it gives us of the virtues and vices of those who have gone before us; upon which we ought to make the proper observations. History animates and excites us to the love and the practice of virtue; by showing us the regard and veneration that was always paid to great and virtuous men in the times in which they lived, and the praise and glory with which their names are perpetuated and transmitted down to our times. The Roman History furnishes more examples of virtue and magnanimity, or greatness of mind, than any other. It was a common thing to see their Consuls and Dictators (who, you know, were their chief Magistrates) taken from the plough, to lead their armies against their enemies; and, after victory, returning to their plough again, and passing the rest of their lives in modest retirement; a retirement more glorious, if possible, than the victories that preceded it! Many of their greatest men died so poor, that they were buried at the expence of the publick.
Curius, who had no money of his own, refused a great sum that the Samnites offered him, saying, that he saw no glory in having money himself, but in commanding those that had. Cicero relates it thus: Curio ad focum sedenti magnum auri pondus Samnites cum attulissent, repudiati ab eo sum. Non enim aurum habere praeclarum sibi videri, sed iis, qui haberent aurum, imperare.* And Fabricius, who had often commanded the Roman armies, and as often triumphed over their enemies, was found by his fireside, eating those roots and herbs which he had planted and cultivated himself in his own field. Seneca tells it thus: Fabricius ad focum coenat illas ipsas radices, quas, in agro repurgando, triumphalis Senex vulsit.* Scipio, after a victory he had obtained in Spain, found among the prisoners a young Princess of extreme beauty, who, he was informed, was soon to have been married to a man of quality of that country. He ordered her to be entertained and attended with the same care and respect as if she had been in her father’s house; and, as soon as he could find her lover, he gave her to him, and added to her portion the money that her father had brought for her ransom. Valerius Maximus says, Eximiae formae virginem accersitis parentibus, et sponso inviolatam tradidit, et Iuvenis, et Coelebs, et Victor.* This was a most glorious example of moderation, continence, and generosity, which gained him the hearts of all the people of Spain; and made them say, as Livy tells us, Venisse Diis simillimum iuvenem, vincentem omnia, turn armis, turn benignitate, ac beneficiis.*
Such are the rewards that always crown virtue; and such the characters that you should imitate, if you would be a great and a good man, which is the only way to be a happy one! Adieu!
THURSDAY
DEAR BOY,
You will seldom hear from me without an admonition to think. All you learn, and all you can read, will be of little use, if you do not think and reason upon it yourself. One reads to know other people’s thoughts; but if we take them upon trust, without examining and comparing them with our own, it is really living upon other people’s scraps, or retailing other people’s goods. To know the thoughts of others is of use, because it suggests thoughts to one’s self, and helps one to form a judgment; but to repeat other people’s thoughts, without considering whether they are right or wrong, is the talent only of a parrot, or at most a player.
If Night were given you as a subject to compose upon, you would do very well to look what the best authors have said upon it, in order to help your own invention; but then you must think of it afterwards yourself, and express it in your own manner, or else you would be at best but a plagiary. A plagiary is a man who steals other people’s thoughts, and puts them off for his own. You will find, for example, the following account of Night in Virgil:
Nox erat, et placidum carpebant fessa soporem
Corpora per terras; sylvaeque et saeva quierant
Aequora: cum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu;
Cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pictaeque volucres,
Quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis
Rura tenent, somno positae sub nocte silenti,
Lenibant curas, et corda oblita laborum.*
Here you see the effects of Night: that it brings rest to men when they are wearied with the labours of the day; that the stars move in their regular course; that flocks and birds repose themselves, and enjoy the quiet of the Night. This, upon examination, you would find to be all true; but then, upon consideration too, you would find, that it is not all that is to be said upon Night; and many more qualities and effects of Night would occur to you. As, for instance, though Night is in general the time of quiet and repose, yet it is often the time too for the commission and security of crimes, such as robberies, murders and violations which generally seek the advantage of darkness, as favourable for the escape of the guilty. Night too, though it brings rest and refreshment to the innocent and virtuous, brings disquiet and horror to the guilty. The consciousness of their crimes torments them, and denies them sleep and quiet. You might, from these reflections, consider what would be the proper epithets to give to Night; as for example, if you were to represent Night in its most pleasing shape, as procuring quiet and refreshment from labour and toil, you might call it the friendly Night, the silent Night, the welcome Night, the peaceful Night: but if, on the contrary, you were to represent it as inviting to the commission of crimes, you would call it the guilty Night, the conscious Night, the horrid Night; with many other epithets, that carry along with them the idea of horror and guilt: for an epithet to be proper must always be adapted (that is, suited) to the circumstances of the person or thing to which it is given. Thus Virgil, who generally gives Eneas the epithet of Pious, because of his piety to the Gods, and his duty to his father, calls him Dux Eneas, where he represents him making love to Dido, as a proper epithet for him in that situation; because making love becomes a General much better than a man of singular piety.
Lay aside, for a few minutes, the thoughts of play, and think of this seriously.
Amoto quaeramus seria ludo.*
Adieu!
You may come to me on Saturday morning, before you go to Mr. Maittaire.
SPA,* JULY 25, N.S. 1741
DEAR BOY:
I have often told you in my former letters (and it is most certainly true), that the strictest and most scrupulous honour and virtue can alone make you esteemed and valued by mankind; that parts and learning can alone make you admired and celebrated by them; but that the possession of lesser talents was most absolutely necessary towards making you liked, beloved, and sought after in private life. Of these lesser talents, good-breeding is the principal and most necessary one, not only as it is very important in itself; but as it adds great lustre to the more solid advantages both of the heart and the mind. I have often touched upon good-breeding to you before; so that this letter shall be upon the next necessary qualification to it, which is a genteel easy manner, and carriage, wholly free from those old tricks, ill habits, and awkwardnesses, which even many very worthy and sensible people have in their behaviour. However trifling a genteel manner may sound, it is of very great consequence towards pleasing in private life, especially the women, whom, one time or other, you will think worth pleasing; and I have known many a man, from his awkwardness, give people such a dislike of him at first, that all his merit could not get the better of it afterwards. Whereas a genteel manner prepossesses people in your favour, bends them towards you, and makes them wish to like you.
Awkwardness can proceed but from two causes; either from not having kept good company, or from not having attended to it. As for your keeping good company, I will take care of that; do you take care to observe their ways and manners, and to form your own upon them. Attention is absolutely necessary for this, as indeed it is for every thing else; and a man without attention is not fit to live in the world. When an awkward fellow first comes into a room, it is highly probable that his sword gets between his legs, and throws him down, or makes him stumble, at least; when he has recovered this accident, he goes and places himself in the very place of the whole room where he should not; there he soon lets his hat fall down, and, in taking it up again, throws down his cane; in recovering his cane, his hat falls a second time, so that he is a quarter of an hour before he is in order again. If he drinks tea or coffee, he certainly scalds his mouth, and lets either the cup or the saucer fall, and spills either the tea or coffee in his breeches. At dinner, his awkwardness distinguishes itself particularly, as he has more to do; there he holds his knife, fork, and spoon differently from other people, eats with his knife, to the great danger of his mouth, picks his teeth with his fork, and puts his spoon, which has been in his throat twenty times, into the dishes again. If he is to carve, he can never hit the joint; but, in his vain efforts to cut through the bone, scatters the sauce in every body’s face. He generally daubs himself with soup and grease, though his napkin is commonly stuck through a button-hole, and tickles his chin. When he drinks, he infallibly coughs in his glass, and besprinkles the company. Besides all this, he has strange tricks and gestures; such as snuffing up his nose, making faces, putting his fingers in his nose, or blowing it and looking afterwards in his handkerchief, so as to make the company sick. His hands are troublesome to him, when he has not something in them, and he does not know where to put them; but they are in perpetual motion between his bosom and his breeches: he does not wear his clothes, and in short does nothing like other people. All this, I own, is not in any degree criminal; but it is highly disagreeable and ridiculous in company, and ought most carefully to be avoided, by whoever desires to please.
From this account of what you should not do, you may easily judge what you should do; and a due attention to the manners of people of fashion, and who have seen the world, will make it habitual and familiar to you.
There is, likewise, an awkwardness of expression and words, most carefully to be avoided; such as false English, bad pronunciation, old sayings, and common proverbs; which are so many proofs of having kept bad and low company. For example, if, instead of saying that tastes are different, and that every man has his own peculiar one, you should let off a proverb, and say, That what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison: or else, Every one as they like, as the good man said when he kissed his cow; everybody would be persuaded that you had never kept company with any body above footmen and housemaids.
Attention will do all this, and without attention nothing is to be done; want of attention, which is really want of thought, is either folly or madness. You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe, at once, all the people in the room, their motions, their looks, and their words, and yet without staring at them, and seeming to be an observer. This quick and unobserved observation is of infinite advantage in life, and is to be acquired with care; and, on the contrary, what is called absence, which is a thoughtlessness, and want of attention about what is doing, makes a man so like either a fool or a madman, that, for my part, I see no real difference. A fool never has thought; a madman has lost it; and an absent man is, for the time, without it.
Adieu! Direct your next to me, chez Monsieur Chabert, Banquier, à Paris; and take care that I find the improvements I expect at my return.
SPA, SEPTEMBER 8, 1741
SIR,
Having at last found a safe way of sending you this letter, I shall, without the least reserve, give you my thoughts upon the contents of yours of the 30th of May, O.S.
By the best judgment I can form of the list of this present Parliament, and I have examined it very carefully, we appear to be so strong, that I think we can but just be called the minority; and I am very sure that such a minority, well united and well conducted, might soon be a majority. But,
Hoc opus hie labor est.*
It will neither be united nor well conducted. Those who should lead it will make it their business to break and divide it; and they will succeed; I mean Carteret and Pulteney.* Their behaviour for these few years has, in my mind, plainly shown their views and their negotiations with the Court: but, surely, their conduct at the end of last Session puts that matter out of all dispute. They feared even the success of that minority, and took care to render it as insignificant as possible. Will they then not be much more apprehensive of the success of this: and will not both their merit and their reward be much the greater for defeating it? If you tell me that they ought rather to avail themselves of these numbers, and, at the head of them, force their way where they are so impatient to go, I will agree with you, that in prudence they ought; but the fact is, they reason quite differently, desire to get in with a few, by negotiation, and not by victory with numbers, who, they fear, might presume upon their strength, and grow troublesome to their generals.
On the other hand, Sir Robert must be alarmed at our numbers, and must resolve to reduce them before they are brought into the field. He knows by experience where and how to apply for that purpose; with this difference only, that the numbers will have raised the price, which he must come up to. And this is all the fruit I expect from this strong minority. You will possibly ask me, whether all this is in the power of Carteret and Pulteney? I answer, yes—in the power of Pulteney alone. He has a personal influence over many, and an interested influence over more. The silly, half-witted, zealous Whigs consider him as the only support of Whigism; and look upon us as running headlong into Bolingbroke and the Tories. The interested Whigs, as Sandys, Rushout and Gibbon.* with many others, are as impatient to come into Court as he can be; and, persuaded that he has opened that door a little, will hold fast by him to squeeze in with him, and think they can justify their conduct to the public, by following their old leader, under the colours (though false ones) of Whigism.
What then, is nothing to be done? Are we to give it up tamely, when the prospect seems so fair? No; I am for acting, let our numbers be what they will. I am for discriminating, and making people speak out; though our numbers should, as I am convinced they will, lessen considerably by it. Let what will happen, we cannot be in a worse situation than that we have been in for these last three or four years. Nay, I am for acting at the very beginning of the Session, and bringing our numbers the first week; and points for that purpose, I am sure, are not wanting. Some occur to me now, many more will, I dare say, occur to others; and many will, by that time, present themselves.
For example, the Court generally proposes some servile and shameless tool of theirs to be Chairman of the Committee of Privileges and Elections.* Why should not we, therefore, pick out some Whig of a fair character, and with personal connections, to set up in opposition? I think we should be pretty strong upon this point. But as for opposition to their Speaker, if if be Onslow, we shall be but weak; he having, by a certain decency of behaviour, made himself many personal friends in the minority. The affair of Carthagena* will of course be mentioned; and there, in my opinion, a question, and a trying one too, of censure, lies very fair, that the delaying of that expedition so late last year was the principal cause of our disappointment. An Address to the King, desiring him to make no peace with Spain, unless our undoubted right of navigation in the West Indies, without molestation or search, be clearly, and in express words, stipulated; and till we have acquired some valuable possession there, as a pledge of the performance of such stipulation: such a question would surely be a popular one, and distressful enough to the Ministry.
I entirely agree with you, that we ought to have meetings to concert measures some time before the meeting of the Parliament; but that, I likewise know, will not happen. I have been these seven years endeavouring to bring it about, and have not been able; fox-hunting, gardening, planting, or indifference having always kept our people in the country, till the very day before the meeting of the Parliament. Besides, would it be easy to settle who should be at those meetings? If Pulteney and his people were to be chose, it would only be informing them beforehand, what they should either oppose or defeat; and if they were not there, their own exclusion would in some degree justify, or at least colour, their conduct. As to our most flagitious House, I believe you agree there is nothing to be done in it; and for such a minority to struggle with such a majority, would be much like the late King of Sweden’s attacking the Ottoman army at Bender,* at the head of his cook and his butler.
These are difficulties, the insurmountable difficulties, that I foresee; and which make me absolutely despair of seeing any good done. However, I am entirely at the service of you and the rest of my friends who mean the public good. I will either fight or run away, as you shall determine. If the Duke of Argyle* sounds to battle, I will follow my leader; if he stays in Oxfordshire, I’ll stay in Grosvenor Square. I think it is all one which we do as to our House; yours must be the scene of action, if action there be; and action, I think, there should be, at least for a time, let your numbers be what you will.
I leave this place to-morrow, and set out for France; a country which, in my conscience, I think as free as our own: they have not the form of freedom, as we have. I know no other difference. I shall pass a couple of months in rambling through the Southern Provinces, and then return to England, to receive what commands you may leave for, etc.
BATH, JUNE 28, 1742
DEAR BOY,
Your promises give me great pleasure; and your performance of them, which I rely upon, will give me still greater. I am sure you know that breaking of your word is a folly, a dishonour, and a crime. It is a folly, because nobody will trust you afterwards; and it is both a dishonour and a crime, truth being the first duty of religion and morality; and whoever has not truth, cannot be supposed to have any one good quality, and must become the detestation of God and man. Therefore I expect, from your truth and your honour, that you will do that, which, independently of your promise, your own interest and ambition ought to incline you to do; that is to excel in every thing you undertake. When I was of your age, I should have been ashamed if any boy of that age had learned his book better, or played at any play better than I did; and I would not have rested a moment till I had got before him. Julius Caesar, who had a noble thirst of glory, used to say, that he would rather be the first in a village, than the second in Rome; and he even cried when he saw the statue of Alexander the Great, with the reflection of how much more glory Alexander had acquired, at thirty years old, than he at a much more advanced age.* These are the sentiments to make people considerable; and those who have them not, will pass their lives in obscurity and contempt; whereas, those who endeavour to excel all, are at least sure of excelling a great many. The sure way to excel in any thing, is only to have a close and undissipated attention while you are about it; and then you need not be half the time that otherwise you must be: for long, plodding, puzzling application, is the business of dulness; but good parts attend regularly, and take a thing immediately. Consider, then, which you would choose; to attend diligently while you are learning, and thereby excel all other boys, get a great reputation, and have a great deal more time to play; or else not mind your book, let boys even younger than yourself get before you, be laughed at by them for a dunce, and have no time to play at all: for, I assure you, if you will not learn, you shall not play. What is the way, then, to arrive art that perfection which you promise me to aim at? It is, first, to do your duty towards God and man; without which every thing else signifies nothing: secondly, to acquire great knowledge; without which you will be a very contemptible man, though you may be a very honest one; and, lastly, to be very well bred; without which you will be a very disagreeable, unpleasing man, though you should be an honest and a learned one.
Remember then these three things, and resolve to excel in them all; for they comprehend whatever is necessary and useful for this world or the next: and in proportion as you improve in them you will enjoy the affection and tenderness of,
Yours.
HAGUE, APRIL 27, N.S. 1745
DEAR DOCTOR,
I told you at first not to reckon too much upon the success of my recommendation, and I have still more reason to give you the same advice now, for it has met with great difficulties, merely as mine, and I am far from knowing yet how it will end. Pray, give no answer whatsoever to anybody, that either writes or speaks to you upon that subject, but leave it to me, for I make it my own affair, and you shall have either the Bishopric of Clonfert, or a better thing, or else I will not be Lord Lieutenant. I hope to be in England in about a fortnight, when this affair must and shall be brought to a decision. Good-night to you!
Yours, etc.
HAGUE, MAY 12, N.S. 1745
MY GOOD LORD,
Now you are what I had positively declared you should be—a Bishop; but it is Bishop of Killaloe, not Clonfert, the latter refusing the translation. Killaloe, I am assured, is better. I heartily wish you joy, and could not refuse myself that pleasure, though I am in the greatest hurry imaginable, being upon my journey to Helvoet-Sluys for England. Adieu!
Yours, etc.
DUBLIN CASTLE, NOVEMBER 27, 1745
SIR,
I have just now received the favour of your letter of the 20th, which adds to my shame, for not having sooner acknowledged your former. The truth is, that the business of this place, such as it is, is continual; and as I am resolved to do it while I am here, it leaves me little or no time to do things I should like much better; assuring you of my regard and friendship is one of those things, but though one of the most agreeable, I believe the least necessary.
I cannot comprehend the consternation which 8,000 of your countrymen have, I find, thrown seven millions of mine into; I, who at this distance, see things only in their plain natural light, am, I confess, under no apprehensions; I consider a Highlander (with submission to you) as Rowe does a Lord*, who when opposed to a man, he affirms to be but a man; from which principle I make this inference, that 49,000 must beat 8,000; not to mention our sixteen new regiments*, which must go for something, though in my opinion not for much.* I have with much difficulty quieted the fears here, which were at first very strong, partly by contagion from England, and partly from old prejudices, which my good subjects are far from being yet above. They are in general still at the year 1689,* and have not shook off any religious or political prejudice that prevailed at that time. However, I am very glad I am among them; for in this little sphere, a little may do a great deal of good, but in England they must be much stronger shoulders than mine that can do any good at that bulky machine. Pray let me hear from you as often and as minutely as you have leisure; most correspondents, like most very learned men, suppose that one knows more than one does, and therefore don’t tell one half what they could, so one never knows so much as one should.
I am, etc.
DUBLIN CASTLE, MARCH 10, 1746
SIR,
I most thankfully acknowledge the honour of two or three letters from you, since I troubled you with my last; and am very proud of the repeated instances you give me of your favour and protection, which I shall endeavour to deserve.
I am very glad that you went to hear a trial in the Court of King’s Bench; and still more so, that you made the proper animadversions upon the inattention of many of the people in the Court. As you observed very well the indecency of that inattention, I am sure you will never be guilty of any thing like it yourself. There is no surer sign in the world of a little, weak mind, than inattention. Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be well done without attention. It is the sure answer of a fool, when you ask him about any thing that was said or done where he was present, that ‘truly he did not mind it’. And why did not the fool mind it? What had he else to do there, but to mind what was doing? A man of sense sees, hears, and retains, every thing that passes where he is. I desire I may never hear you talk of not minding, nor complain, as most fools do, of a treacherous memory. Mind, not only what people say, but how they say it; and, if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will; and their looks frequently discover, what their words are calculated to conceal. Observe, therefore, people’s looks carefully, when they speak not only to you, but to each other. I have often guessed, by people’s faces, what they were saying, though I could not hear one word they said. The most material knowledge of all, I mean the knowledge of the world, is never to be acquired without great attention; and I know many old people, who, though they have lived long in the world, are but children still as to the knowledge of it, from their levity and inattention. Certain forms, which all people comply with, and certain arts, which all people aim at, hide, in some degree, the truth, and give a general exterior resemblance to almost every body. Attention and sagacity must see through that veil, and discover the natural character. You are of an age now, to reflect, to observe and compare characters, and to arm yourself against the common arts, at least, of the world. If a man, with whom you are but barely acquainted, to whom you have made no offers, nor given any marks of friendship, makes you, on a sudden, strong professions of his, receive them with civility, but do not repay them with confidence: he certainly means to deceive you; for one man does not fall in love with another at sight. If a man uses strong protestations or oaths, to make you believe a thing, which is of itself so likely and probable that the bare saying of it would be sufficient, depend upon it he lies, and is highly interested in making you believe it; or else he would not take so much pains.
In about five weeks, I propose having the honour of laying myself at your feet: which I hope to find grown longer than they were when I left them. Adieu.
Private
DUBLIN CASTLE, MARCH 11, 1746
MY LORD,
My office letter to your Grace by this post being, as I hope, the last that I shall trouble you with from hence this season, contains variety of matters, and those of some importance, with regard to this country. Your Grace will therefore give me leave to explain them to you, with that truth which, wherever I am concerned, I desire his Majesty should most minutely know.
The Council door has not been opened of some years, I think seven or eight, and crowds are pressing at it, as it is really a Board of consequence here, being part of the Legislature.* Some new members are really wanting, it being sometimes difficult to make up a quorum; but the greatest difficulty of all was, where to stop. I have at last reduced the number to eight, of which I don’t reckon above five effective, which is about the number wanted at the Board.
The Earl of Kildare applied to me early and strongly; his rank and estate in this country, I thought, left me no room to hesitate, and I readily promised him my recommendation.
The Earl of Kerry is of a great family, has a great estate, and is a kind of a sovereign in the wild county of Kerry; a very honest man, and very zealous for his Majesty’s Government. He is ambitious of the title, more than of the thing itself; for his ill state of health, which is a palsy, will seldom or never let him attend. I think he very well deserves that mark of his Majesty’s favour.
Lord Ikerren is son-in-law to the Speaker—has a very good estate, is a very honest man; and, the truth is, the Speaker makes it a point.
The Lords Massarene and Powerscourt are men of good sense and good estates, and will be of use at the Board. They are both what we call here Castle-men— that is they meddle with no cabals nor parties; but they belong to the Lord-Lieutenant, and as such, in my humble opinion, deserve the favour of the Government in this case; and the more so, as they ask for nothing else.
Lord Limerick applies himself much to the business of this country, promotes the manufactures, and is in that way so efficient a man, that it seems as much the desire of most people, as his own, that he should have a place at that Board.
Lord Hillsborough has a very considerable estate in this country, and his relations here, particularly Mr. Hill, his uncle, have credit and influence. They make it their request; and I look upon his admission there to be more nominal than real, as I believe he will be more in England than here.
Lord Viscount Fitzwilliam, who likewise will, I believe, seldom take his seat, I fairly confess I recommend, at the earnest instances of his relations in England, though he has a very good estate here, and is a most unexceptionable person.
I assure your Grace I have no favourite among them, and my recommendation proceeds singly from the motives I have mentioned.
The Earl of Grandison’s* application for a Viscountship for his daughter, Lady Betty Mason, seems to me so reasonable with regard to him, and of so little consequence to anybody else, that I own I have given him some reason to hope for that mark of his Majesty’s favour. His estate here is at least eight thousand pounds a year. Mr. Mason, who married his daughter, has four; all which will centre in the son by that daughter. Lord Grandison’s present Viscountship goes at his death to Lord Jersey. This request of his, therefore, seems to be a very common, and, so far at least a pardonable, piece of human vanity, often indulged in other cases, and I hope will be so in this.
The new Barrack Patent is a thing of absolute necessity for his Majesty’s military service here. I should be a great deal too tedious if I were to state to your Grace a tenth part of that affair. I will therefore only say, that this new Patent, together with some other regulations I am making here, is the only probable method of preventing for the future the enormous abuses of the Barrack Board.*
The Dublin Society* is really a very useful establishment. It consists of many considerable people, and has been kept up hitherto by voluntary subscriptions. They give premiums for the improvement of lands, for plantations, for manufactures. They furnish many materials for those improvements in the poorer and less cultivated parts of this kingdom, and have certainly done a great deal of good. The bounty they apply for to his Majesty is five hundred pounds a year, which, in my humble opinion, would be properly bestowed; but I entirely submit it.
As to the applications of the Earls of Cavan and Rosse, and Lord Mayo.* all I can say for them is, that they have nothing of their own—that they are part of the furniture of this House of Lords, which if his Majesty thinks proper to put in a little better repair, he will at the same time do a real act of compassion.
The few small pensions are too trifling to mention; they are the usual charities of the Government, and at the same time lay some obligations upon more considerable people who solicit them; and the establishment can very well bear them.
Having now finished, as I hope, all my recommendations for some time, I must beg leave to assure your Grace that they are, every one of them the recommendations of his Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant only, and that I am neither directly nor indirectly, in my private capacity, concerned in any one of them. I have neither retainer, friend, nor favourite among them.
I have one request more to trouble your Grace with, which indeed concerns myself singly, and that is, that your Grace will be pleased to apply to his Majesty for his gracious permission for me to return to England, to lay myself at his feet. I shall by that time have been here near eight months, during which time I have endeavoured to carry on his Majesty’s service. If I have failed it must have been only from want of abilities; for my zeal, I am sure, was not wanting, and I must, with the warmest and most respectful gratitude, acknowledge that his Majesty’s indulgence to all my recommendations has given me all the credit and weight I was capable of receiving.
I am, with the greatest truth and respect, etc.
P.S. I have received the honour of your Grace’s letter of the 5th, relating to the embargo,* and have given the proper orders thereupon.
DUBLIN CASTLE, APRIL 5, 1746
DEAR BOY,
Before it is very long, I am of opinion that you will both think and speak more favourably of women than you do now. You seem to think that from Eve downwards they have done a great deal of mischief. As for that Lady, I give her up to you: but, since her time, history will inform you, that men have done much more mischief in the world than women; and, to say the truth, I would not advise you to trust either, more than is absolutely necessary. But this I will advise you to, which is, never to attack whole bodies of any kind; for, besides that all general rules have their exceptions, you unnecessarily make yourself a great number of enemies, by attacking a corps collectively. Among women, as among men, there are good as well as bad; and it may be full as many, or more, good than among men. This rule holds as to lawyers, soldiers, parsons, courtiers, citizens, etc. They are all men, subject to the same passions and sentiments, differing only in the manner, according to their several educations; and it would be as imprudent as unjust to attack any of them by the lump. Individuals forgive sometimes; but bodies and societies never do. Many young people think it very genteel and witty to abuse the Clergy; in which they are extremely mistaken; since, in my opinion, parsons are very like other men, and neither the better nor the worse for wearing a black gown. All general reflections, upon nations and societies, are the trite, thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so have recourse to commonplace. Judge of individuals from your own knowledge of them, and not from their sex, profession, or denomination.
Though at my return, which I hope will be very soon, I shall not find your feet lengthened, I hope I shall find your head a good deal so, and then I shall not much mind your feet. In two or three months after my return, you and I shall part for some time; you must go to read men as well as books, of all languages and nations. Observation and reflection will then be very necessary for you. We will talk this matter over fully when we meet; which I hope will be in the last week of this month; till when, I have the honour of being
Your most faithful servant.
LONDON, JUNE 14, 1746
SIR,
I thank you for the favour of your letter, with the inclosed scheme for carrying on the war; which if others approved of as much as I do, and the present situation of the war permitted, would be soon put in execution.
As you are one of the few in Ireland, who always think of the public, without any mixture of private, interest; I do not doubt but that you have already thought of some useful methods of employing the King’s bounty to the Dublin Society. The late additional tax upon glass.* here, as it must considerably raise the price of glass-bottles imported into Ireland, seems to point out the manufacturing them there; which consideration, with a small premium added to it, would, in my mind, set up such a manufacture. Fine writing and printing paper, we have often talked of together; and the specimen you gave me, before I left Dublin, proves, that nothing but care and industry is wanting, to bring that manufacture to such a perfection as to prevent the exportation of it from Holland, and through Holland from France; nay, I am convinced that you might supply England with a great deal if you pleased, that is, if you would make it, as you could do, both good and cheap. Here is a man who has found out a method of making starch of potatoes, and, by the help of an engine of his own invention, to make a prodigious quantity of it in a day.* But here is an Act of Parliament which strictly prohibits the making starch of any thing but flour. Have you such an Act of Parliament in Ireland? If you have not, and that you import your starch from England, as I take it for granted that you do, for you import everything that you can, it would be well worth this man’s while to go to Ireland, and advantageous for you that he should; his starch being to my knowledge and experience full as good, and abundantly cheaper than any other.
These are the sorts of jobs that I wish people in Ireland would attend to with as much industry and care, as they do to jobs of a very different nature. These honest arts would solidly increase their fortunes, and improve their estates, upon the only true and permanent foundation, the public good. Leave us and your regular forces in Ireland to fight for you; think of your manufactures at least as much as of your militia, and be as much upon your guard against Poverty as against Popery; take my word for it, you are in more danger of the former than of the latter.
I hope my friend, the Bishop of Meath,* goes on prosperously with his Charter-schools. I call them his, for I really think that without his care and perseverance they would hardly have existed now. Though their operation is sure, yet, being slow, it is not suited to the Irish taste of the time present only; and I cannot help saying, that, except in your claret, which you are very solicitous should be two or three years old, you think less of two or three years hence than any people under the sun. If they would but wish themselves as well as I wish them; and take as much pains to promote their own true interest, as I should be glad to do to contribute to it, they would in a few years be in a very different situation from that which they are in at present. Go on, however, you and our other friends; be not weary of well-doing, and though you cannot do all the good you would, do all the good you can.
When you write to the most worthy Bishop of Cloyne, pray assure him of my truest regard and esteem, and remember me to my honest and indefatigable friend in good works, Dr. Madden;* and be persuaded yourself, that I am, with sincere friendship and regard,
Your most faithful humble servant.
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 23, 1746
SIR,
A long and dangerous illness has hindered me from acknowledging, till now, your last letters; and though I am a great deal better, I still feel, by extreme weakness, the shock which that illness has given to a constitution too much shattered before.
Pray be under no kind of uneasiness as to the accident that happened to my letter, for I assure you that I am under none myself. I confess, the printing of a letter carelessly and inaccurately written, in the freedom and confidence of a friendly correspondence, is not very agreeable, especially to me, who am so idle and negligent in my familiar letters, that I never wrote one over twice in my life, and am consequently often guilty both of false spelling and false English; but as to my sentiments with regard to Ireland, I am not only willing, but desirous, that all Ireland should know them. I very well recollect the two paragraphs in my letter, which might be objected to by many people; but I recollect them without retracting them. I repeat it again, that there are not many people there, who, like you, employ their thoughts, their time, and their labour, merely for the public good, without any private view. The condition of Ireland sufficiently proves that truth. How different would the state of your lands, your trade, your manufactures, your arts and sciences, have been now from what it is, had they been the objects of general, as they have been of your particular, attention! I still less recant what I said about claret, which is a known and melancholy truth; and I could add a great deal more upon that subject.
Five thousand tuns of wine imported communibus annis into Ireland, is a sure, but indecent, proof of the excessive drinking of the gentry there, for the inferior sort of people cannot afford to drink wine there, as many of them can here;* so that these five thousand tuns of wine are chiefly employed in destroying the constitutions, the faculties, and too often the fortunes, of those of superior rank, who ought to take care of all the others. Were there to be a contest between public cellars and public granaries, which do you think would carry it? I believe you will allow that a Claret Board, if there were one, would be much better attended than the Linen Board,* unless when flax-seed were to be distributed. I am sensible that I shall be reckoned a very shallow politician, for my attention to such trifling objects, as the improvement of your lands, the extension of your manufactures, and the increase of your trade, which only tend to the advantages of the public; whereas an able Lord-Lieutenant ought to employ his thoughts in greater matters. He should think of jobs for favourites, sops for enemies, managing parties, and engaging Parliaments to vote away their own and their fellow-subjects’ liberties and properties. But these great arts of Government, I confess, are above me, and people should not go out of their depth. I will modestly be content with wishing Ireland all the good that is possible, and with doing it all the good I can; and so weak am I, that I would much rather be distinguished and remembered by the name of the Irish Lord-Lieutenant than by that of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
My paper puts me in mind that I have already troubled you too long, so I conclude abruptly, with assuring you that I am, with the truest esteem, etc.
BATH, OCTOBER 4, O.S. 1746
DEAR BOY,
Though I employ so much of my time in writing to you, I confess I have often my doubts whether it is to any purpose. I know how unwelcome advice generally is; I know that those who want it most, like it and follow it least; and I know too, that the advice of parents, more particularly, is ascribed to the moroseness, the imperiousness, or the garrulity of old age. But then, on the other hand, I flatter myself, that as your own reason (though too young as yet to suggest much to you of itself) is, however, strong enough to enable you, both to judge of, and receive plain truths; I flatter myself (I say) that your own reason, young as it is, must tell you, that I can have no interest but yours in the advice I give you; and that, consequently, you will at least weigh and consider it well; in which case, some of it will, I hope, have its effect. Do not think that I mean to dictate as a Parent; I only mean to advise as a friend, and an indulgent one too: and do not apprehend that I mean to check your pleasures, of which, on the contrary, I only desire to be the guide, not the censor. Let my experience supply your want of it, and clear your way, in the progress of your youth, of those thorns and briars which scratched and disfigured me in the course of mine. I do not, therefore, so much as hint to you, how absolutely dependent you are upon me; that you neither have, nor can have a shilling in the world but from me; and that, as I have no womanish weakness for your person, your merit must and will be the only measure of my kindness. I say, I do not hint these things to you, because I am convinced that you will act right, upon more noble and generous principles; I mean for the sake of doing right, and out of affection and gratitude to me.
I have so often recommended to you attention and application to whatever you learn, that I do not mention them now as duties; but I point them out to you as conducive, nay, absolutely necessary to your pleasures; for can there be a greater pleasure, than to be universally allowed to excel those of one’s own age and manner of life? And, consequently, can there be any thing more mortifying, than to be excelled by them? In this latter case, your shame and regret must be greater than any body’s, because every person knows the uncommon care which has been taken of your education, and the opportunities you have had of knowing more than others of your age. I do not confine the application which I recommend, singly to the view and emulation of excelling others (though that is a very sensible pleasure and a very warrantable pride); but I mean likewise to excel in the thing itself; for in my mind, one may as well not know a thing at all, as know it but imperfectly. To know a little of anything, gives neither satisfaction nor credit; but often brings disgrace or ridicule.
Mr. Pope says, very truly,
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep or taste not the Castalian spring.*
And what is called a smattering of every thing infallibly constitutes a coxcomb. I have often, of late, reflected what an unhappy man I must now have been, if I had not acquired in my youth some fund and taste of learning. What could I have done with myself at this age, without them? I must, as many ignorant people do, have destroyed my health and faculties by sotting away the evenings; or, by wasting them frivolously in the tattle of women’s company, must have exposed myself to the ridicule and contempt of those very women; or, lastly, I must have hanged myself, as a man once did, for weariness of putting on and pulling off his shoes and stockings every day. My books, and only my books, are now left me: and I daily find what Cicero says of learning to be true: ‘Haec studia (says he) adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur.’*
I do not mean, by this, to exclude conversation out of the pleasures of an advanced age; on the contrary, it is a very great and a very rational pleasure, at all ages; but the conversation of the ignorant is no conversation, and gives even them no pleasure: they tire of their own sterility, and have not matter enough to furnish them with words to keep up a conversation.
Let me, therefore, most earnestly recommend to you, to hoard up, while you can, a great stock of knowledge; for though, during the dissipation of your youth, you may not have occasion to spend much of it; yet, you may depend upon it, that a time will come, when you will want it to maintain you. Public granaries are filled in plentiful years; not that it is known that the next, or the second, or third year will prove a scarce one; but because it is known that, sooner or later, such a year will come, in which the grain will be wanted.
I will say no more to you upon this subject; you have Mr. Harte with you to enforce it; you have reason to assent to the truth of it; so that, in short, ‘you have Moses and the Prophets; if you will not believe them, neither will you believe, though one rose from the dead.’* Do not imagine that the knowledge which I so much recommend to you, is confined to books, pleasing, useful, and necessary as that knowledge is: but I comprehend in it the great knowledge of the world, still more necessary than that of books. In truth, they assist one another reciprocally; and no man will have either perfectly, who has not both. The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet. Books alone will never teach it you; but they will suggest many things to your observation, which might otherwise escape you; and your own observations upon mankind, when compared with those which you will find in books, will help you to fix the true point.
To know mankind well, requires full as much attention and application as to know books, and, it may be, more sagacity and discernment. I am, at this time, acquainted with many elderly people, who have all passed their whole lives in the great world, but with such levity and inattention, that they know no more of it now, than they did at fifteen. Do not flatter yourself, therefore, with the thoughts that you can acquire this knowledge in the frivolous chit-chat of idle companies; no, you must go much deeper than that. You must look into people, as well as at them. Almost all people are born with all the passions, to a certain degree; but almost every man has a prevailing one, to which the others are subordinate. Search every one for that ruling passion;* pry into the recesses of his heart, and observe the different workings of the same passion in different people; and when you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned. Work upon him by it, if you please; but be upon your guard yourself against it, whatever professions he may make you.
I would desire you to read this letter twice over, but that I much doubt whether you will read once to the end of it. I will trouble you no longer now; but we will have more upon this subject hereafter. Adieu.
I have this moment received your letter from Schaffhausen;* in the date of it you forgot the month.
BATH, OCTOBER 9, O.S. 1746
DEAR BOY:
Your distresses in your journey from Heidleberg to Schaffhausen, your lying upon straw, your black bread, and your broken berline,* are proper seasons for the greater fatigues and distresses, which you must expect in the course of your travels; and, if one had a mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which every man meets with in his journey through life. In this journey, the understanding is the voiture that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better or worse; though at best you will now and then find some bad roads, and some bad inns. Take care, therefore, to keep that necessary voiture in perfect good repair; examine, improve, and strengthen it every day: it is in the power, and ought to be the care, of every man to do it; he that neglects it, deserves to feel, and certainly will feel, the fatal effects of that negligence.
A propos of negligence; I must say something to you upon that subject. You know I have often told you, that my affection for you was not a weak, womanish one; and, far from blinding me, it makes me but more quicksighted, as to your faults; those it is not only my right, but my duty, to tell you of; and it is your duty and your interest to correct them. In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank God) hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar weakness of the head; but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and indifference; faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar, Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.* You seem to want that vivida vis animi,* which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the desire and attention necessary to please, you never can please. Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia,* is unquestionably true with regard to everything except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labour, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet.…
What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very weak, or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, with whom yesterday he appeared to live in intimacy. He takes no part in the general conversation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with some start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said before) is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it is not able to bear above one object at a time; or so affected, that it would be supposed to be wholly engrossed by, and directed to, some very great and important objects. Sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or six more, since the creation of the world, may have had a right to absence, from that intense thought which the things they were investigating required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who has no such avocations to plead, will claim and exercise that right of absence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned into an involuntary absence, by his perpetual exclusion out of company. However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. If therefore you would rather please than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than hated; remember to have that constant attention about you, which flatters every man’s little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his pride, never fails to excite his resentment, or at least his ill-will. For instance; most people (I might say all people) have their weaknesses; they have their aversions and their likings, to such or such things; so that, if you were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat, or cheese, (which are common antipathies), or, by inattention and negligence, to let them come in his way, where you could prevent it, he would, in the first case, think himself insulted, and, in the second, slighted, and would remember both. Whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he hates, shows him, that he is at least an object of your attention; flatters his vanity, and makes him possibly more your friend, than a more important service would have done. With regard to women, attentions still below these are necessary, and, by the custom of the world, in some measure due, according to the laws of good-breeding.
My long and frequent letters, which I send you in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of certain papers, which you have very lately, and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we called messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite. But I will content myself now, as I did then, if some of my present messengers do but stick to you. Adieu!
GROSVENOR SQUARE, l8 NOV., 1746
MY LORDS,
His Majesty having done me the honour, most unexpectedly and undeservedly on my part, to appoint me to be one of his Principal Secretaries of State, and having been pleased to appoint the Earl of Harrington to be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, I cannot take my leave of your Lordships without returning you at the same time my sincerest thanks for your assistance during my residence in Ireland, and for your wise and prudent administration of the government of that Kingdom ever since.
Could anything add to my personal regard and consideration for your Lordships, it would be the conviction I have that your sentiments and affection for the Kingdom of Ireland correspond with mine.
May your Lordships be able to promote effectually what now I can only wish sincerely—the interest and prosperity of a loyal and a brave people; may Industry improve, Trade enrich, and all Happiness attend Ireland.
I am, my Lords, with great respect, your Lordships.’
Most faithful and most humble servant.
LONDON, MARCH 27, O.S. 1747
DEAR BOY,
Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon: they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compass to direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage. Do not think that I mean to snarl at pleasure, like a Stoic, or to preach against it, like a parson; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend it to you, like an Epicurean: I wish you a great deal; and my only view is to hinder you from mistaking it.
The character which most young men first aim at is, that of a man of pleasure; but they generally take it upon trust; and instead of consulting their own taste and inclinations, they blindly adopt whatever those with whom they chiefly converse, are pleased to call by the name of pleasure; and a man of pleasure, in the vulgar acceptation of that phrase, means only a beastly drunkard, an abandoned whore-master, and a profligate swearer and curser. As it may be of use to you, I am not unwilling, though at the same time ashamed, to own, that the vices of my youth proceeded much more from my silly resolution of being what I heard called a man of pleasure, than from my own inclinations. I always naturally hated drinking; and yet I have often drunk, with disgust at the time, attended by great sickness the next day, only because I then considered drinking as a necessary qualification for a fine gentleman, and a man of pleasure.
The same as to gaming. I did not want money, and consequently had no occasion to play for it; but I thought play another necessary ingredient in the composition of a man of pleasure, and accordingly I plunged into it without desire, at first; sacrificed a thousand real pleasures to it; and made myself solidly uneasy by it, for thirty the best years of my life.
I was even absurd enough, for a little while, to swear, by way of adorning and completing the shining character which I affected; but this folly I soon laid aside, upon finding both the guilt and the indecency of it.
Thus seduced by fashion, and blindly adopting nominal pleasures, I lost real ones; and my fortune impaired, and my constitution shattered, are, I must confess, the just punishment of my errors.
Take warning then by them; choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you. Follow nature and not fashion: weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them, and then let your own common sense determine your choice.
Were I to begin the world again, with the experience which I now have of it, I would lead a life of real, not of imaginary pleasure. I would enjoy the pleasures of the table, and of wine; but stop short of the pains inseparably annexed to an excess in either. I would not, at twenty years, be a preaching missionary of abstemiousness and sobriety; and I should let other people do as they would, without formally and sententiously rebuking them for it: but I would be most firmly resolved not to destroy my own faculties and constitution; in complaisance to those who have no regard to their own. I would play to give me pleasure, but not to give me pain; that is, I would play for trifles, in mixed companies, to amuse myself, and conform to custom; but I would take care not to venture for sums which, if I won, I should not be the better for; but, if I lost, should be under a difficulty to pay; and when paid, would oblige me to retrench in several other articles. Not to mention the quarrels which deep play commonly occasions.
I would pass some of my time in reading, and the rest in the company of people of sense and learning, and chiefly those above me; and I would frequent the mixed companies of men and women of fashion, which, though often frivolous, yet they unbend and refresh the mind, not uselessly, because they certainly polish and soften the manners.
These would be my pleasures and amusements, if I were to live the last thirty years over again: they are rational ones; and moreover, I will tell you, they are really the fashionable ones: for the others are not, in truth, the pleasures of what I call people of fashion, but of those who only call themselves so. Does good company care to have a man reeling drunk among them? or to see another tearing his hair, and blaspheming, for having lost, at play, more than he is able to pay? or a whore-master with half a nose, and crippled by coarse and infamous debauchery? No; those who practise, and much more those who brag of them, make no part of good company; and are most unwillingly, if ever, admitted into it. A real man of fashion and pleasures observes decency: at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy, and secrecy.
I have not mentioned the pleasures of the mind (which are the solid and permanent ones), because they do not come under the head of what people commonly call pleasures; which they seem to confine to the senses. The pleasure of virtue, of charity, and of learning, is true and lasting pleasure; with which I hope you will be well and long acquainted. Adieu!
LONDON, JULY 3, O.S. 1747
DEAR DAYROLLES,
I received by the last mail your letter of the 7th, N.S. and though I have very little time to-night, yet I would not omit acquainting you that the hints, which I gave you in one of my former letters, concerning the 30,000 Russians,* are now useless. The Prince of Orange writ to me two posts ago to propose the taking of the Russian troops jointly in the service of the Maritime Powers, that is that the Dutch were to take 10,000 into their pay, and we the 20,000 into ours. Nay, more, they would even, I believe, have contributed their fourth part to our 20,000 over and above their own 10,000; but upon mature and wise deliberation, it was thought proper to put off this affair till September to wait for events en attendant, which God knows, in my mind, we have done but too long already. I represented the distance of the Court of Petersburg, and the necessity of immediately beginning whatever negotiation you would have concluded at that Court even by next spring, but in vain, for the old spirit of delay and indecision prevailed. I fear this delay will be very disagreeable to the Prince of Orange, who I dare say thought that the proposal would have been very welcome here.
I thank you for the account which you sent me from Lausanne, though I can’t say that it gives me great comfort. I shall hint nothing of it to the boy, while he stays at Lausanne, that he may neither accuse nor suspect anybody there of being my informer; but, as soon as he is at Leipsig, he shall receive des mercuriales* upon all those points.
I own I am in great pain for the Dutch frontier, Bergen-op-zoom, Breda, or Bois-le-duc, but chiefly the two first, being, I am convinced, the object of the French, which, if they succeed in, the consequence is but too plain. Pray tell me what you take to be the whole force of Prince Saxe Hildbourghausen’s corps.*
Burn this letter as soon as you have read it, and don’t mention the former part of it to anybody living.
Yours faithfully.
(Separate and Secret Postscript, first printed in Lord Mahon’s edition.)
When you deliver my office letter to the Prince of Orange, I dare say he will talk to you about the Russian affair, which it relates to. I dare say, too, that he will be disappointed in finding his proposal so coldly received here, and put off for so long. He will probably express something of this kind to you, which when he does, you will just hint, that you believe that my opinion was for taking the Russians immediately; because you know, that while we are in war, I am for making it vigorously, and with superior force, and not consuming ourselves, by inferior and ineffectual armies.
In the course of this conversation, take an opportunity of showing him my enclosed letter, which I have calculated for that purpose, and in which I have inserted the Lausanne affair, to prevent the least suspicion. But when you do show it, do it with seeming difficulty, and as a mark of your unbounded confidence in the Prince; and enjoin him the strictest secrecy, especially that I may never know that you showed it to him.
Both the King and I thought the measure a right one, and that we should get all the force we could; but we can neither of us do what we have a mind to do, and the resolutions of those who neither know how to make war nor peace are to prevail.
Good night, once more!
LONDON, OCTOBER 9, O.S. 1747
DEAR BOY:
People of your age have, commonly, an unguarded frankness about them; which makes them the easy prey and bubbles of the artful and the experienced: they look upon every knave or fool, who tells them that he is their friend, to be really so; and pay that profession of simulated friendship with an indiscreet and unbounded confidence, always to their loss, often to their ruin. Beware, therefore, now that you are coming into the world, of these proffered friendships. Receive them with great civility, but with great incredulity too; and pay them with compliments, but not with confidence. Do not let your vanity and self-love make you suppose that people become your friends at first sight, or even upon a short acquaintance. Real friendship is a slow grower; and never thrives, unless ingrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit. There is another kind of nominal friendship among young people, which is warm for the time, but, by good luck, of short duration. This friendship is hastily produced, by their being accidentally thrown together, and pursuing the same course of riot and debauchery. A fine friendship, truly; and well cemented by drunkenness and lewdness. It should rather be called a conspiracy against morals and good manners, and be punished as such by the civil magistrate. However, they have the impudence and folly to call this confederacy a friendship. They lend one another money, for bad purposes; they engage in quarrels, offensive and defensive, for their accomplices; they tell one another all they know, and often more too, when, of a sudden, some accident disperses them, and they think no more of each other, unless it be to betray and laugh at their imprudent confidence. Remember to make a great difference between companions and friends; for a very complaisant and agreeable companion may, and often does, prove a very improper and a very dangerous friend. People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you, upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb,* which says very justly, Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are. One may fairly suppose, that a man, who makes a knave or a fool his friend, has something very bad to do or to conceal. But, at the same time that you carefully decline the friendship of knaves and fools, if it can be called friendship, there is no occasion to make either of them your enemies, wantonly, and unprovoked; for they are numerous bodies: and I would rather choose a secure neutrality, than alliance, or war, with either of them. You may be a declared enemy to their vices and follies, without being marked out by them as a personal one. Their enmity is the next dangerous thing to their friendship. Have a real reserve with almost everybody; and have a seeming reserve with almost nobody; for it is very disagreeable to seem reserved, and very dangerous not to be so. Few people find the true medium; many are ridiculously mysterious and reserved upon trifles; and many imprudently communicative of all they know.
The next thing to the choice of your friends, is the choice of your company. Endeavour, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you: there you rise, as much as you sink with people below you; for (as I have mentioned before) you are whatever the company you keep is. Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth: that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.
There are two sorts of good company; one, which is called the beau monde, and consists of those people who have the lead in courts, and in the gay part of life; the other consists of those who are distinguished by some peculiar merit, or who excel in some particular and valuable art or science. For my own part, I used to think myself in company as much above me, when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope,* as if I had been with all the Princes in Europe. What I mean by low company, which should by all means be avoided, is the company of those, who, absolutely insignificant and contemptible in themselves, think they are honoured by being in your company, and who flatter every vice and every folly you have, in order to engage you to converse with them. The pride of being the first of the company is but too common; but it is very silly, and very prejudicial. Nothing in the world lets down a character more than that wrong turn.
You may possibly ask me, whether a man has it always in his power to get into the best company? and how? I say, Yes, he has, by deserving it; provided he is but in circumstances which enable him to appear upon the footing of a gentleman. Merit and good-breeding will make their way everywhere. Knowledge will introduce him, and good-breeding will endear him to the best companies; for, as I have often told you, politeness and good-breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light. The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.
I long to hear, from my several correspondents at Leipsig, of your arrival there, and what impression you make on them at first; for I have Arguses,* with an hundred eyes each, who will watch you narrowly, and relate to me faithfully. My accounts will certainly be true; it depends upon you, entirely, of what kind they shall be. Adieu.
LONDON, OCTOBER l6, O.S. 1747
DEAR BOY,
The art of pleasing is a very necessary one to possess; but a very difficult one to acquire. It can hardly be reduced to rules; and your own good sense and observation will teach you more of it than I can. Do as you would be done by, is the surest method that I know of pleasing. Observe carefully what pleases you in others, and probably the same things in you will please others. If you are pleased with the complaisance and attention of others to your humours, your tastes, or your weaknesses, depend upon it the same complaisance and attention, on your part to theirs, will equally please them. Take the tone of the company that you are in, and do not pretend to give it; be serious, gay, or even trifling, as you find the present humour of the company; this is an attention due from every individual to the majority. Do not tell stories in company; there is nothing more tedious and disagreeable; if by chance you know a very short story, and exceedingly applicable to the present subject of conversation, tell it in as few words as possible; and even then, throw out that you do not love to tell stories, but that the shortness of it tempted you. Of all things, banish the egotism out of your conversation, and never think of entertaining people with your own personal concerns or private affairs; though they are interesting to you they are tedious and impertinent to everybody else; besides that, one cannot keep one’s own private affairs too secret. Whatever you think your own excellencies may be, do not affectedly display them in company; nor labour, as many people do, to give that turn to the conversation, which may supply you with an opportunity of exhibiting them. If they are real, they will infallibly be discovered, without your pointing them out yourself, and with much more advantage. Never maintain an argument with heat and clamour, though you think or know yourself to be in the right; but give your opinion modestly and coolly, which is the only way to convince; and, if that does not do, try to change the conversation, by saying, with good-humour, ‘We shall hardly convince one another; nor is it necessary that we should, so let us talk of something else.’
Remember that there is a local propriety to be observed in all companies; and that what is extremely proper in one company, may be, and often is, highly improper in another.
The jokes, the bons mots, the little adventures, which may do very well in one company, will seem flat and tedious when related in another. The particular characters, the habits, the cant of one company, may give credit to a word, or a gesture, which would have none at all if divested of those accidental circumstances. Here people very commonly err; and fond of something that has entertained them in one company, and in certain circumstances, repeat it with emphasis in another, where it is either insipid, or, it may be, offensive, by being ill-timed or misplaced. Nay, they often do it with this silly preamble: ‘I will tell you an excellent thing’; or, ‘the best thing in the world.’ This raises expectations, which, when absolutely disappointed, make the relator of this excellent thing look, very deservedly, like a fool.
If you would particularly gain the affection and friendship of particular people, whether men or women, endeavour to find out their predominant excellency, if they have one, and their prevailing weakness, which everybody has; and do justice to the one, and something more than justice to the other. Men have various objects in which they may excel, or at least would be thought to excel; and, though they love to hear justice done to them, where they know that they excel, yet they are most and best flattered upon those points where they wish to excel, and yet are doubtful whether they do or not. As, for example: Cardinal Richelieu, who was undoubtedly the ablest statesman of his time, or perhaps of any other, had the idle vanity of being thought the best poet too: he envied the great Corneille his reputation, and ordered a criticism to be written upon the Cid.* Those, therefore, who flattered skilfully, said little to him of his abilities in state affairs, or at least but en passant, and as it might naturally occur. But the incense which they gave him, the smoke of which they knew would turn his head in their favour, was as a bel esprit and a poet. Why? Because he was sure of one excellency, and distrustful as to the other. You will easily discover every man’s prevailing vanity, by observing his favourite topic of conversation; for every man talks most of what he has most a mind to be thought to excel in. Touch him but there, and you touch him to the quick. The late Sir Robert Walpole (who was certainly an able man) was little open to flattery upon that head; for he was in no doubt himself about it; but his prevailing weakness was, to be thought to have a polite and happy turn to gallantry;—of which he had undoubtedly less than any man living: it was his favourite and frequent subject of conversation; which proved, to those who had any penetration, that it was his prevailing weakness. And they applied to it with success.
Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow. Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person; if her face is so shocking, that she must in some degree be conscious of it, her figure and air, she trusts, make ample amends for it. If her figure is deformed, her face, she thinks, counterbalances it. If they are both bad, she comforts herself that she has graces; a certain manner; a je ne seals quoi, still more engaging than beauty. This truth is evident, from the studied and elaborate dress of the ugliest women in the world. An undoubted, uncontested, conscious beauty is, of all women, the least sensible of flattery upon that head; she knows that it is her due, and is therefore obliged to nobody for giving it her. She must be flattered upon her understanding; which, though she may possibly not doubt of herself, yet she suspects that men may distrust.
Do not mistake me, and think that I mean to recommend to you abject and criminal flattery: no; flatter nobody’s vices or crimes: on the contrary, abhor and discourage them. But there is no living in the world without a complaisant indulgence for people’s weaknesses, and innocent, though ridiculous vanities. If a man has a mind to be thought wiser, and a woman handsomer, than they really are, their error is a comfortable one to themselves, and an innocent one with regard to other people; and I would rather make them my friends, by indulging them in it, than my enemies, by endeavouring (and that to no purpose) to undeceive them.
There are little attentions likewise, which are infinitely engaging, and which sensibly affect that degree of pride and self-love, which is inseparable from human nature; as they are unquestionable proofs of the regard and consideration which we have for the persons to whom we pay them. As, for example, to observe the little habits, the likings, the antipathies, and the tastes of those whom we would gain; and then take care to provide them with the one, and to secure them from the other; giving them, genteelly, to understand, that you had observed they liked such a dish, or such a room; for which reason you had prepared it: or, on the contrary, that having observed they had an aversion to such a dish, a dislike to such a person, etc., you had taken care to avoid presenting them. Such attention to such trifles flatters self-love much more than greater things, as it makes people think themselves almost the only objects of your thoughts and care.
These are some of the arcana necessary for your initiation in the great society of the world. I wish I had known them better at your age; I have paid the price of three and fifty years for them, and shall not grudge it, if you reap the advantage. Adieu.
LONDON, DECEMBER 18, O.S. 1747
DEAR BOY,
As two mails are now due from Holland, I have no letters of yours or Mr. Harte’s to acknowledge; so that this letter is the effect of that scribendi cacoethes,* which my fears, my hopes, and my doubts, concerning you give me. When I have wrote you a very long letter upon any subject, it is no sooner gone, but I think I have omitted something in it, which might be of use to you; and then I prepare the supplement for the next post: or else some new subject occurs to me, upon which I fancy that I can give you some informations, or point out some rules which may be advantageous to you. This sets me to writing again, though God knows whether to any purpose or not; a few years more can only ascertain that. But, whatever my success may be, my anxiety and my care can only be the effects of that tender affection which I have for you; and which you cannot represent to yourself greater than it really is. But do not mistake the nature of that affection, and think it of a kind that you may with impunity abuse. It is not natural affection, there being in reality no such thing; for, if there were, some inward sentiment must necessarily and reciprocally discover the parent to the child, and the child to the parent, without any exterior indications, knowledge, or acquaintance whatsoever; which never happened since the creation of the world, whatever poets, romance, or novel writers, and such sentiment-mongers, may be pleased to say to the contrary. Neither is my affection for you that of a mother, of which the only, or at least the chief objects, are health and life: I wish you them both most heartily; but, at the same time, I confess they are by no means my principal care.
My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all. My affection for you then is, and only will be, proportioned to your merit, which is the only affection that one rational being ought to have for another. Hitherto I have discovered nothing wrong in your heart or your head: on the contrary, I think I see sense in the one, and sentiments in the other. This persuasion is the only motive of my present affection; which will either increase or diminish, according to your merit or demerit. If you have the knowledge, the honour, and probity which you may have, the marks and warmth of my affection shall amply reward them; but if you have them not, my aversion and indignation will rise in the same proportion; and, in that case, remember, that I am under no farther obligation, than to give you the necessary means of subsisting. If ever we quarrel, do not expect or depend upon any weakness in my nature, for a reconciliation, as children frequently do, and often meet with, from silly parents; I have no such weakness about me: and, as I will never quarrel with you but upon some essential point, if once we quarrel, I will never forgive. But I hope and believe, that this declaration (for it is no threat) will prove unnecessary. You are no stranger to the principles of virtue; and, surely, whoever knows virtue must love it. As for knowledge, you have already enough of it, to engage you to acquire more. The ignorant only either despise it, or think that they have enough: those who have the most, are always the most desirous to have more, and know that the most they can have is, alas! but too little.
Reconsider from time to time, and retain the friendly advice which I send you. The advantage will be all your own.
BATH, FEBRUARY 22, O.S. 1748
DEAR BOY,
Every excellency, and every virtue, has its kindred vice or weakness; and if carried beyond certain bounds, sinks into the one or the other. Generosity often runs into profusion, œconomy into avarice, courage into rashness, caution into timidity, and so on;—insomuch that, I believe, there is more judgment required, for the proper conduct of our virtues, than for avoiding their opposite vices. Vice in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight, and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not, at first, wear the mask of some virtue. But virtue is, in itself, so beautiful, that it charms us at first sight; engages us more and more upon farther acquaintance; and as with other beauties, we think excess impossible; it is here that judgment is necessary, to moderate and direct the effects of an excellent cause. I shall apply this reasoning, at present, not to any particular virtue, but to an excellency, which, for want of judgment, is often the cause of ridiculous and blameable effects; I mean, great learning; which, if not accompanied with sound judgment, frequently carries us into error, pride, and pedantry. As, I hope, you will posses that excellency in its utmost extent, and yet without its too common failings, the hints, which my experience can suggest, may probably not be useless to you.
Some learned men, proud of their knowledge, only speak to decide, and give judgment without appeal; the consequence of which is, that mankind, provoked by the insult, and injured by the oppression, revolt; and in order to shake off the tyranny, even call the lawful authority in question. The more you know, the modester you should be: and (by-the-bye) that modesty is the surest way of gratifying your vanity. Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful; represent, but do not pronounce, and if you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.
Others, to show their learning, or often from the prejudices of a school education, where they hear nothing else, are always talking of the ancients, as something more than men, and of the moderns, as something less. They are never without a classic or two in their pockets; they stick to the old good sense; they read none of the modern trash; and will show you, plainly, that no improvement has been made, in any one art or science, these last seventeen hundred years. I would by no means have you disown your acquaintance with the ancients: but still less would I have you brag of an exclusive intimacy with them. Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their ages; and if you happen to have an Elzeviriclassic* in your pocket, neither show it nor mention it.
Some great scholars, most absurdly, draw all their maxims, both for public and private life, from what they call parallel cases in the ancient authors; without considering that in the first place, there never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel; and in the next place, that there never was a case stated, or even known, by any historian, with every one of its circumstances; which, however, ought to be known, in order to be reasoned from. Reason upon the case itself, and the several circumstances that attend it, and act accordingly; but not from the authority of ancient poets, or historians. Take into your consideration, if you please, cases seemingly analogous; but take them as helps only, not as guides. We are really so prejudiced by our education, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen; of which, with all due regard for antiquity, I take Leonidas and Curtius* to have been two distinguished ones. And yet a solid pedant would, in a speech in parliament, relative to a tax of twopence in the pound upon some commodity or other, quote those two heroes as examples of what we ought to do and suffer for our country. I have known these absurdities carried so far by people of injudicious learning, that I should not be surprised, if some of them were to propose, while we are at war with the Gauls, that a number of geese should be kept in the Tower, upon account of the infinite advantage which Rome received in a parallel case, from a certain number of geese in the Capitol. This way of reasoning, and this way of speaking, will always form a poor politician, and a puerile declaimer.
There is another species of learned men who, though less dogmatical and supercilious, are not less impertinent. These are the communicative and shining pedants, who adorn their conversation, even with women, by happy quotations of Greek and Latin; and who have contracted such a familiarity with the Greek and Roman authors, that they call them by certain names or epithets denoting intimacy. As old Homer; that sly rogue Horace; Maro, instead of Virgil; and Naso, instead of Ovid. These are often imitated by coxcombs, who have no learning at all; but who have got some names and some scraps of ancient authors by heart, which they improperly and impertinently retail in all companies, in hopes of passing for scholars. If, therefore, you would avoid the accusation of pedantry on one hand, or the suspicion of ignorance on the other, abstain from learned ostentation. Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o’clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.
Upon the whole, remember that learning (I mean Greek and Roman learning) is a most useful and necessary ornament, which it is shameful not to be master of; but, at the same time, most carefully avoid those errors and abuses which I have mentioned, and which too often attend it. Remember, too, that great modern knowledge is still more necessary than ancient; and that you had better know perfectly the present, than the old state of Europe; though I would have you well acquainted with both.
I have this moment received your letter of the 17th, N.S. Though, I confess, there is no great variety in your present manner of life, yet materials can never be wanting for a letter; you see, you hear, or you read something new every day; a short account of which, with your own reflections thereupon, will make out a letter very well. But since you desire a subject, pray send me an account of the Lutheran establishment in Germany; their religious tenets, their church government, the maintenance, authority, and titles of their clergy.
Vittorio Siri,* complete, is a very scarce and very dear book here; but I do not want it. If your own library grows too voluminous, you will not know what to do with it, when you leave Leipsig. Your best way will be, when you go away from thence, to send to England, by Hamburg, all the books that you do not absolutely want. Yours.
BATH, FEBRUARY 23, O.S. 1748
Me voici, mon cher enfant, enjoying liberty and idleness, but attended with a great cold, which I got upon the road, in the coldest weather, and the deepest snow that I ever remember. This has hindered me from drinking the waters hitherto; but that is no great matter, as I came here more for the sake of quiet, and absence from London, while I was the only subject of conversation there, than for any great occasion that I had for the waters.
Without affectation, I feel most sensibly the comforts of my present free and quiet situation; and if I had much vanity in my composition, of which I really think that I have less than most people, even that vanity would be fully gratified, by the voice of the public upon this occasion. But, upon my word, all the busy tumultuous passions have subsided in me; and that not so much from philosophy, as from a little reflection upon a great deal of experience. I have been behind the scenes, both of pleasure and business. I have seen all the coarse pullies and dirty ropes, which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines; and I have seen and smelt the tallow-candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment and admiration of the ignorant audience.
Since my resignation, my brother, as you will have seen in the newspapers, is appointed Commissioner of the Admiralty,* which he never would have been as long as I had continued in, the resolution being taken to exclude all those who might otherwise have been supposed to have come in upon my interest. As I retire without quarrelling, and without the least intention to oppose, I saw no reason why my brother should decline this post; and I advised him to accept of it, and the rather as it was the King’s own doing.
George Stanhope* too, I am told, is now to have the rank of Colonel given him, which I could never procure him; so that it seems I have a much better interest out of place than I had in.
All goes well at Leipsig; the boy applies and improves more than I expected. Count and Countess Flemming, who saw him there, and who carried him to the Duchess of Courland’s, gave me a very good account of him; and assured me, that he was by no means the awkward English oaf, but passablement decrotté.* He shall stay there a year longer, and then go to Turin. If you should accidentally hear, or can procure, any memoirs of his private character, pray let me know them.
Remember the cautions which I gave you in one of my former letters. When Lord Sandwich goes to the Congress, you will have a great deal to do, and play a considerable part, at the Hague; which I know you are able to acquit yourself of very well. This, I think, will put you en train d’être Monsieur l’Envoyé, upon Lord Sandwich’s return to his post here, which will be before it is very long; for, however little peace is at present intended, necessity will soon make it by the means of the Maréchaux de Saxe et Lowendahl; and then, being upon the place,’! think you may reasonably ask, and probably obtain, the character and appointments of Envoy.*
The more to facilitate this point, make your court as much as possible to the Prince of Orange,
‘Et sachez qu’en ceci
La femme est comprise aussi.’*
For a word dropped in a private letter from sister to sister, may be of great use upon that occasion.
May you have all you wish!
Adieu, yours.
BATH, MARCH 9, O.S. 1748
DEAR BOY,
I must from time to time, remind you of what I have often recommended to you, and of what you cannot attend to too much; sacrifice to the Graces.* The different effects of the same things, said or done, when accompanied or abandoned by them, is almost inconceivable. They prepare the way to the heart; and the heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest. It is the whole of women, who are guided by nothing else; and it has so much to say, even with men, and the ablest men too, that it commonly triumphs in every struggle with the understanding. Monsieur de la Rochefoucault, in his Maxims, says, that l’esprit est souvent la dupe du cœur.* If he had said, instead of souvent, presque toujours, I fear he would have been nearer the truth. This being the case, aim at the heart. Intrinsic merit alone will not do; it will gain you the general esteem of all; but not the particular affection, that is, the heart, of any. To engage the affection of any particular person, you must, over and above your general merit, have some particular merit to that person, by services done, or offered; by expressions of regard and esteem; by complaisance, attentions, etc., for him: and the graceful manner of doing all these things opens the way to the heart, and facilitates, or rather insures, their effects. From your own observation, reflect what a disagreeable impression an awkward address, a slovenly figure, an ungraceful manner of speaking, whether stuttering, muttering, monotony, or drawling, an unattentive behaviour, etc., make upon you, at first sight, in a stranger, and how they prejudice you against him, though, for ought you know, he may have great intrinsic sense and merit. And reflect, on the other hand, how much the opposites of all these things prepossess you, at first sight, in favour of those who enjoy them. You wish to find all good qualities in them, and are in some degree disappointed if you do not. A thousand little things, not separately to be defined, conspire to form these graces, this je ne sçais quoi, that always pleases. A pretty person, genteel motions, a proper degree of dress, an harmonious voice, something open and cheerful in the countenance, but without laughing; a distinct and properly varied manner of speaking: all these things, and many others, are necessary ingredients in the composition of the pleasing je ne sçais quoi, which everybody feels, though nobody can describe. Observe carefully, then, what displeases or pleases you in others, and be persuaded, that, in general, the same things will please or displease them in you. Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners: it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it: they please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above. A man’s going to sit down, in the supposition that he has a chair behind him, and falling down upon his breech for want of one, sets a whole company a laughing, when all the wit in the world would not do it; a plain proof, in my mind, how low and unbecoming a thing laughing is: not to mention the disagreeable noise that it makes, and the shocking distortion of the face that it occasions. Laughter is easily restrained by a very little reflection; but as it is generally connected with the idea of gaiety, people do not enough attend to its absurdity. I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposition, and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody; but I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh. Many people, at first, from awkwardness and mauvaise honte,* have got a very disagreeable and silly trick of laughing whenever they speak: and I know a man of very good parts, Mr. Waller,* who cannot say the commonest thing without laughing; which makes those who do not know him take him at first for a natural fool.
This, and many other very disagreeable habits, are owing to mauvaise honte at their first setting out in the world. They are ashamed in company, and so disconcerted, that they do not know what they do, and try a thousand tricks to keep themselves in countenance; which tricks afterwards grow habitual to them. Some put their fingers in their nose, others scratch their head, others twirl their hats; in short, every awkward, ill-bred body has his trick. But the frequency does not justify the thing, and all these vulgar habits and awkwardnesses, though not criminal indeed, are most carefully to be guarded against, as they are great bars in the way of the art of pleasing. Remember that to please is almost to prevail, or at least a necessary previous step to it. You, who have your fortune to make, should more particularly study this art. You had not, I must tell you, when you left England, les manières prévenantes;* and I must confess they are not very common in England; but I hope that your good sense will make you acquire them abroad. If you desire to make yourself considerable in the world (as, if you have any spirit, you do), it must be entirely your own doing; for I may very possibly be out of the world at the time you come into it. Your own rank and fortune will not assist you; your merit and your manners can alone raise you to figure and fortune. I have laid the foundations of them, by the education which I have given you; but you must build the superstructure yourself….
I wish you a good Easter fair at Leipsig.* See, with attention, all the shops, drolls, tumblers, rope-dancers, and hoc genus omne:* but inform yourself more particularly of the several parts of trade there. Adieu!
LONDON, APRIL 1, O.S. 1748
DEAR BOY,
I have not received any letter, either from you or from Mr. Harte, these three posts, which I impute wholly to accidents between this place and Leipsig; and they are distant enough to admit of many. I always take it for granted that you are well, when I do not hear to the contrary; besides, as I have often told you, I am much more anxious about your doing well, than about your being well; and when you do not write, I will suppose that you are doing something more useful. Your health will continue, while your temperance continues; and at your age Nature takes sufficient care of the body, provided she is left to herself, and that intemperance on one hand, or medicines on the other, do not break in upon her. But it is by no means so with the mind, which, at your age particularly, requires great and constant care, and some physic. Every quarter of an hour, well or ill employed, will do it essential and lasting good or harm. It requires, also, a great deal of exercise, to bring it to a state of health and vigour. Observe the difference there is between minds cultivated and minds uncultivated, and you will, I am sure, think that you cannot take too much pains, nor employ too much of your time in the culture of your own. A drayman is probably born with as good organs as Milton, Locke, or Newton; but, by culture, they are much more above him than he is above his horse. Sometimes, indeed, extraordinary geniuses have broken out by the force of nature, without the assistance of education; but those instances are too rare for anybody to trust to; and even they would make a much greater figure, if they had the advantage of education into the bargain. If Shakespeare’s genius had been cultivated, those beauties, which we so justly admire in him, would have been undisgraced by those extravagancies, and that nonsense, with which they are frequently accompanied. People are, in general, what they are made, by education and company, from fifteen to five-and-twenty; consider well, therefore, the importance of your next eight or nine years; your whole depends upon them. I will tell you sincerely my hopes and fears concerning you. I think you will be a good scholar, and that you will acquire a considerable stock of knowledge of various kinds; but I fear that you neglect what are called little, though, in truth, they are very material things; I mean, a gentleness of manners, an engaging address, and an insinuating behaviour: they are real and solid advantages, and none but those who do not know the world treat them as trifles. I am told that you speak very quick, and not distinctly; this is a most ungraceful and disagreeable trick, which you know I have told you of a thousand times; pray attend carefully to the correction of it. An agreeable and distinct manner of speaking adds greatly to the matter; and I have known many a very good speech unregarded, upon account of the disagreeable manner in which it has been delivered, and many an indifferent one applauded, for the contrary reason. Adieu!
LONDON, APRIL 26, O.S. 1748
DEAR BOY,
I am extremely pleased with your continuation of the history of the Reformation; which is one of those important eras that deserve your utmost attention, and of which you cannot be too minutely informed. You have, doubtless, considered the causes of that great event, and observed that disappointment and resentment had a much greater share in it, than a religious zeal or an abhorrence of the errors and abuses of popery.
Luther, an Augustin monk, enraged that his order, and consequently himself, had not the exclusive privilege of selling indulgences, but that the Dominicans were let into a share of that profitable but infamous trade, turns reformer, and exclaims against the abuses, the corruption, and the idolatry, of the Church of Rome; which were certainly gross enough for him to have seen long before, but which he had at least acquiesced in, till what he called the rights, that is the profit, of his order came to be touched. It is true, the Church of Rome furnished him ample matter for complaint and reformation, and he laid hold of it ably. This seems to me the true cause of that great and necessary work; but whatever the cause was, the effect was good; and the Reformation spread itself by its own truth and fitness; was conscientiously received by great numbers in Germany, and other countries; and was soon afterwards mixed up with the politics of princes; and, as it always happens in religious disputes, became the specious covering of injustice and ambition.
Under the pretence of crushing heresy, as it was called, the House of Austria meant to extend and establish its power in the empire: as, on the other hand, many Protestant Princes, under the pretence of extirpating idolatry, or at least of securing toleration, meant only to enlarge their own dominions or privileges. These views respectively, among the chiefs on both sides, much more than true religious motives, continued what were called the religious wars in Germany, almost uninterruptedly, till the affairs of the two religions were finally settled by the treaty of Munster.*
Were most historical events traced up to their true causes, I fear we should not find them much more noble, nor disinterested, than Luther’s disappointed avarice; and therefore I look with some contempt upon those refining and sagacious historians, who ascribe all, even the most common events, to some deep political cause; whereas mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character. The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely. Our jarring passions, our variable humours, nay, our greater or lesser degree of health and spirits, produce such contradictions in our conduct, that, I believe, those are the oftenest mistaken, who ascribe our actions to the most seemingly obvious motives: and I am convinced that a light supper, a good night’s sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward. Our best conjectures, therefore, as to the true springs of actions, are but very uncertain; and the actions themselves are all that we must pretend to know from history. That Caesar was murdered by twenty-three conspirators I make no doubt: but I very much doubt that their love of liberty and of their country was their sole, or even principal motive; and I dare say that if the truth were known, we should find that many other motives at least concurred, even in the great Brutus himself; such as pride, envy, personal pique, and disappointment. Nay, I cannot help carrying my Pyrrhonism* still farther, and extending it often to historical facts themselves, at least to most of the circumstances with which they are related; and every day’s experience confirms me in this historical incredulity. Do we ever hear the most recent fact related exactly in the same way by the several people who were at the same time eye-witnesses of it? No. One mistakes, another misrepresents; and others warp it a little to their own turn of mind, or private views. A man who has been concerned in a transaction, will not write it fairly; and a man who has not, cannot. But notwithstanding all this uncertainty, history is not the less necessary to be known; as the best histories are taken for granted, and are the frequent subjects both of conversation and writing. Though I am convinced that Caesar’s ghost never appeared to Brutus, yet I should be much ashamed to be ignorant of that fact, as related by the historians of those times. Thus the Pagan theology is universally received as matter for writing and conversation, though believed now by nobody; and we talk of Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, etc., as gods, though we know that, if they ever existed at all, it was only as mere mortal men. This historical Pyrrhonism, then, proves nothing against the study and knowledge of history; which, of all other studies, is the most necessary for a man who is to live in the world. It only points out to us, not to be too decisive and peremptory; and to be cautious how we draw inferences, for our own practice, from remote facts, partially or ignorantly related; of which we can at best, but imperfectly guess, and certainly not know the real motives. The testimonies of ancient history must necessarily be weaker than those of modern, as all testimony grows weaker and weaker, as it is more and more remote from us. I would therefore advise you to study ancient history, in general as other people do; that is, not to be ignorant of any of those facts which are universally received upon the faith of the best historians; and whether true or false, you have them as other people have them. But modern history, I mean particularly that of the three last centuries, is what I would have you apply to with the greatest attention and exactness. There the probability of coming at the truth is much greater, as the testimonies are much more recent; besides, anecdotes, memoirs, and original letters, often come to the aid of modern history. The best Memoirs that I know of are those of Cardinal de Retz,* which I have once before recommended to you; and which I advise you to read more than once, with attention. There are many political maxims in these memoirs, most of which are printed in italics; pray attend to, and remember them. I never read them, but my own experience confirms the truth of them. Many of them seem trifling to people who are not used to business; but those who are, feel the truth of them.
It is time to put an end to this long rambling letter; in which if any one thing can be of use to you, it will more than pay the trouble I have taken to write it. Adieu! Yours.
LONDON, MAY 10, O.S. 1748
DEAR BOY,
I reckon that this letter will find you just returning from Dresden,* where you have made your first court caravanne. What inclination for courts this taste of them may have given you, I cannot tell; but this I think myself sure of, from your good sense, that in leaving Dresden, you have left dissipation too; and have resumed, at Leipsig, that application, which, if you like courts, can alone enable you to make a good figure at them. A mere courtier, without parts or knowledge, is the most frivolous and contemptible of all beings; as, on the other hand, a man of parts and knowledge, who acquires the easy and noble manners of a court, is the most perfect. It is a trite, commonplace observation, that courts are the seats of falsehood and dissimulation. That, like many, I might say most commonplace observations, is false. Falsehood and dissimulation are certainly to be found at courts; but where are they not to be found? Cottages have them, as well as courts; only with worse manners. A couple of neighbouring farmers in a village will contrive and practise as many tricks to overreach each other at the next market, or to supplant each other in the favour of the squire, as any two courtiers can do to supplant each other in the favour of their prince.
Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true—that shepherds and ministers are both men; their nature and passions the same, the modes of them only different.
Having mentioned commonplace observations, I will particularly caution you against either using, believing or approving them. They are the common topics of witlings and coxcombs; those who really have wit have the utmost contempt for them, and scorn even to laugh at the pert things that those wouldbe wits say upon such subjects.
Religion is one of their favourite topics; it is all priestcraft; and an invention contrived and carried on by priests of all religions for their own power and profit; from this absurd and false principle flow the commonplace insipid jokes, and insults upon the clergy. With these people, every priest, of every religion, is either a public or concealed unbeliever, drunkard, and whoremaster; whereas, I conceive, that priests are extremely like other men, and neither the better nor the worse for wearing a gown or a surplice; but if they are different from other people, probably it is rather on the side of religion and morality, or, at least, decency, from their education and manner of life.
Another common topic for false wit and cold raillery, is matrimony. Every man and his wife hate each other cordially; whatever they may pretend, in public, to the contrary. The husband certainly wishes his wife at the devil, and the wife certainly cuckolds her husband. Whereas, I presume that men and their wives neither love nor hate each other the more, upon account of the form of matrimony which has been said over them. The cohabitation, indeed, which is the consequence of matrimony, makes them either love or hate more, accordingly as they respectively deserve it; but that would be exactly the same, between any man and woman, who lived together without being married.
These and many other commonplace reflections upon nations or professions in general (which are at least as often false as true), are the poor refuge of people who have neither wit nor invention of their own, but endeavour to shine in company by secondhand finery. I always put these pert jackanapes out of countenance, by looking extremely grave, when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so; as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them; as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon. Men of parts are not reduced to these shifts, and have the utmost contempt for them; they find proper subjects enough for either useful or lively conversations; they can be witty without satire or commonplace, and serious without being dull. The frequentation of courts checks this petulancy of manners; the good-breeding and circumspection which are necessary, and only to be learned there, correct those pertnesses. I do not doubt but that you are improved in your manners, by the short visit which you have made at Dresden; and the other courts, which I intend that you shall be better acquainted with, will gradually smooth you up to the highest polish. In courts, a versatility of genius and a softness of manners, are absolutely necessary; which some people mistake for abject flattery, and having no opinion of one’s own; whereas it is only the decent and genteel manner of maintaining your own opinion, and possibly of bringing other people to it. The manner of doing things is often more important than the things themselves; and the very same thing may become either pleasing or offensive, by the manner of saying or doing it. Materiam superabat opus,* is often said of works of sculpture: where, though the materials were valuable, as silver, gold, etc., the workmanship was still more so. This holds true, applied to manners; which adorn whatever knowledge or parts people may have; and even make a greater impression upon nine in ten of mankind, than the intrinsic value of the materials. On the other hand, remember, that what Horace says of good writing is justly applicable to those who would make a good figure in courts, and distinguish themselves in the shining parts of life; Sapere est principium et fans.* A man who, without a good fund of knowledge and parts, adopts a court life, makes the most ridiculous figure imaginable. He is a machine, little superior to the court clock; and as this points out the hours, he points out the frivolous employment of them. He is, at most, a comment upon the clock; and according to the hours that it strikes, tells you now it is levee, now dinner, now supper time, etc. The end which I propose by your education, and which (if you please) I shall certainly attain, is to unite in you all the knowledge of a scholar with the manners of a courtier; and to join, what is seldom joined in any of my countrymen, books and the world. They are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster, and the fellows of their college. If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin, but not one word of modern history, or modern languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad, as they call it; but, in truth, they stay at home all that while; for being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at least none good; but dine and sup with one another only at the tavern. Such examples, I am sure, you will not imitate, but even carefully avoid. You will always take care to keep the best company in the place where you are, which is the only use of travelling: and (by the way) the pleasures of a gentleman are only to be found in the best company; for that riot which low company most falsely and impudently call pleasure, is only the sensuality of a swine.
I ask hard and uninterrupted study from you but one year more; after that, you shall have every day more and more time for your amusements. A few hours each day will then be sufficient for application, and the others cannot be better employed than in the pleasures of good company. Adieu!
LONDON, JULY 1, O.S. 1748
DEAR BOY,
I am extremely well pleased with the course of studies which Mr. Harte informs me you are now in, and with the degree of application which he assures me you have to them. It is your interest to do so, as the advantage will be all your own. My affection for you makes me both wish and endeavour that you may turn out well; and, according as you do turn out, I shall be either proud or ashamed of you. But as to mere interest, in the common acceptation of that word, it would be mine that you should turn out ill; for you may depend upon it, that whatever you have from me shall be most exactly proportioned to your desert. Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal; deserve little, and you shall have but little; and be good for nothing at all, and I assure you you shall have nothing at all.
Solid knowledge, as I have often told you, is the first and great foundation of your future fortune and character; for I never mention to you the two much greater points of Religion and Morality, because I cannot possibly suspect you as to either of them. This solid knowledge you are in a fair way of acquiring; you may, if you please; and I will add, that nobody ever had the means of acquiring it more in their power than you have. But remember, that manners must adorn, knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but it will never be worn, nor shine, if it is not polished. It is upon this article, I confess, that I suspect you the most, which makes me recur to it so often; for I fear that you are apt to show too little attention to everybody, and too much contempt to many. Be convinced, that there are no persons so insignificant and inconsiderable, but may, some time or other, have it in their power to be of use to you; which they certainly will not, if you have once shown them contempt. Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it for ever. It implies a discovery of weaknesses, which we are much more careful to conceal than crimes. Many a man will confess his crimes to a common friend, but I never knew a man who would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one—as many a friend will tell us our faults without reserve, who will not so much as hint at our follies. That discovery is too mortifying to our self-love, either to tell another, or to be told of one’s self. You must therefore never expect to hear of your weaknesses, or your follies, from anybody but me; those I will take pains to discover, and whenever I do, shall tell you of them.
Next to manners are exterior graces of person and address; which adorn manners, as manners adorn knowledge. To say that they please, engage, and charm, as they most indisputably do, is saying, that one should do everything possible to acquire them. The graceful manner of speaking is, particularly, what I shall always holla in your ears, as Hotspur hollaed Mortimer to Henry the Fourth, and, like him too, I have aimed to have a starling taught to say, Speak distinctly and gracefully, and send him you, to replace your loss of the unfortunate Matzel;* who, by the way, I am told spoke his language very distinctly and gracefully.
As by this time you must be able to write German tolerably well, I desire you will not fail to write a German letter, in the German character, once every fortnight, to Mr. Grevenkop;* which will make it more familiar to you, and enable me to judge how you improve in it.
Do not forget to answer me the questions, which I asked you a great while ago, in relation to the constitution of Saxony; and also the meaning of the words Landsassii and Amptsassii.*
I hope you do not forget to inquire into the affairs of trade and commerce, nor to get the best accounts you can of the commodities and manufactures, exports and imports, of the several countries where you may be, and their gross value.
I would likewise have you attend to the respective coins, gold, silver, copper, etc., and their value, compared with our coins; for which purpose, I would advise you to put up, in a separate piece of paper, one piece of every kind, wherever you shall be, writing upon it the name and value. Such a collection will be curious enough in itself; and that sort of knowledge will be very useful to you in your way of business, where the different value of money often comes in question.
I am going to Cheltenham to-morrow, less for my health, which is pretty good, than for the dissipation and amusement of the journey. I shall stay about a fortnight.
L’Abbé Mably’s* Droit de l’Europe, which Mr. Harte is so kind as to send me, is worth your reading. Adieu.
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 5, O.S. 1748
DEAR BOY,
I have received yours, with the enclosed German letter to Mr. Grevenkop, 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. Grevenkop; 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 procure you the necessary informations; which I desire you will enter in your litde 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 die 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 lien 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 pry, 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 analyse 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 endeavouring 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 favourite.
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 Réflexions Morales de Monsieur de la Rochefoucault, and Les Caractères de La Bruyère:* 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 blameable motive, when we take the immediate and indiscriminate gratification of a passion, or appetite, for real happiness. But am I blameable, 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 déplaît 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 chicance* 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 Bruyère are pictures from the life; most of them finely drawn, and highly coloured. 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 towards 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 humour always breaks in 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, humours 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 mark 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 covetous, 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 not 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 for ever; 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!
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 this distinguishes the Latin of a 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 schoolboys, 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 favourite 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, optumè than optimè, 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 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, siferociam 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-defence. 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 defence, 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 authorise, 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 any one 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 of 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 skilful 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 to puzzle people of some degree of knowledge, to answer me point by point. I have seen a book, intituled 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, is 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 return always to settle with common sense.
I stumbled, the other day, at a bookseller’s, upon Comte de 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 Cabalists 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 gave 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 Cabalist, 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, whom 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 to me without reserve, you may depend upon my inviolable secrecy. If you have ever looked into the Letters of Madame de Sevigné* to her daughter, Madame de Grignan, you must have observed the ease, freedom, and friendship of that correspondence; and yet, I hope, and believe, 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 gendeman’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 behaviour, 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 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 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 extérieur brillant, 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 litde reflection, and less knowledge; but who, by their good-breeding, and train-train* 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!
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, every one 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 neighbour), 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 to each other; and if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavour 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 pretence 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 sympathising with, and endeavouring 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 outré, 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 poet would not venture to set them upon the stage in their true and high colouring.
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 extravagancies, 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 and reserved 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 observing 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; for though the 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 favourite 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 practise 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 Cameleon, 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 abovementioned 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 te luventas
Mercuriusque.*
They are not inexorable Ladies, and may be had, if properly and diligently pursued. Adieu!
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; 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. Those 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 heads 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 levelled 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, 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 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 situation 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, humour, 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 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 noble 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-humour, good-breeding, and (if you have it) with urbanity; for you have not yet beard 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 groupe 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 pre-eminence 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 entided 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 neighbouring 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 manières 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 manières 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 manières 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 coloured, or thrown into skilful 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 colours of a French regiment of grenadiers; it was represented bursting with this motto under it: Perearn 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!
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 contemplation of the ancient statues, there is written, Non mai a bastanza; There never can be enough. But in the clouds, at top of the piece, are represented the three Graces; with this just sentence written over them, Senza di not ogni fatica è vana; that is, Without us, all labour is vain. This everybody allows to be true in painting; but all people do not 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 farther, and, as the transition from Popery to Paganism is short and easy, I will classically and 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 find 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 which 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 Amédée* 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 polítest, and les plus déliés.* 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 mat 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 favourite 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 grey in business, and who had governed the republic of the United Provinces for more than forty years, was absolutely governed by the Duke of Marl-borough, 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 can 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 that 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 received 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 aimable 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!
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 towards 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 Hamburgh, 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 tribe 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 Pluralité des Mondes,* which you may read in two hours’ time, will both inform and please you. God bless you!
Yours.
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 afterwards 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 εε and your εε in zig-zag, 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 extremely 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 endeavours and your speed will slacken, in finishing the small remains of your course. Consider what lustre and éclat it will give you, when you return here, to be allowed to be the best scholar, of 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 part 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 the 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 favourite, 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 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 post-house 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 favour, 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 favour; and that you true Germans cannot allow Danes to be competent judges of your language, etc.
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; 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 unexperienced 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 defence, 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 yourselves 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 afterwards; 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 these 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 I desire of you is, that you will never slattern away one minute in idleness, and in doing 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 only can 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 a 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 M. Descartes’s 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 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, 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 I could expect, or hope, from the sagacity of the person.
I send you, my dear child (and you will not doubt) 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, honour, and knowledge, alone can merit, alone can procure. Dii tibi dent annos, de te nam caetera 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 whenever I cannot apply the latter part of the line to you with truth, I shall neither say, think, nor wish the former. Adieu!
LONDON, JANUARY 10, O.S. 1749
DEAR BOY,
I have received your letter of the 31st December, N.S-Your thanks for my present, as you call it, exceed the value of the present; but the use, which you assure me that you will make of it is the thanks which I desire to receive. Due attention to the inside of books, and due contempt for the outside, is the proper relation between a man of sense and his books.
Now that you are going a little more into the world, I will take this occasion to explain my intentions as to your future expenses, that you may know what you have to expect from me, and make your plan accordingly. I shall neither deny nor grudge you any money that may be necessary for either your improvement or your pleasures; I mean the pleasures of a rational being. Under the head of improvement, I mean the best books, and the best masters, cost what they will; I also mean, all the expense of lodgings, coach, dress, servants, etc., which, according to the several places where you may be, shall be respectively necessary to enable you to keep the best company. Under the head of rational pleasures, I comprehend, first, proper charities, to real and compassionate objects of it; secondly, proper presents to those to whom you are obliged, or whom you desire to oblige; thirdly, a conformity of expense to that of the company which you keep; as in public spectacles; your share of little entertainments; a few pistoles at games of mere commerce; and other incidental calls of good company. The only two articles which I will never supply are, the profusion of low riot, and the idle lavishness of negligence and laziness. A fool squanders away, without credit or advantage to himself, more than a man of sense spends with both. The latter employs his money as he does his time, and never spends a shilling of the one, nor a minute of the other, but in something that is either useful or rationally pleasing to himself or others. The former buys whatever he does not want, and does not pay for what he does want. He cannot withstand the charms of a toy-shop; snuff-boxes, watches, heads of canes, etc., are his destruction. His servants and tradesmen conspire with his own indolence to cheat him; and in a very little time, he is astonished, in the midst of all the ridiculous superfluities, to find himself in want of all the real comforts and necessaries of life. Without care and method, the largest fortune will not, and with them almost the smallest will, supply all necessary expenses. As far as you can possibly, pay ready money for everything you buy, and avoid bills. Pay that money too yourself, and not through the hands of any servant, who always either stipulates poundage, or requires a present for his good word, as they call it. Where you must have bills (as for meat and drink, clothes, etc.), pay them regularly every month, and with your own hand. Never, from a mistaken economy, buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap; or from a silly pride, because it is dear. Keep an account, in a book, of all that you receive, and of all that you pay; for no man who knows what he receives and what he pays, ever runs out. I do not mean that you should keep an account of the shillings and half-crowns which you may spend in chair-hire, operas, etc.: they are unworthy of the time, and of the ink that they would consume; leave such minutiae to dull, penny-wise fellows; but remember, in economy, as well as in every other part of life, to have the proper attention to proper objects, and the proper contempt for little ones. A strong mind sees things in their true proportion; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium; which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea; magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones. I have known many a man pass for a miser, by saving a penny, and wrangling for twopence, who was undoing himself at the same time by living above his income, and not attending to essential articles, which were above his portée.* The sure characteristic of a sound and strong mind, is to find in everything, those certain bounds, quos ultra citrave nequit consistere rectum.* These boundaries are marked out by a very fine line, which only good sense and attention can discover; it is much too fine for vulgar eyes. In manners, this line is good-breeding; beyond it, is troublesome ceremony; short of it, is unbecoming negligence and inattention. In morals, it divides ostentatious puritanism from criminal relaxation; in religion, superstition from impiety: and in short, every virtue from its kindred vice or weakness. I think you have sense enough to discover the line; keep it always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you, till you are able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer people who walk well upon that line than upon the slack rope, and therefore a good performer shines so much the more….
Remember to take the best dancing-master at Berlin, more to teach you to sit, stand, and walk gracefully, than to dance finely. The Graces, the Graces; remember the Graces! Adieu !
LONDON, APRIL 25, O.S. 1749
DEAR DAYROLLES,
I am now three letters in your debt, which I would have paid more punctually, if I had any tolerable current species to have paid you in: but I have nothing but farthings to offer, and most of them, too, counterfeit; for being, thank God, no longer concerned in the coinage, I cannot answer for the weight of the coin. I hear, as everybody does, more lies than truth, and am not in a situation of knowing which is which. It is said, for example, that our great men are reconciled, and I believe that they say so themselves; but I believe at the same time que le diable n’y perd rien. One Grace is too jealous not to suspect his best friend, and the other Grace too obstinate to forgive or forget the least injury. Lord Sandwich, who governs the latter, and detests the former, who in return abhors him, takes care to keep this fire alive, so that he may blow it into a flame whenever it may serve his purpose to do so; and I am much mistaken, if he does not make it blaze often.*
The Prince of Wales gains strength in Parliament in proportion as the King grows older; and Mr. Pelham loses ground there from the public conviction that he has but little power, which indeed I believe is true; the Army being entirely in the Duke of Cumberland, the Navy in Lord Sandwich, and the whole Church in the Duke of Newcastle. All other employments are scrambled for; and sometimes one Minister, and sometimes another, gets one. The situation of things little enables Mr. Pelham to satisfy the hungry and greedy rascals of the House of Commons, and consequently creates schisms and subdivisions in the Court party.* The next Session will produce events.
However disjointedly business may go on, pleasures, I can assure you, go roundly. To-morrow there is to be, at Ranelagh Garden, a masquerade in the Venetian manner. It is to begin at three o’clock in the afternoon; the several loges are to be shops for toys, limonades, glaces, and other rafraîchissemens. The next day come the fireworks, at which hundreds of people will certainly lose their lives or their limbs, from the tumbling of scaffolds, the fall of rockets, and other accidents inseparable from such crowds. In order to repair this loss to society, there will be a subscription masquerade on the Monday following, which, upon calculation, it is thought, will be the occasion of getting about the same number of people as were destroyed at the fireworks.*
I hear nothing yet of Lord Holderness* going to Holland, and therefore do not ask you when I may hope to see you here; for I suppose that his arrival must be previous to your departure: moreover, I am told that you are so busy in moving from one house to another, that you could not yet move from one country to another. Where is your new dwelling at the Hague?
I am glad to hear that Madame de Berkenroodt* goes Ambassadress to Paris; she will pass her time well there, and she deserves it. Pray make her my compliments of congratulation, and tell her that I am strongly tempted to pay my respects to her at Paris myself; but that, if I cannot, I will at least do it by proxy this winter twelvemonth, and send her an Ambassador about forty years younger, and consequently forty times better than myself. My boy will then be at Paris; he is now at Venice, goes to Turin till November, and then to Rome till the October following, when I shall emancipate him at Paris. I hear so well of him from all quarters, that I think he will do. Adieu; portez vous bien, et aimez mot toujours.*
LONDON, JULY 20, O.S. 1749.
DEAR BOY,
I wrote to Mr. Harte last Monday, the 17th, O.S., in answer to his letter of the 20th June, N.S., which I had received but the day before, after an interval of eight posts, during which I did not know whether you or he existed, and indeed I began to think that you did not. By that letter you ought at this time to be at Venice; where I hope you are arrived in perfect health, after the baths of Tieffer,* in case you have made use of them. I hope they are not hot baths, if your lungs are still tender.
Your friend, the Comte d’Einsiedlen, is arrived here; he has been at my door, and I have been at his; but we have not yet met. He will dine with me some day this week. Comte Lascaris* inquires after you very frequently, and with great affection; pray answer the letter which I forwarded to you a great while ago from him. You may enclose your answer to me, and I will take care to give it him. Those attentions ought never to be omitted; they cost little, and please a great deal; but the neglect of them offends more than you can yet imagine. Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done, or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world. Examine youself why you like such and such people, and dislike such and such others; and you will find, that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes. Moral virtues are the foundation of society in general, and of friendship in particular; but attentions, manners, and graces both adorn and strengthen them. My heart is so set upon your pleasing, and consequently succeeding, in the world, that possibly I have already (and probably shall again) repeat the same things over and over to you. However, to err, if I do err, on the surer side, I shall continue to communicate to you those observations upon the world which long experience has enabled me to make, and which I have generally found to hold true. Your youth and talents, armed with my experience, may go a great way; and that armour is very much at your service, if you please to wear it. I premise that it is not my imagination, but my memory, that gives you these rules: I am not writing pretty, but useful reflections. A man of sense soon discovers, because he carefully observes, where, and how long, he is welcome; and takes care to leave the company, at least as soon as he is wished out of it. Fools never perceive where they are either ill-timed or ill-placed.
I am this moment agreeably stopped, in the course of my reflections, by the arrival of Mr. Harte’s letter of the 13th July, N.S., to Mr. Grevenkop, with one enclosed for your Mamma. I find by it that many of his and your letters to me must have miscarried; for he says, that I have had regular accounts of you: whereas all those accounts have been only, his letter of the 6th and yours of the 7th June, N.S.; his of the 20th June, N.S., to me; and now his of the 13th July, N.S., to Mr. Grevenkop. However, since you are so well, as Mr. Harte says you are, all is well. I am extremely glad you have no complaint upon your lungs; but I desire that you will think you have, for three or four months to come. Keep in a course of asses’ or goats’ milk, for one is as good as the other, and possibly the latter is the best; and let your common food be as pectoral as you can conveniently make it. Pray tell Mr. Harte that, according to his desire, I have wrote a letter of thanks to Mr. Firmian.* I hope you write to him too, from time to time. The letters of recommendation of a man of his merit and learning will, to be sure, be of great use to you among the learned world in Italy; that is, provided you take care to keep up the character he gives you in them; otherwise they will only add to your disgrace.
Consider that you have lost a good deal of time by your illness; fetch it up now you are well. At present you should be a good economist of your moments, of which company and sights will claim a considerable share; so that those which remain for study must be not only attentively, but greedily employed. But indeed I do not suspect you of one single moment’s idleness in the whole day. Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools. I do not call good company and liberal pleasures, idleness; far from it: I recommend to you a good share of both.
I send you here enclosed a letter for Cardinal Alexander Albani, which you will give him as soon as you get to Rome, and before you deliver any others; the Purple expects that preference; go next to the Due de Nivernois,* to whom you are recommended by several people at Paris, as well as by myself. Then you may carry your other letters occasionally.
Remember to pry narrowly into every part of the government of Venice; inform yourself of the History of that Republic, especially of its most remarkable aeras; such as the Ligue de Cambray, in 1509, by which it had like to have been destroyed; and the conspiracy formed by the Marquis de Bedmar, the Spanish Ambassador, to subject it to the Crown of Spain.* The famous disputes between that Republic and the Pope are worth your knowledge; and the writings of the celebrated and learned Frà Paolo di Sarpi.* upon that occasion, worth your reading. It was once the greatest commercial Power in Europe, and in the 14th and 15th centuries, made a considerable figure; but at present its commerce is decayed, and its riches consequently decreased; and far from meddling now with the affairs of the Continent, it owes its security to its neutrality and inefficiency; and that security will last no longer than till one of the great Powers in Europe engrosses the rest of Italy; an event which this century possibly may, but which the next probably will see.*
Your friend Comte d’Einsiedlen, and his Governor, have been with me this moment, and delivered me your letter from Berlin, of February the 28th, N.S. I like them both so well, that I am glad you did; and still more glad to hear what they say of you. Go on, and continue to deserve the praises of those who deserve praises themselves. Adieu!
I break open this letter to acknowledge yours of the 30th June, N.S., which I have but this instant received, though thirteen days antecedent in date to Mr. Harte’s last. I never in my life heard of bathing four hours a day; and I am impatient to hear of your safe arrival at Venice, after so extraordinary an operation.
LONDON, AUGUST 10, O.S. 1749
DEAR BOY,
Let us resume our reflections upon men, their characters, their manners, in a word, our reflections upon the world. They may help you to form yourself and to know others; a knowledge very useful at all ages, very rare at yours. It seems as if it were nobody’s business to communicate it to young men. Their masters teach them, singly, the languages, or the sciences of their several departments; and are indeed generally incapable of teaching diem the world; their parents are often so too, or at least neglect doing it; either from avocations, indifference, or from an opinion, that throwing them into the world (as they call it) is the best way of teaching it them. This last notion is in a great degree true; that is, the world can doubtless never be well known by theory; practice is absolutely necessary; but surely, it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country, full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveller.
There is a certain dignity of manners absolutely necessary, to make even the most valuable character either respected or respectable.
Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, waggery, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man. Indiscrimate familiarity either offends your superiors, or else dubs you their dependant, and led captain. It gives your inferiors just, but troublesome and improper claims of equality. A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit. Whoever is admitted or sought for, in company, upon any other account than that of his merit and manners, is never respected there, but only made use of. We will have such-a-one, for he sings prettily; we will invite such-a-one to a ball, for he dances well; we will have such-a-one at supper, for he is always joking and laughing; we will ask another, because he plays deep at all games, or because he can drink a great deal. These are all vilifying distinctions, mortifying preferences, and exclude all ideas of esteem and regard. Whoever is had (as it is called) in company for the sake of any one thing singly, is singly that thing, and will never be considered in any other light; consequently never respected, let his merits be what they will.
This dignity of manners, which I recommend so much to you, is not only as different from pride, as true courage is from blustering, or true wit from joking; but is absolutely inconsistent with it; for nothing vilifies and degrades more than pride. The pretensions of the proud man are oftener treated with sneer and contempt than with indignation; as we offer ridiculously too little to a tradesman who asks ridiculously too much for his goods; but we do not haggle with one who only asks a just and reasonable price.
Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one’s own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people’s, preserve dignity.
Vulgar, low expressions, awkward motions and address, vilify, as they imply, either a very low turn of mind, or low education and low company.
Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and a laborious attention to little objects, which neither require nor deserve a moment’s thought, lower a man; who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz, very sagaciously, marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him he had wrote three years with the same pen,* and that it was an excellent good one still.
A certain degree of exterior seriousness in looks and motions gives dignity, without excluding wit and decent cheerfulness, which are always serious themselves. A constant smirk upon the face, and a whiffling activity of the body, are strong indications of futility. Whoever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is about is too big for him. Haste and hurry are very different things.
I have only mentioned some of those things which may, and do, in the opinion of the world, lower and sink characters in other respects valuable enough, but I have taken no notice of those that affect and sink the moral characters. They are sufficiently obvious. A man who has patiently been kicked may as well pretend to courage as a man blasted by vices and crimes may to dignity of any kind. But an exterior decency and dignity of manners will even keep such a man longer from sinking than otherwise he would be: of such consequence is the τó πρEπον, even though affected and put on! Pray read frequently, and with the utmost attention, nay, get by heart, if you can, that incomparable chapter in Cicero’s Offices, upon the τó πρέπον, or the Decorum.* It contains whatever is necessary for the dignity of manners.
In my next I will send you a general map of courts; a region yet unexplored by you; but which you are one day to inhabit. The ways are generally crooked and full of turnings, sometimes strewed with flowers, sometimes choked up with briars; rotten ground and deep pits frequently lie concealed under a smooth and pleasing surface; all the paths are slippery, and every slip is dangerous. Sense and discretion must accompany you at your first setting out; but notwithstanding those, till experience is your guide, you will every now and then step out of your way or stumble.
Lady Chesterfield has just now received your German letter, for which she thanks you; she says the language is very correct; and I can plainly see that the character is well formed, not to say better than your English character. Continue to write German frequently, that it may become quite familiar to you. Adieu!
LONDON, AUGUST 21, O.S. 1749
DEAR BOY,
By the last letter that I received from Mr. Harte, of the 31st July, N.S., I suppose you are now either at Venice or Verona, and perfectly recovered of your late illness: which, I am daily more and more convinced, had no consumptive tendency; however, for some time still, faites comme s’il y en avoit,* be regular, and live pectorally.
You will soon be at courts, where, though you will not be concerned, yet reflection and observation upon what you see and hear there may be of use to you, when hereafter you may come to be concerned in courts yourself. Nothing in courts is exactly as it appears to be; often very different; sometimes directly contrary. Interest, which is the real spring of everything there, equally creates and dissolves friendships, produces and reconciles enmities; or rather, allows of neither real friendships nor enmities; for as Dryden very justly observes, Politicians neither love nor hate.* This is so true, that you may think you connect yourself with two friends to-day, and be obliged to-morrow to make your option between them as enemies: observe, therefore, such a degree of reserve with your friends, as not to put yourself in their power, if they should become your enemies; and such a degree of moderation with your enemies, as not to make it impossible for them to become your friends.
Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good-breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other, if manners did not interpose; but ambition and avarice, the two prevailing passions at courts, found dissimulation more effectual than violence; and dissimulation introduced that habit of politeness, which distinguishes the courtier from the country gentleman. In the former case the strongest body would prevail; in the latter, the strongest mind.
A man of parts and efficiency need not flatter everybody at court; but he must take great care to offend nobody personally; it being in the power of very many to hurt him, who cannot serve him. Homer supposes a chain let down from Jupiter to the earth, to connect him with mortals.* There is, at all courts, a chain which connects the prince or the minister with the page of the back-stairs or the chambermaid. The king’s wife, or mistress, has an influence over him; a lover has an influence over her; the chambermaid, or the valet de chambre has an influence over both; and so ad infinitum. You must, therefore, not break a link of that chain, by which you hope to climb up to the Prince.
You must renounce courts, if you will not connive at knaves, and tolerate fools. Their number makes them considerable. You should as little quarrel as connect yourself with either.
Whatever you say or do at court, you may depend upon it, will be known; the business of most of those who crowd levees and antichambers being to repeat all that they see or hear, and a great deal that they neither see nor hear, according as they are inclined to the persons concerned, or according to the wishes of those to whom they hope to make their court. Great caution is therefore necessary; and if, to great caution you can join seeming frankness and openness, you will unite what Machiavel reckons very difficult, but very necessary to be united; volto sciolto e pensieri stretti.*
Women are very apt to be mingled in court intrigues; but they deserve attention better than confidence; to hold by them is a very precarious tenure.
I am agreeably interrupted in these reflections by a letter which I have this moment received from Baron Firmian. It contains your panegyric, and with the strongest protestations imaginable that he does you only justice. I received this favourable account of you with pleasure, and I communicate it to you with as much. While you deserve praise, it is reasonable you should know that you meet with it; and I make no doubt, but it will encourage you in persevering to deserve it. This is one paragraph of the Baron’s letter. ‘Ses mœurs dans un âge si tendre, réglées selon toutes les lois d’une morale exacte et sensée; son application (that is what I like) à tout ce qui s’ appelle étude sérieuse, et Belles-Lettres, éloignée de l’ombre même d’un Faste Pédantesque, le rendent très digne de vos tendres soins; et j’ai rhonneur de vous assurer que chacun se louera beaucoup de son commerce aisé, et de son amitié: j’en ai profilé avec plaisir id et à Vienne, et je me crois très heureux de la permission, qu’il m’a accordée, de la continuer par la voïe de lettres.’*—Reputation, like health, is preserved and increased by the same means by which it is acquired. Continue to desire and deserve praise, and you will certainly find it. Knowledge, adorned by manners, will infallibly procure it. Consider, that you have but a little way farther to get to your journey’s end; therefore, for God’s sake, do not slacken your pace: one year and a half more of sound application, Mr. Harte assures me, will finish his work; and when his work is finished well, your own will be very easily done afterwards. Les Manières et les Graces are no immaterial parts of that work; and I beg that you will give as much of your attention to them as to your books. Everything depends upon them; senza di not ogni fatica è vana.* The various companies you now go into will procure them you, if you will carefully observe, and form yourself upon those who have them.
Adieu! God bless you! and may you ever deserve that affection with which I am now Yours!
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 12, O.S. 1749
DEAR BOY,
It seems extraordinary, but it is very true, that my anxiety for you increases in proportion to the good accounts which I receive of you from all hands. I promise myself so much from you, that I dread the least disappointment. You are now so near the port which I have so long wished and laboured to bring you safe into, that my concern would be doubled, should you be shipwrecked within sight of it. The object, therefore, of this letter is (laying aside all the authority of a parent), to conjure you as a friend, by the affection you have for me (and surely you have reason to have some), and by the regard you have for yourself, to go on, with assiduity and attention, to complete that work which, of late, you have carried on so well, and which is now so near being finished. My wishes and my plan were to make you shine, and distinguish yourself equally in the learned and the polite world. Few have been able to do it. Deep learning is generally tainted with pedantry, or at least unadorned by manners: as, on the other hand, polite manners, and the turn of the world, are too often unsupported by knowledge, and consequently end contemptibly, in the frivolous dissipation of drawing-rooms and ruelles.* You are now got over the dry and difficult parts of learning; what remains requires much more time than trouble. You have lost time by your illness; you must regain it now or never. I therefore most earnestly desire, for your own sake, that for these next six months, at least six hours every morning, uninterruptedly, may be inviolably sacred to your studies with Mr. Harte. I do not know whether he will require so much; but I know that I do, and hope you will, and consequently prevail with him to give you that time; I own it is a good deal: but when both you and he consider that the work will be so much better, and so much sooner done, by such an assiduous and continued application, you will neither of you think it too much, and each will find his account in it. So much for the mornings, which from your own good sense, and Mr. Harte’s tenderness and care of you, will, I am sure, be thus well employed. It is not only reasonable, but useful too, that your evenings should be devoted to amusements and pleasures: and therefore I not only allow, but recommend, that they should be employed at assemblies, balls, spectacles.* and in the best companies; with this restriction only, that the consequences of the evening’s diversions may not break in upon the morning’s studies, by breakfastings, visits, and idle parties into the country. At your age, you need not be ashamed when any of these morning parties are proposed, to say you must beg to be excused, for you are obliged to devote your mornings to Mr. Harte; that I will have it so; and that you dare not do otherwise. Lay it all upon me; though I am persuaded it will be as much your own inclination as it is mine. But those frivolous, idle people, whose time hangs upon their own hands, and who desire to make others lose theirs too, are not to be reasoned with: and indeed it would be doing them too much honour. The shortest civil answers are the best; I cannot, I dare not, instead of I will not; for if you were to enter with them into the necessity of study, and the usefulness of knowledge, it would only furnish them with matter for their silly jests; which, though I would not have you mind, I would not have you invite. I will suppose you at Rome studying six hours uninterruptedly with Mr. Harte every morning, and passing your evenings with the best company of Rome, observing their manners and forming your own; and I will suppose a number of idle, sauntering, illiterate English, as there commonly is there, living entirely with one another, supping, drinking, and sitting up late at each other’s lodgings; commonly in riots and scrapes when drunk; and never in good company when sober. I will take one of these pretty fellows, and give you the dialogue between him and yourself; such as, I dare say, it will be on his side; and such as, I hope, it will be on yours.
Englishman.—Will you come and breakfast with me to-morrow; there will be four or five of our countrymen; we have provided chaises, and we will drive somewhere out of town after breakfast?
Stanhope.—I am very sorry I cannot; but I am obliged to be at home all morning.
Englishman.—Why then we will come and breakfast with you.
Stanhope.—I can’t do that neither; I am engaged.
Englishman.—Well, then, let it be the next day.
Stanhope.—To tell you the truth, it can be no day in the morning; for I neither go out nor see anybody at home before twelve.
Englishman.—And what the devil do you do with yourself till twelve o’clock?
Stanhope.—I am not by myself, I am with Mr. Harte.
Englishman.—Then what the devil do you do with him?
Stanhope.—We study different things; we read, we converse.
Englishman.—Very pretty amusement indeed! Are you to take Orders then?
Stanhope.—Yes, my father’s orders, I believe I must take.
Englishman.—Why hast thou no more spirit than to mind an old fellow a thousand miles off?
Stanhope.—If I don’t mind his orders he won’t mind my draughts.
Englishman.—What, does the old prig threaten then? threatened folks live long: never mind threats.
Stanhope.—No, I can’t say that he has ever threatened me in his life; but I believe I had best not provoke him.
Englishman.—Pooh! you would have one angry letter from the old fellow, and there would be an end of it.
Stanhope.—You mistake him mightily; he always does more than he says. He has never been angry with me yet, that I remember, in his life; but if I were to provoke him, I am sure he would never forgive me; he would be coolly immovable, and I might beg and pray, and write my heart out to no purpose.
Englishman.—Why then he is an odd dog, that’s all I can say; and pray are you to obey your dry-nurse too, this same, what’s his name—Mr. Harte?
Stanhope.—Yes.
Englishman.—So he stuffs you all morning with Greek, and Latin, and Logic, and all that. Egad, I have a dry-nurse too, but I never looked into a book with him in my life; I have not so much as seen the face of him this week, and don’t care a louse if I never see it again.
Stanhope.—My dry-nurse never desires anything of me that is not reasonable, and for my own good; and therefore I like to be with him.
Englishman.—Very sententious and edifying, upon my word! At this rate you will be reckoned a very good young man.
Stanhope.—Why, that will do me no harm.
Englishman.—Will you be with us to-morrow in the evening then? We shall be ten with you; and I have got some excellent good wine; and we’ll be very merry.
Stanhope.—I am very much obliged to you, but I am engaged for all the evening, to-morrow; first at Cardinal Albani’s; and then to sup at the Venetian Ambassadress’s.
Englishman.—How the devil can you like being always with these foreigners? I never go amongst them, with all their formalities and ceremonies. I am never easy in company with them, and I don’t know why, but I am ashamed.
Stanhope.—I am neither ashamed nor afraid; I am very easy with them; they are very easy with me; I get the language, and I see their characters, by conversing with them; and that is what we are sent abroad for, is it not?
Englishman.—I hate your modest women’s company; your woman of fashion as they call ’em; I don’t know what to say to them for my part.
Stanhope.—Have you ever conversed with them?
Englishman.—No; I never conversed with them; but I have been sometimes in their company, though much against my will.
Stanhope.—But at least they have done you no hurt; which is probably more than you can say of the women you do converse with.
Englishman.—That’s true, I own; but for all that, I would rather keep company with my surgeon half the year, than with your women of fashion the year round.
Stanhope.—Tastes are different, you know, and every man follows his own.
Englishman.—That’s true; but thine’s a devilish odd one, Stanhope. All morning with thy dry-nurse; all the evening in formal fine company; and all day long afraid of old Daddy in England. Thou art a queer fellow, and I am afraid there’s nothing to be made of thee.
Stanhope.—I am afraid so too.
Englishman.—Well then: good night to you: you have no objection, I hope, to my being drunk to-night, which I certainly will be.
Stanhope.—Not in the least; nor to your being sick to-morrow, which you as certainly will be; and so good night too.
You will observe, that I have not put into your mouth those good arguments, which upon such an occasion would, I am sure, occur to you; as piety and affection towards me; regard and friendship for Mr. Harte; respect for your own moral character, and for all the relative duties of man, son, pupil, and citizen. Such solid arguments would be thrown away upon such shallow puppies. Leave them to their ignorance, and to their dirty, disgraceful vices. They will severely feel the effects of them, when it will be too late. Without the comfortable refuge of learning, and with all the sickness and pains of a ruined stomach, and a rotten carcase, if they happen to arrive at old age, it is an uneasy and ignominious one. The ridicule which such fellows endeavour to throw upon those who are not like them, is, in the opinion of all men of sense, the most authentic panegyric. Go on, then, my dear child, in the way you are in, only for a year and a half more; that is all I ask of you. After that, I promise that you shall be your own master, and that I will pretend to no other title than that of your best and truest friend. You shall receive advice, but no orders, from me; and in truth you will want no other advice but such as youth and inexperience must necessarily require. You shall certainly want nothing that is requisite, not only for your conveniency, but also for your pleasures, which I always desire should be gratified. You will suppose that I mean the pleasures d’un honnête homme.
While you are learning Italian, which I hope you do with diligence, pray take care to continue your German, which you may have frequent opportunities of speaking. I would also have you keep up your knowledge of the Ius Publicum Imperii, by looking over, now and then, those inestimable manuscripts, which Sir Charles Williams.* who arrived here last week, assures me you have made upon that subject. It will be of very great use to you, when you come to be concerned in foreign affairs; as you shall be (if you qualify yourself for them) younger than ever any other was: I mean before you are twenty. Sir Charles tells me, that he will answer for your learning; and that he believes you will acquire that address, and those graces, which are so necessary to give it its full lustre and value. But he confesses, that he doubts more of the latter than of the former. The justice which he does Mr. Harte, in his panegyrics of him, makes me hope, that there is likewise a great deal of truth in his encomiums of you. Are you pleased with, and proud of the reputation which you have already acquired? Surely you are, for I am sure I am. Will you do anything to lessen or forfeit it? Surely you will not. And will you not do all you can to extend and increase it? Surely you will. It is only going on for a year and a half longer, as you have gone on for the two years last past, and devoting half the day only to application; and you will be sure to make the earliest figure and fortune in the world, that ever man made. Adieu.