BATH, OCTOBER 18, 1752
DEAR DAYROLLES,
Your last letter of the 6th, and my last of the 10th, crossed one another somewhere upon the road, for I received yours four days after I had sent mine. I think I rather gain ground by the waters and other medicines; but, if I do, it is but slowly, and by inches. I hear the person who sits or stands near me, and who directs his voice in a straight line to me; but I hear no part of a mixed conversation, and consequently am no part of society. However, I bear my misfortune better than I believe most other people would; whether from reason, philosophy, or constitution, I will not pretend to decide. If I have no very cheerful, at least I have no melancholy, moments. Books employ most of my hours agreeably; and some few objects, within my own narrow circle, excite my attention enough to preserve me from ennui.
The chief of those objects is now with you; and I am very glad that he is, because I expect, from your friendship, a true and confidential account of him. You will have time to analyse him; and I do beg of you to tell me the worst, as well as the best, of your discoveries. When evils are incurable, it may be the part of one friend to conceal them from another; but at his age, when no defect can have taken so deep a root as to be immoveable, if proper care be taken, the friendly part is rather to tell me his defects than his perfections. I promise you, upon my honour, the most inviolable secrecy. Among the defects, that possibly he may have, I know one that I am sure he has; it is, indeed, a negative fault, a fault of omission; but still it is a very great fault, with regard to the world. He wants that engaging address, those pleasing manners, those little attentions, that air, that abord.* and those graces which all conspire to make that first advantageous impression upon people’s minds, which is of such infinite use through the whole course of life. It is a sort of magic power, which prepossesses one at first sight in favour of that person, makes one wish to be acquainted with him, and partial to all he says and does. I will maintain it to be more useful in business than in love. This most necessary varnish we want too much: pray recommend it strongly.
I have heard no more of the Venetian affair, nor do I suppose that I shall till the Duke of Newcastle comes over. I hope it will do, and have but one reason to fear that it will not. I look upon it as the making of his fortune, and putting him early in a situation from whence he may in time hope to climb up to any.
He has, I dare say, already told you himself, how exceedingly kind the Duke of Newcastle was to him at Hanover, for he wrote me word with transports of it. Faites un peu valoir cela,* when you happen either to see or to write to his Grace, but only as from yourself and historically. Add too, that you observe that I was extremely affected with it. In truth, I do intend to give him to the two brothers.* for their own; and have nothing else to ask of either, but their acceptance of him. In time he may possibly not be quite useless to them. I have given him such an education that he may be of use to any Court; and I will give him such a provision that he shall be a burthen to none.
As for my godson, who, I assure you without compliment, enjoys my next warmest wishes, you go a little too fast, and think too far beforehand. No plan can possibly be now laid down for the second seven years. His own natural turn and temper must be first discovered, and your then situation will and ought to decide his destination. But I will add one consideration with regard to these first seven years. It is this. Pray let my godson never know what a blow or a whipping is, unless for those things for which, were he a man, he would deserve them; such as lying, cheating, making mischief, and meditated malice. In any of those cases, however young, let him be most severely whipped. But either to threaten or whip him for falling down, or not standing still to have his head combed, and his face washed, is a most unjust and absurd severity; and yet all these are the common causes of whipping. This hardens them to punishment, and confounds them as to the causes of it; for, if a poor child is to be whipped equally for telling a lie, or for a snotty nose, he must of course think them equally criminal. Reason him, by fair means, out of all those things, for which he will not be the worse man; and flog him severely for those things only, for which the law would punish him as a man.
I have ordered Mr. Stanhope to pass six weeks in Flanders, making Brussels his head quarters. I think he cannot know it as he should do in less time; for I would have him see all the considerable towns there, and be acquainted and faufilé* at Brussels, where there is a great deal of good company, and, as I hear, a very polite Court.—From thence he is to go to Holland for three months. Pray put him au fait of the Hague, which nobody can do better than you. I shall put him into Kreuningen’s* hand there, for the reading, and the constitutional part of the Republic, of which I would have him most thoroughly informed. If, by any letters, you can be of use to him there, I know you will. I would fain have him know everything of that country, of that Government, of that Court, and of that people, perfectly well. Their affairs and ours always have been, and always will be, intimately blended; and I should be very sorry that, like nine in ten of his countrymen, he should take Holland to be the Republic of the seven United Provinces, and the States-General for the Sovereign.*
Lord Coventry has used your friend Lady Coventry very brutally at Paris, and made her cry more than once in public. On the contrary, your other friend, Lady Caroline, has si bien morigéné my kinsman, that no French husband ever behaved better. Mais à force d’être sourd je deviens bavard;* so a good night to you with Madame Dayrolles; and I think that is wishing you both very well.
Yours.
BATH, OCTOBER 4, 1752
MY DEAR FRIEND:
I consider you now as at the Court of Augustus, where, if ever the desire of pleasing animated you, it must make you exert all the means of doing it. You will see there, full as well, I dare say, as Horace did at Rome, how States are defended by arms, adorned by manners, and improved by laws.* Nay, you have an Horace there, as well as an Augustus; I need not name Voltaire, qui nil molitur ineptè,* as Horace himself said of another poet. I have lately read over all his works that are published, though I had read them more than once before. I was induced to this by his Siècle de Louis XIV, which I have yet read but four times. In reading over all his works, with more attention I suppose than before, my former admiration of him is, I own, turned into astonishment. There is no one kind of writing in which he has not excelled. You are so severe a Classic, that I question whether you will allow me to call his Henriade* an Epic poem, for want of the proper number of gods, devils, witches and other absurdities, requisite for the machinery; which machinery is, it seems, necessary to constitute the Epopée.* But whether you do or not, I will declare (though possibly to my own shame) that I never read any Epic poem with near so much pleasure. I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke; but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.
In this disposition of mind, judge whether I can read all Homer through tout de suite. I admire his beauties; but, to tell you the truth, when he slumbers, I sleep.* Virgil, I confess, is all sense, and therefore I like him better than his model; but he is often languid, especially in his five or six last books, during which I am obliged to take a good deal of snuff. Besides,! profess myself an ally of Turnus’s.* against the pious Æneas, who, like many soi disant pious people, does the most flagrant injustice and violence in order to execute what they impudently call the will of Heaven. But what will you say, when I tell you truly, that I cannot possibly read our countryman Milton through? I acknowledge him to have some most sublime passages, some prodigious flashes of light; but then you must acknowledge that light is often followed by darkness visible,* to use his own expression. Besides, not having the honour to be acquainted with any of the parties in his Poem, except the Man and the Woman, the characters and speeches of a dozen or two of angels, and of as many devils, are as much above my reach as my entertainment. Keep this secret for me: for if it should be known, I should be abused by every tasteless pedant, and every solid divine in England.
Whatever I have said to the disadvantage of these three poems, holds much stronger against Tasso’s Gierusalemme: it is true he has very fine and glaring rays of poetry; but then they are only meteors, they dazzle, then disappear, and are succeeded by false thoughts, poor concetti, and absurd impossibilities; witness the Fish and Parrot; extravagances unworthy of an Heroic Poem, and would much better have become Ariosto, who professes le coglioneriè.*
I have never read the Lusiade of Camoens,* except in a prose translation, consequently I have never read it at all, so shall say nothing of it; but the Henriade is all sense from the beginning to the end, often adorned by the justest and liveliest reflections, the most beautiful descriptions, the noblest images, and the sublimest sentiments; not to mention the harmony of the verse, in which Voltaire undoubtedly exceeds all the French poets: should you insist upon an exception in favour of Racine, I must insist, on my part, that he at least equals him. What hero ever interested more than Henry IV; who, according to the rules of Epic poetry, carries on one great and long action,* and succeeds in it at last? What description ever excited more horror than those, first of the Massacre, and then of the Famine, at Paris? Was love ever painted with more truth and morbidezza than in the ninth book! Not better, in my mind, even in the fourth of Virgil. Upon the whole, with all your classical rigour, if you will but suppose St. Louis a god, a devil, or a witch, and that he appears in person, and not in a dream, the Henriade will be an Epic poem, according to the strictest statute laws of the Epopée; but in my court of equity it is one as it is.*
I could expatiate as much upon all his different works, but that I should exceed the bounds of a letter, and run into a dissertation. How delightful is his history of that northern brute, the King of Sweden!* for I cannot call him a man; and I should be sorry to have him pass for a hero, out of regard to those true heroes, such as Julius Caesar, Titus, Trajan, and the present King of Prussia,* who cultivated and encouraged arts and sciences; whose animal courage was accompanied by the tender and social sentiments of humanity; and who had more pleasure in improving, than in destroying their fellow creatures. What can be more touching, or more interesting; what more nobly thought, or more happily expressed, than all his dramatic pieces? What can be more clear and rational than all his philosophical letters:* and what ever was so graceful, and gentle, as all his little poetical trifles? You are fortunately à portée* of verifying, by your knowledge of the man, all that I have said of his works.
Monsieur de Maupertuis* (whom I hope you will get acquainted with) is, what one rarely meets with, deep in philosophy and mathematics, and yet honnête et aimable homme: Algarotti is young Fontenelle. Such men must necessarily give you the desire of pleasing them; and if you can frequent them, their acquaintance will furnish you the means of pleasing everybody else.
A propos of pleasing, your pleasing Mrs. Fitzgerald is expected here in two or three days; I will do all that I can for you with her: I think you carried on the romance to the third or fourth volume; I will continue it to the eleventh; but as for the twelfth and last, you must come and conclude it yourself. Non sum qualis eram.*
Good-night to you, child; for I am going to bed, just at the hour at which I suppose you are beginning to live, at Berlin.
BATH, NOVEMBER 28, 1752
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Since my last to you, I have read Madame Maintenon’s letters;* I am sure they are genuine, and they both entertained and informed me. They have brought me acquainted with the character of that able and artful lady; whom I am convinced that I now know much better than her directeur the Abbé de Fénelon (afterwards Archbishop of Cambray) did, when he wrote her the 185th letter;* and I know him the better too for that letter. The Abbé though brimful of the divine love, had a great mind to be first Minister and Cardinal, in order, no doubt, to have an opportunity of doing the more good. His being directeur at that time to Madame Maintenon, seemed to be a good step towards those views. She put herself upon him for a saint, and he was weak enough to believe it; he, on the other hand, would have put himself upon her for a saint too, which, I daresay, she did not believe; both of them knew that it was necessary for them to appear saints to Louis the Fourteenth, who they were very sure was a bigot. It is to be presumed, nay, indeed, it is plain by that 185th letter, that Madame Maintenon had hinted to her directeur some scruples of conscience, with relation to her commerce with the King; and which I humbly apprehend to have been only some scruples of prudence, at once to flatter the bigot character, and increase the desires of the King. The pious Abbé, frightened out of his wits, lest the King should impute to the directeur any scruples or difficulties which he might meet with on the part of the lady, writes her the above-mentioned letter; in which he not only bids her not teaze the King by advice and exhortations, but to have the utmost submission to his will; and, that she may not mistake the nature of that submission, he tells her, it is the same that Sarah had for Abraham; to which submission Isaac perhaps was owing.* No bawd could have written a more seducing letter to an innocent country girl, than the directeur did to his pénitente; who I dare say had no occasion for his good advice. Those who would justify the good directeur, alias the pimp, in this affair, must not attempt to do it by saying, that the King and Madame Maintenon were at that time privately married; that the directeur knew it; and that this was the meaning of his énigme. That is absolutely impossible; for that private marriage must have removed all scruples between the parties; nay, could not have been contracted upon any other principle, since it was kept private, and consequently prevented no public scandal. It is therefore extremely evident, that Madame Maintenon could not be married to the King, at the time when she scrupled granting, and when the directeur advised her to grant, those favours which Sarah with so much submission granted to Abraham: and what the directeur is pleased to call le mystère de Dieu, was most evidently a state of concubinage. The letters are very well worth your reading; they throw light upon many things of those times.
I have just received a letter from Sir William Stanhope,* from Lyons; in which he tells me that he saw you at Paris, that he thinks you a little grown, but that you do not make the most of it, for that you stoop still; d’ailleurs his letter was a panegyric of you.
The young Comte de Schullemburg,* the Chambellan whom you knew at Hanover, is come over with the King, et fait aussi vos éloges.
Though, as I told you in my last, I have done buying pictures by way of virtù,* yet there are some portraits of remarkable people that would tempt me. For instance, if you could by chance pick up at Paris, at a reasonable price, and undoubted originals (whether heads, half-lengths, or whole-lengths, no matter) of Cardinals Richelieu, Mazarin, and Retz, Monsieur de Turenne, le grand Prince de Condé; Mesdames de Montespan, de Fontanges, de Montbazon, de Sévigné, de Maintenon, de Chevreuse, de Mogueville, d’Olonne,* etc., I should be tempted to purchase them. I am sensible that they can only be met with by great accident, at family sales and auctions, so I only mention the affair to you eventually.
I do not understand, or else I do not remember, what affair you mean in your last letter; which you think will come to nothing, and for which, you say, I had once a mind that you should take the road again. Explain it to me.
I shall go to town in four or five days, and carry back with me a little more hearing than I brought; but yet not half enough for common use. One wants ready pocket-money much oftener than one wants great sums; and, to use a very odd expression, I want to hear at sight. I love everyday senses, everyday wit and entertainment; a man who is only good on holidays is good for very little. Adieu!
THE HUMBLE PETITION OF PHILIP EARL OF CHESTERFIELD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER,
SHEWETH,
That your Petitioner, being rendered, by deafness, as useless and insignificant as most of his equals and contemporaries are by nature, hopes, in common with them, to share your Majesty’s Royal favour and bounty; whereby he may be enabled either to save or spend, as he shall think proper, more than he can do at present.
That your Petitioner, having had the honour of serving your Majesty in several very lucrative employments, seems thereby entitled to a lucrative retreat from business, and to enjoy otium cum dignitate;* that is, leisure and a large pension.
Your Petitioner humbly presumes, that he has, at least, a common claim to such a pension: he has a vote in the most august assembly in the world; he has an estate that puts him above wanting it; but he has, at the same time (though he says it) an elevation of sentiment, that makes him not only desire, but (pardon, dread Sir, an expression you are used to) insist upon it.
That your Petitioner is little apt, and always unwilling, to speak advantageously of himself; but as, after all, some justice is due to one’s self, as well as to others, he begs leave to represent: That his loyalty to your Majesty has always been unshaken, even in the worst of times; That, particularly, in the late unnatural rebellion, when the Pretender advanced as far as Derby,* at the head of, at least, three thousand undisciplined men, the flower of the Scottish nobility and gentry, your Petitioner did not join him, as, unquestionably, he might have done, had he been so inclined; but, on the contrary, raised sixteen companies, of one hundred men each, at the public expense, in support of your Majesty’s undoubted right to the Imperial Crown of these Realms; which distinguished proof of his loyalty is, to this hour, unrewarded.
Your Majesty’s Petitioner is well aware, that your Civil List must necessarily be in a low and languid state, after the various, frequent, and profuse evacuations, which it has of late years undergone; but, at the same time, he presumes to hope, that this argument, which seems not to have been made use of against any other person whatsoever, shall not, in this single case, be urged against him; and the less so, as he has good reasons to believe, that the deficiencies of the Pension-fund are, by no means, the last that will be made good by Parliament.
Your Petitioner begs leave to observe, That a small pension is disgraceful and opprobrious, as it intimates a shameful necessity on one part, and a degrading sort of charity on the other: but that a great one implies dignity and affluence on one side; on the other, regard and esteem; which, doubtless, your Majesty must entertain in the highest degree, for those great personages whose respectable names stand upon your Eleemosynary list. Your Petitioner, therefore, humbly persuades himself, upon this principle, that less than three thousand pounds a year will not be proposed to him: if made up of gold, the more agreeable; if for life, the more marketable.
Your Petitioner persuades himself, that your Majesty will not suspect this his humble application to proceed from any mean, interested motive, of which he has always had the utmost abhorrence. No, Sir, he confesses his own weakness; Honour alone is his object; Honour is his passion; Honour is dearer to him than life.* To Honour he has always sacrificed all other considerations; and upon this general principle, singly, he now solicits that honour, which in the most shining times distinguished the greatest men of Greece, who were fed at the expense of the public.
Upon this Honour, so sacred to him as a Peer, so tender to him as a man, he most solemnly assures your Majesty, that, in case you shall be pleased to grant him this his humble request, he will gratefully and honourably support, and promote with zeal and vigour, the worst measure that the worst Minister can ever suggest to your Majesty: but, on the other hand, should he be singled out, marked, and branded by a refusal, he thinks himself obliged in Honour to declare, that he will, to the utmost of his power, oppose the best and wisest measures that your Majesty yourself can ever dictate.
And your Majesty’s Petitioner will ever pray, etc.
BATH, OCTOBER 19, 1753
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Of all the various ingredients that compose the useful and necessary art of pleasing, no one is so effectual and engaging, as that gentleness, that douceur of countenance and manners, to which you are no stranger, though (God knows why) a sworn enemy. Other people take great pains to conceal or disguise their natural imperfections; some, by the make of their clothes, and other arts, endeavour to conceal the defects of their shape; women who unfortunately have natural bad complexions, lay on good ones; and both men and women, upon whom unkind nature has inflicted a surliness and ferocity of countenance, do at least all they can, though often without success, to soften and mitigate it; they affect douceur, and aim at smiles, though often in the attempt, like the Devil in Milton, they grin horribly, a ghastly smile.* But you are the only person I ever knew in the whole course of my life, who not only disdain, but absolutely reject and disguise a great advantage that nature has kindly granted. You easily guess I mean countenance; for she has given you a very pleasing one; but you beg to be excused, you will not accept it; on the contrary, take singular pains to put on the mostjuneste, forbidding, and unpleasing one, that can possibly be imagined. This one would think impossible; but you know it to be true. If you imagine that it gives you a manly, thoughtful, and decisive air, as some, though very few of your countrymen do, you are most exceedingly mistaken; for it is at best the air of a German corporal, part of whose exercise is to look fierce, and to blasemeer-op.* You will say, perhaps, What, am I always to be studying my countenance, in order to wear this douceur? I answer, No; do it but for a fortnight, and you will never have occasion to think of it more. Take but half the pains to recover the countenance that nature gave you, that you must have taken to disguise and deform it as you have, and the business will be done. Accustom your eyes to a certain softness, of which they are very capable, and your face to smiles, which become it more than most faces I know. Give all your motions, too, an air of douceur, which is directly the reverse of their present celerity and rapidity. I wish you would adopt a little of l’air du Couvent (you very well know what I mean) to a certain degree; it has something extremely engaging; there is a mixture of benevolence, affection, and unction in it: it is frequently really sincere, but is almost always thought so, and consequently pleasing. Will you call this trouble? It will not be half an hour’s trouble to you in a week’s time. But suppose it be, pray tell me, why did you give yourself the trouble of learning to dance so well as you do? It is neither a religious, moral, or civil duty. You must own, that you did it then singly to please, and you were in the right on’t. Why do you wear your fine clothes, and curl your hair? Both are troublesome; lank locks, and plain flimsy rags, are much easier. This then you also do in order to please, and you do very right. But then, for God’s sake, reason and act consequentially; and endeavour to please in other things too, still more essential; and without which the trouble you have taken in those is wholly thrown away. You show your dancing, perhaps, six times a year at most; but you show your countenance, and your common motions every day, and all day. Which, then, I appeal to yourself, ought you to think of the most, and care to render easy, graceful, and engaging? Douceur of countenance and gesture can alone make them so. You are by no means ill-natured; and would you then most unjustly be reckoned so? Yet your common countenance intimates, and would make anybody, who did not know you, believe it. A propos of this, I must tell you what was said the other day to a fine lady whom you know, who is very good-natured in truth, but whose common countenance implies ill-nature, even to brutality. It was Miss Hamilton, Lady Murray’s niece,* whom you have seen, both at Blackheath and at Lady Hervey’s. Lady Murray was saying to me, that you had a very engaging countenance, when you had a mind to it, but that you had not always that mind; upon which Miss Hamilton said, that she liked your countenance best, when it was as glum as her own. Why then, replied Lady Murray, you two should marry; for while you both wear your worst countenances, nobody else will venture upon either of you; and they call her now Mrs. Stanhope. To complete this douceur of countenance and motions, which I so earnestly recommend to you, you should carry it also to your expressions and manner of thinking, mettez-y toujours de l’affectueux, de l’onction; take the gentle, the favourable, the indulgent side of most questions. I own that the manly and sublime John Trott,* your countryman, seldom does; but, to show his spirit and decision, takes the rough and harsh side, which he generally adorns with an oath, to seem more formidable. This he only thinks fine; for to do John justice, he is commonly as good-natured as anybody. These are among the many little things which you have not, and I have lived long enough in the world to know of what infinite consequence they are in the course of life. Reason then, I repeat it again, within yourself consequently; and let not the pains you have taken, and still take, to please in some things, be à pure perte,* by your negligence of, and inattention to, others, of much less trouble, and much more consequence.
I have been of late much engaged, or rather bewildered, in Oriental history, particularly that of the Jews, since the destruction of their temple, and their dispersion by Titus;* but the confusion and uncertainty of the whole, and the monstrous extravagances and falsehoods of the greatest part of it, disgusted me extremely. Their Thalmud, their Mischna, their Targums.* and other traditions and writings of their Rabbins and Doctors, who were most of them Cabalists, are really more extravagant and absurd, if possible, than all that you have read in Comte de Gabalis; and indeed most of his stuff is taken from them. Take this sample of their nonsense, which is transmitted in the writings of one of their most considerable Rabbins. ‘One Abas Saul, a man of ten feet high, was digging a grave, and happened to find the eye of Goliath, in which he thought proper to bury himself; and so he did, all but his head, which the giant’s eye was unfortunately not quite deep enough to receive.’* This, I assure you, is the most modest lie of ten thousand. I have also read the Turkish History, which, excepting the religious part, is not fabulous, though very possibly not true. For the Turks, having no notion of letters, and being even by their religion forbid the use of them, except for reading and transcribing the Koran they have no historians of their own, nor any authentic records pr memorials for other historians to work upon; so that what histories we have of that country, are written by foreigners; as Platina, Sir Paul Rycaut, Prince Cantemir, &c., or else snatches of particular and short periods, by some who happened to reside there at those times: such as Busbequius,* whom I have just finished. I like him, as far as he goes, much the best of any of them: but then his account is, properly, only an account of his own Embassy from the Emperor Charles the Fifth to Solyman the Magnificent. However, there he gives, episodically, the best account I know of the customs and manners of the Turks, and of the nature of that government, which is a most extraordinary one. For, despotic as it always seems, and sometimes is, it is in truth a military republic; and the real power resides in the Janissaries; who sometimes order their Sultan to strangle his Vizar, and sometimes the Vizar* to depose or strangle his Sultan, according as they happen to be angry at the one or the other. I own, I am glad that the capital strangler should, in his turn, be strangle-able, and now and then strangled; for I know of no brute so fierce, nor no criminal so guilty, as the creature called a Sovereign, whether King, Sultan, or Sophy, who thinks himself, either by divine or human right, vested with an absolute power of destroying his fellow-creatures; or who, without enquiring into his right, lawlessly exerts that power. The most excusable of all those human monsters are the Turks, whose religion teaches them inevitable fatalism. A propos of the Turks, my Loyola, I pretend, is superior to your Sultan. Perhaps you think this impossible, and wonder who this Loyola is. Know then, that I have had a Barbet brought me from France, so exactly like Sultan, that he has been mistaken for him several times; only his snout is shorter, and his ears longer than Sultan’s. He has also the acquired knowledge of Sultan; and I am apt to think that he studied under the same master at Paris. His habit and his white band show him to be an ecclesiastic; and his begging, which he does very earnestly, proves him to be of a Mendicant Order; which, added to his flattery and insinuation, make him supposed to be a Jesuit, and have acquired him the name of Loyola. I must not omit too, that when he breaks wind he smells exactly like Sultan.*
I do not yet hear one jot the better for all my bathings and pumpings, though I have been here already full half my time; I consequently go very little into company, being very little fit for any. I hope you keep company enough for us both; you will get more by that, than I shall by all my reading. I read singly to amuse myself, and fill up my time, of which I have too much; but you have two much better reasons for going into company, Pleasure and Profit. May you find a great deal of both, in a great deal of company! Adieu.
LONDON, JANUARY I, 1754
DEAR DAYROLLES,
You fine gentlemen, who have never committed the sin or the folly of scribbling, think that all those who have, can do it again whenever they please, but you are much mistaken; the pen has not only its moments, but its hours, its days of impotence, and is no more obedient to the will, than other things have been since the fall. Unsuccessful and ineffectual attempts are in both cases alike disagreeable and disgraceful. It is true, I have nothing else to do but to write, and for that very reason perhaps I should do it worse than ever; what was formerly an act of choice, is now become the refuge of necessity. I used to snatch up the pen with momentary raptures, because by choice, but now I am married to it…. Though I keep up a certain equality of spirits, better I believe than most people would do in my unfortunate situation, yet you must not suppose that I have ever that flow of active spirits which is so necessary to enable one to do anything well. Besides, as the pride of the human heart extends itself beyond the short span of our lives, all people are anxious and jealous, authors perhaps more so than any others, of what will be thought and said of them at a time when they cannot know, and therefore ought not reasonably to care for, either. Notwithstanding all these difficulties, I will confess to you that I often scribble, but at the same time protest to you that I almost as often burn. I judge myself as impartially and I hope more severely, than I do others; and upon an appeal from myself to myself, I frequently condemn the next day, what I had approved and applauded the former. What will finally come of all this I do not know; nothing I am sure, that shall appear while I am alive, except by chance some short trifling essays, like the Spectators, upon some new folly or absurdity that may happen to strike me, as I have now and then helped Mr. Fitz-Adam in his weekly paper called the World. …*
This is the season of well-bred lies indiscriminately told by all to all; professions and wishes unfelt and unmeant, degraded by use, and profaned by falsehood, are lavished with profusion. Mine for you, Mrs. Dayrolles, and my godson, are too honest and sincere to keep such company, or to wear their dress. Judge of them then yourselves; without my saying anything more, than that I am most heartily and faithfully Yours.
LONDON, FEBRUARY 12, 1754
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I take my aim, and let off this letter at you at Berlin; I should be sorry it missed you, because you will read it with as much pleasure as I write it. It is to inform you, that, after some difficulties and dangers, your seat in the new Parliament is at last absolutely secured, and that without opposition, or the least necessity of your personal trouble or appearance. This success, I must further inform you, is, in a great degree owing to Mr. Eliot’s friendship to us both; for he brings you in with himself at his surest borough. As it was impossible to act with more zeal and friendship than Mr. Eliot has acted in this whole affair, I desire that you will, by the very next post, write him a letter of thanks; warm and young thanks, not old and cold ones. You may enclose it in yours to me, and I will send it to him, for he is now in Cornwall.*
Thus, sure of being a senator, I daresay you do not propose to be one of the pedarii senatores, et pedibus ire in sententiam;* for, as the House of Commons is the theatre where you must make your fortune and figure in the world, you must resolve to be an actor, and not a persona muta, which is just equivalent to a candle-snuffer upon other theatres. Whoever does not shine there, is obscure, insignificant, and contemptible; and you cannot conceive how easy it is for a man of half your sense and knowledge to shine there if he pleases. The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy—Take of common sense quantum sufficit,* add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style—Take it for granted, that by far the greatest part of mankind do neither analyse nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. All have senses to be gratified, very few have reason to be applied to. Graceful utterance and action please their eyes, elegant diction tickles their ears; but strong reason would be thrown away upon them. I am not only persuaded by theory, but convinced by my experience, that (supposing a certain degree of common sense) what is called a good speaker is as much a mechanic as a good shoemaker; and that the two trades are equally to be learned by the same degree of application. Therefore, for God’s sake, let this trade be the principal object of your thoughts; never lose sight of it. Attend minutely to your style, whatever language you speak or write in; seek for the best words, and think of the best turns. Whenever you doubt of the propriety or elegancy of any word, search the dictionary or some good author for it, or inquire of somebody who is master of that language; and, in a little time, propriety and elegancy of diction will become so habitual to you, that they will cost you no more trouble. As I have laid this down to be mechanical and attainable by whoever will take the necessary pains, there will be no great vanity in my saying, that I saw the importance of the object so early, and attended to it so young, that it would now cost me more trouble to speak or write ungrammatically, vulgarly, and inelegantly, than ever it did to avoid doing so. The late Lord Bolingbroke, without the least trouble, talked all day long full as elegantly as he wrote. Why? Not by a peculiar gift from heaven; but, as he has often told me himself, by an early and constant attention to his style. The present Solicitor-General, Murray,* has less law than many lawyers, but has more practice than any; merely upon account of his eloquence, of which he has a never-failing stream. I remember so long ago as when I was at Cambridge, whenever I read pieces of eloquence (and indeed they were my chief study) whether ancient or modern, I used to write down the shining passages, and then translate them, as well and as elegantly as ever I could; if Latin or French, into English; if English, into French. This, which I practised for some years, not only improved and formed my style, but imprinted in my mind and memory the best thoughts of the best authors. The trouble was little, but the advantage I have experienced was great. While you are abroad, you can neither have time nor opportunity to read pieces of English or Parliamentary eloquence, as I hope you will carefully do when you return; but, in the meantime, whenever pieces of French eloquence come in your way, such as the speeches of persons received into the Academy, oraisons funèbres,* representations of the several Parliaments to the king, etc., read them in that view, in that spirit; observe the harmony, the turn and elegancy of the style; examine in what you think it might have been better; and consider in what, had you written it yourself, you might have done worse. Compare the different manners of expressing the same thoughts, in different authors; and observe how differently the same things appear in different dresses. Vulgar, coarse, and ill-chosen words will deform and degrade the best thoughts, as much as rags and dirt will the best figure. In short, you now know your object; pursue it steadily, and have no digressions that are not relative to, and connected with, the main action. Your success in Parliament will effectually remove all other objections; either a foreign or a domestic destination will no longer be refused you, if you make your way to it through Westminster.
I think I may now say, that I am quite recovered from my late illness, strength and spirits excepted, which are not yet restored. Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa will, I believe, answer all my purposes.
I long to hear an account of your reception at Berlin, which I fancy will be a most gracious one. Adieu.
LONDON, MARCH 8, 1754
MY DEAR FRIEND:
A great and unexpected event has lately happened in our ministerial world—Mr. Pelham died* last Monday, of a fever and mortification; occasioned by a general corruption of his whole mas? of blood, which had broke out into sores in his back. I regret him as an old acquaintance, a pretty near relation, and a private man, with whom I have lived many years in a social and friendly way. He meaned well to the public; and was incorrupt in a post where corruption is commonly contagious. If he was no shining, enterprising Minister, he was a safe one, which I like better. Very shining Ministers, like the sun, are apt to scorch, when they shine the brightest: in our constitution, I prefer the milder light of a less glaring Minister.
His successor is not yet, at least publicly, designatus. You will easily suppose that many are very willing, and very few able, to fill that post. Various persons are talked of, by different people, for it, according as their interest prompts them to wish, or their ignorance to conjecture. Mr. Fox is the most talked of; he is strongly supported by the Duke of Cumberland. Mr. Legge, the Solicitor-General, and Dr. Lee, are likewise all spoken of, upon the foot of the Duke of Newcastle’s and the Chancellor’s interest. Should it be any one of the three last, I think no great alterations will ensue; but, should Mr. Fox prevail, it would, in my opinion, soon produce changes, by no means favourable to the Duke of Newcastle.* In the mean time, the wild conjectures of volunteer politicians, and the ridiculous importance which, upon these occasions, blockheads always endeavour to give themselves, by grave looks, significant shrugs, and insignificant whispers, are very entertaining to a bystander, as, thank God, I now am. One knows something, but is not yet at liberty to tell it; another has heard something from a very good hand; a third congratulates himself upon a certain degree of intimacy, which he has long had with every one of the candidates, though perhaps he has never spoken twice to any one of them. In short, in these sort of intervals, vanity, interest, and absurdity, always display themselves in the most ridiculous light. One who has been so long behind the scenes, as I have, is much more diverted with the entertainment, than those can be who only see it from the pit and boxes. I know the whole machinery of the interior, and can laugh the better at the silly wonder and wild conjectures of the uninformed spectators. This accident, I think, cannot in the least affect your election, which is finally settled with your friend Mr. Eliot. For, let who will prevail, I presume he will consider me enough not to overturn an arrangement of that sort, in which he cannot possibly be personally interested. So pray go on with your parliamentary preparations. Have that object always in your view, and pursue it with attention.
I take it for granted, that your late residence in Germany has made you as perfect and correct in German, as you were before in French: at least it is worth your while to be so; because it is worth every man’s while to be perfectly master of whatever language he may ever have occasion to speak. A man is not himself, in a language which he does not thoroughly possess; his thoughts are degraded, when inelegantly or imperfectly expressed; he is cramped and confined, and consequently can never appear to advantage. Examine and analyse those thoughts that strike you the most, either in conversation or in books; and you will find, that they owe at least half their merit to the turn and expression of them. There is nothing truer than that old saying Nikil dictum quod non prius dictum.* It is only the manner of saying or writing it, that makes it appear new. Convince yourself, that Manner is almost every thing, in every thing, and study it accordingly.
I am this moment informed,* and I believe truly, that Mr. Fox is to succeed Mr. Pelham, as First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; and your friend Mr. Yorke, of the Hague, to succeed Mr. Fox, as Secretary at War. I am not sorry for this promotion of Mr. Fox, as I have always been upon civil terms with him, and found him ready to do me any little services. He is frank and gentlemanlike in his manner; and, to a certain degree, I really believe, will be your friend upon my account; if you can afterwards make him yours, upon your own, tant mieux.* I have nothing more to say now, but Adieu.
LONDON, MARCH 26, 1754
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Yesterday I received your letter of the 15th from Manheim, where I find you have been received in the usual gracious manner; which I hope you return in a graceful one. As this is a season of great devotion and solemnity, in all Catholic countries, pray inform yourself of, and constantly attend to, all their silly and pompous Church ceremonies: one ought to know them.
I am very glad that you wrote the letter to Lord——, which, in every different case that can possibly be supposed, was, I am sure, both a decent and a prudent step. You will find it very difficult, whenever we meet, to convince me that you could have any good reasons for not doing it; for I will, for argument’s sake, suppose, what I cannot in reality believe, that he has both said and done the worst he could, of and by you; what then? How will you help yourself? Are you in a situation to hurt him? Certainly not; but he certainly is in a situation to hurt you.* Would you show a sullen, pouting, impotent resentment? I hope not: leave that silly, unavailing sort of resentment to women, and men like them, who are always guided by humour, never by reason and prudence. That pettish, pouting conduct is a great deal too young, and implies too little knowledge of the world, for one who has seen so much of it as you have. Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—Never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike. There would be no living in Courts, nor indeed in the world, if one could not conceal, and even dissemble, the just causes of resentment, which one meets with every day in active and busy life. Whoever cannot master his humour enough, pour faire bonne mine a mauvais jeu,* should leave the world, and retire to some hermitage, in an unfrequented desert. By showing an unavailing and sullen resentment, you authorize the resentment of those who cannot hurt you, and whom you cannot hurt; and give them that very pretence, which perhaps they wished for, of breaking with, and injuring you; whereas the contrary behaviour would lay them under the restraints of decency at least; and either shackle or expose their malice. Besides, captiousness, sullenness, and pouting, are exceedingly illiberal and vulgar. Un honnête homme ne les connoît point.*
I am extremely glad to hear that you are soon to have Voltaire at Manheim: immediately upon his arrival, pray make him a thousand compliments from me. I admire him most exceedingly; and whether as an epic, dramatic, or lyric poet, or prose-writer, I think I justly apply to him the Nil molitur inepté. I long to read his own correct edition of Les Annales de l’Empire,* of which the Abrégé Chronologique de l’Histoire Universelle, which I have read, is, I suppose, a stolen and imperfect part; however, imperfect as it is, it has explained to me that chaos of history of seven hundred years more clearly than any other book had done before. You judge very rightly, that I love le style léger et fleuri.* I do, and so does everybody who has any parts and taste. It should, I confess, be more or less fleuri, according to the subject; but at the same time I assert, that there is no subject that may not properly, and which ought not to be adorned, by a certain elegancy and beauty of style. What can be more adorned than Cicero’s philosophical works? What more than Plato’s? It is their eloquence only, that has preserved and transmitted them down to us, through so many centuries; for the philosophy of them is wretched, and the reasoning part miserable.
But eloquence will always please, and has always pleased. Study it therefore; make it the object of your thoughts and attention. Use yourself to relate elegantly; that is a good step towards speaking well in Parliament. Take some political subject, turn it in your thoughts, consider what may be said, both for and against it, then put those arguments into writing, in the most correct and elegant English you can. For instance, a Standing Army, a Place-Bill,* etc.; as to the former, consider, on one side, the dangers arising to a free country from a great standing military force; on the other side, consider the necessity of a force to repel force with. Examine whether a standing army, though in itself an evil, may not, from circumstances, become a necessary evil, and preventive of greater dangers. As to the latter, consider how far places may bias and warp the conduct of men, from the service of their country, into an unwarrantable complaisance to the Court; and, on the other hand, consider whether they can be supposed to have that effect upon the conduct of people of probity and property, who are more solidly interested in the permanent good of their country, than they can be in an uncertain and precarious employment. Seek for, and answer in your own mind, all the arguments that can be urged on either side, and write them down in an elegant style. This will prepare you for debating, and give you an habitual eloquence; for I would not give a farthing for a mere holiday eloquence, displayed once or twice in a session, in a set declamation; but I want an everyday, ready, and habitual eloquence, to adorn extempore and debating speeches; to make business not only clear but agreeable, and to please even those whom you cannot inform, and who do not desire to be informed. All this you may acquire, and make habitual to you, with as little trouble as it cost you to dance a minuet as well as you do. You now dance it mechanically, and well, without thinking of it.
I am surprise that you found but one letter from me at Manheim, for you ought to have found four or five; there are as many lying for you, at your banker’s at Berlin, which I wish you had, because I always endeavoured to put something into them, which, I hope, may be of use to you.
When we meet at Spa, next July, we must have a great many serious conversations; in which I will pour out all my experience of the world, and which, I hope, you will trust to, more than to your own young notions of men and things. You will, in time, discover most of them to have been erroneous; and, if you follow them long, you will perceive your error too late; but, if you will be led by a guide, who, you are sure does not mean to mislead you, you will unite two things, seldom united in the same person: the vivacity and spirit of youth, with the caution and experience of age.
Last Saturday, Sir Thomas Robinson,* who had been the King’s Minister at Vienna, was declared Secretary of State for the southern department, Lord Holderness having taken the northern. Sir Thomas accepted it unwillingly, and, as I hear, with a promise that he shall not keep it long. Both his health and spirits are bad, two very disqualifying circumstances for that employment; yours, I hope, will enable you, some time or other, to go through with it. In all events, aim at it, and if you fail or fall, let it, at least, be said of you, Magnis tamen excidit ausis.* Adieu.
LONDON, APRIL 5, 1754
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I received, yesterday, your letter of the 20th March, from Manheim, with the enclosed for Mr. Eliot; it was a very proper one, and I have forwarded it to him by Mr. Harte, who sets out for Cornwall to-morrow morning.
I am very glad that you use yourself to translations; and I do not care of what, provided you study the correctness and elegancy of your style. The Life of Sextus Quintus is the best book, of the innumerable books written by Gregorio Leti, whom the Italians, very justly, call Leti caca libri.* But I would rather that you chose some pieces of oratory for your translations; whether ancient or modern, Latin or French; which would give you a more oratorial train of thoughts, and turn of expression. In your letter to me, you make use of two words, which, though true and correct English, are, however, from long disuse, become inelegant, and seem now to be stiff, formal, and, in some degree, scriptural: the first is the word namely, which you introduce thus, ‘You inform me of a very agreeable piece of news, namely, that my election is secured.’ Instead of namely, I would always use, which is, or that is, that my election is secured. The other word is, Mine own inclinations: this is certainly correct, before a subsequent word that begins with a vowel; but it is too correct, and is now disused as too formal, notwithstanding the hiatus occasioned by my own. Every language has its peculiarities; they are established by usage, and, whether right or wrong, they must be complied with. I could instance many very absurd ones in different languages; but so authorized by the ius et norma loquendi, that they must be submitted to. Namely, and to wit,* are very good words in themselves, and contribute to clearness, more than the relatives which we now substitute in their room; but, however, they cannot be used, except in a sermon, or some very grave and formal compositions. It is with language as with manners; they are both established by the usage of people of fashion; it must be imitated, it must be complied with. Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not. We will, when we meet, discuss these and many other points, provided you will give me attention and credit; without both which it is to no purpose to advise either you or anybody else.
I want to know your determination, where you intend to (if I may use that expression) while away your time, till the last week in June, when we are to meet at Spa; I continue rather in the opinion which I mentioned to you formerly, in favour of the Hague; but, however, I have not the least objection to Dresden, or to any other place that you may like better. If you prefer the Dutch scheme, you take Treves and Coblentz in your way, as also Dusseldorp: all which places I think you have not yet seen. At Manheim you may certainly get good letters of recommendation to the Courts of the two Electors of Treves and Cologne.* whom you are yet unacquainted with; and I should wish you to know them all. For, as I have often told you, olim haec meminisse juvabit.* There is an utility in having seen what other people have seen, and there is a justifiable pride in having seen what others have not seen. In the former case you are equal to others; in the latter, superior. As your stay abroad will not now be very long, pray, while it lasts, see everything, and everybody you can; and see them well, with care and attention. It is not to be conceived of what advantage it is to anybody to have seen more things, people, and countries, than other people in general have: it gives them a credit, makes them referred to, and they become the objects of the attention of the company. They are not out in any part of polite conversation; they are acquainted with all the places, customs, courts, and families, that are likely to be mentioned; they are, as Monsieur de Maupertuis justly observes, de tous les pals comme les sçavans sont de tons les tems. You have, fortunately, both those advantages; the only remaining point is de sçavoir les faire valoir;* for without that, one may as well note have them. Remember that very true maxim of La Bruyère’s, Qu’on ne vaut dans ce monde que ce qu’on veut valoir.* The knowledge of the world will teach you to what degree you ought to show ce que vous valez. One must by no means, on one hand, be indifferent about it; as, on the other, one must not display it with affectation, and in an overbearing manner: but, of the two, it is better to show too much than too little.
Adieu.
ARTICLE FOR INSERTION
(BATH, FEBRUARY, 1755)
On the tenth of this month, died at Paris, universally and sincerely regretted, Charles Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu,* and Président à Mortier of the Parliament at Bourdeaux. His virtues did honour to human nature; his writings, to justice. A friend to mankind, he asserted their undoubted and inalienable rights with freedom, even in his own country, whose prejudices in matters of religion and government he had long lamented, and endeavoured, not without some success, to remove. He well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country, where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny, and liberty from licentiousness. His works will illustrate his name, and survive him as long as right reason, moral obligation, and the true spirit of laws, shall be understood, respected, and maintained.
BLACKHEATH, NOVEMBER 17, 1755
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I heartily congratulate you upon the loss of your political maidenhead, of which I have received from others a very good account. I hear, that you were stopped for some time in your career; but recovered breath, and finished it very well. I am not surprised, nor indeed concerned, at your accident; for I remember the dreadful feeling of that situation in myself; and as it must require a most uncommon share of impudence to be unconcerned upon such an occasion, I am not sure that I am not rather glad you stopped. You must therefore now think of hardening yourself by degrees, by using yourself insensibly to the sound of your own voice, and to the act (trifling as it seems) of rising up and sitting down again. Nothing will contribute so much to this as committee work, of elections at night, and of private bills in the morning. There, asking short questions, moving for witnesses to be called in, and all that kind of small ware, will soon fit you to set up for yourself. I am told that you are much mortified at your accident; but without reason; pray let it rather be a spur than a curb to you. Persevere, and depend upon it, it will do well at last. When I say persevere, I do not mean that you should speak every day, nor in every debate.*
Moreover, I would not advise you to speak again upon public matters for some time, perhaps a month or two; but I mean never lose view of that great object; pursue it with discretion, but pursue it always. Pelotez en attendant partie.* You know I have always told you, that speaking in public was but a knack, which those who apply to most will succeed in best. Two old Members, very good judges, have sent me compliments upon this occasion; and have assured me, that they plainly find it will do, though they perceived, from that natural confusion you were in, that you neither said all nor perhaps what you intended. Upon the whole, you have set out very well, and have sufficient encouragement to go on. Attend therefore assiduously, and observe carefully all that passes in the House; for it is only knowledge and experience that can make a debater. But if you still want comfort, Mrs.——,* I hope, will administer it to you; for, in my opinion, she may, if she will, be very comfortable; and with women, as with speaking in Parliament, perseverance will most certainly prevail, sooner or later.
What little I have played for here, I have won; but that is very far from the considerable sum which you heard of. I play every evening from seven till ten, at a crown whist party, merely to save my eyes from reading or writing for three hours by candle-light. I propose being in town the week after next, and hope to carry back with me much more health than I brought down here.
Good night.
Yours.
BLACKHEATH, JUNE 17, 1756
DEAR DAYROLLES,
Could I give you better accounts of either myself or the public, I would give you more frequent ones; but the best that I can give you of either, are such as will not flatter that affection which I know you have for both. We are both going very fast, and I can hardly guess which will be gone first. I am shrunk to a skeleton, and grow weaker and weaker every day. And as for my fellow-sufferer the public, it has lost Minorca by the incapacity of the administration; and may perhaps soon lose Gilbraltar, by a secret bargain between France and Spain, which, I have reason to think, is negotiating, if not concluded. Our naval laurels are withered by the unaccountable and shameful conduct of Admiral Byng.*
The French are unquestionably masters to do what they please in America. Our good Ally, the Queen of Hungary, has certainly concluded some treaty, God knows what, with our and her old enemy France. The Swedish and Danish fleets are joined, undoubtedly not in our favour, since France pays both. We have an army here of threescore thousand men, under a Prince of the Blood, to defend us against an invasion which was never really intended. We cannot pay it another year, since the expense of this year amounts to twelve millions sterling; judge if we can raise that sum another year, and, to complete all, the two Courts, the old and the young one, are upon very ill terms.*
These are not the gloomy apprehensions of a sick man; but real facts, obvious to whoever will see and reflect. One of the chief causes of this unfortunate situation is, that we have now in truth no Minister; but the Administration is a mere Republic, and carried on by the Cabinet Council,* the individuals of which think only how to get the better of each other. Let us then turn our eyes, as much as we can, from this melancholy prospect, which neither of us can mend, and think of something else. I find my nephew Sir Charles Hotham is a true English gentleman, and does not relish your outlandish folks.
I am told that you have an infinite number of English gentlemen now at Brussels; but I hope you do not put yourself upon the foot of stuffing them with salt beef, and drenching them with claret; for I am sure your appointments will not afford that expense, and by the way, I believe, that in their hearts they would much rather you would let them alone, to be jolly together at their inns, than go to your house, where, it is ten to one, that they would meet des honnêtes gens, et ce n’est pas là leur fait.*
Make my compliments to Mrs. Dayrolles, to my godson, to tutti quanti,* in short, who can receive them, for Mademoiselle* cannot yet. Adieu, my dear and faithful friend. May you, arid all who belong to you, be long happy, whatever becomes of
Yours.
LONDON, FEBRUARY 28, 1757
DEAR DAYROLLES,
I have been too long in your debt; but the true reason has been, that I had no specie* to pay you in; and what I give you even now does not amount to a penny in the pound. Public matters have been long, and are still, too undecipherable for me to understand, consequently to relate. Fox, out of place, takes the lead in the House of Commons; Pitt, Secretary of State, declares that he is no minister, and has no ministerial influence.* The Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke lie by, and declare themselves for neither party, and in the meantime, I presume, negotiate with both. Byng is reprieved for a fortnight; what will become of him at last, God knows! for the late Admiralty want to shoot him, to excuse themselves; and the present Admiralty want to save him, in order to lay the blame upon their predecessors; for neither the public service, nor the life of a fellow creature, enter into the consideration on either side. The Duke of Cumberland wants extremely to go with his own Regiment of Guards, to be beaten at the head of the Army of Observation, in Lower Saxony; for that will infallibly be the case of that army as soon as Comte D’Etrées at the head of one hundred thousand men shall arrive there.*
The fright, that your friend Mr.Van-haren has put the Dutch into, by telling them the French army is intended for Cleves and Gueldres, is a most idle alarm. They are not of importance enough to be in danger; nobody thinks of them now. Hanover is evidently the object, and the only rational one, of the operations of the French army; not as Hanover, but as belonging to the King of England, and that Electorate is to be a reply to the present state of Saxony. The fields of Bohemia and Moravia will become Golgothas, or fields of blood, this year; for probably an hundred thousand human creatures will perish there this year, for the quarrel of two individuals.* The King of Prussia, will, I suppose, seek for battle, in which, I think, he will be victorious. The Austrians will, I suppose, avoid it if they can, and endeavour to destroy his armies, as they did the French ones in the last war, by harassing, intercepting convoys, killing stragglers, and all the feats of their irregulars.* These are my political dreams, or prophecies, for perhaps they do not deserve the name of reasonings.
The Bath did me more good than I thought anything could do me; but all that good does not amount to what builders call half-repairs, and only keeps up the shattered fabric a little longer than it would have stood without them; but take my word for it, it will stand but a very little while longer. I am now in my grand climacteric, and shall not complete it. Fontenelle’s last words at a hundred and three were, Je souffre d’être;* deaf and infirm as I am, I can with truth say the same thing at sixty-three. In my mind it is only the strength of our passions, and the weakness of our reason, that makes us so fond of life; but when the former subside and give way to the latter, we grow weary of being and willing to withdraw. I do not recommend this train of serious reflections to you, nor ought you to adopt them. Our ages, our situations, are widely different. You have children to educate and provide for, you have all your senses, and can enjoy all the comforts both of domestic and social life. I am in every sense isolé, and have wound up all my bottoms;* I may now walk off quietly, neither missing nor being missed. Till when,
Yours most sincerely.
P.S. My compliments to Mrs. Dayrolles and company, visible or invisible.*
LONDON, MARCH 15, 1757
SIR,
The installation is to be at Windsor on this day fortnight, the 29th; it is a foolish piece of pageantry, but worth seeing once. The ceremony in the Chapel is the most solemn, and consequently the silliest, part of the show. The tickets for that operation are the pretended property of the Dean and Chapter. I will take care to procure you one. I will also try to procure you a ticket for the feast, though it is full late. There you will dine very ill and very inconveniently; but, however, with the comfort of hearing the style and titles of the puissant knights proclaimed by Garter King at Arms. I take it for granted that Mrs. Irwine is to be of your Windsor party, and I will endeavour to accommodate you both as far as I can.* She made you too favourable a report of my health; which you have too easily believed, from wishing it true. It is vegetation at most, and I should be very sorry if my fellow-vegetables at Blackheath were not in a more lively and promising state than
Yours, etc.
BLACKHEATH, SEPTEMBER 17, 1757
MY DEAR FRIEND:
Lord Holderness has been so kind as to communicate to me all the letters which he has received from you hitherto, dated the 15th, 19th, 23rd, and 26th August; and also a draught of that which he wrote to you the 9th instant. I am very well pleased with all your letters; and, what is better, I can tell you that the King is so too; and he said, but three days ago, to Monsieur Münchausen.* He (meaning you) sets out very well and I like his letters; provided that, like most of my English Ministers abroad, he does not grow idle hereafter. So that here is both praise to flatter, and a hint to warn you. What Lord Holderness recommends to you, being by the King’s order, intimates also a degree of approbation; for the blacker ink, and the larger character, show that his Majesty, whose eyes are grown weaker, intends to read all your letters himself. Therefore, pray do not neglect to get the blackest ink you can; and to make your secretary enlarge his hand, though d’ailleurs it is a very good one.
Had I been to wish an advantageous situation for you, and a good début in it, I could not have wished you either, better than both have hitherto proved. The rest will depend entirely upon yourself; and I own I begin to have much better hopes than I had; for I know, by my own experience, that the more one works, the more willing one is to work. We are all, more or less, des animaux d’habitude. I remember very well, that when I was in business, I wrote four or five hours together every day, more willingly than I should now half an hour; and this is most certain, that when a man has applied himself to business half the day, the other half goes off the more cheerfully and agreeably. This I found so forcibly when I was at the Hague, that I never tasted company so well, nor was so good company myself, as at the suppers of my post-days. I take Hamburgh now to be le centre du refuge Allemand. If you have any Hanover refugiés among them, pray take care to be particularly attentive to them. How do you like your house? Is it a convenient one? Have the Casserolles* been employed in it yet? You will find les petits soupers fins less expensive, and turn to better account, than large dinners for great companies.
I hope you have written to the Duke of Newcastle; I take it for granted that you have to all your brother Ministers of the northern department. For God’s sake be diligent, alert, active, and indefatigable in your business. You want nothing but labour and industry to be, one day, whatever you please, in your own way.
We think and talk of nothing here but Brest, which is universally supposed to be the object of our great expedition.* A great and important object it is. I suppose the affair must be brusqué, or it will not do. If we succeed, it will make France put some water to its wine. As for my own private opinion, I own I rather wish than hope success. However, should our expedition fail, Magnis tamen exidit ausis,* and that will be better than our late languid manner of making war.
To mention a person to you whom I am very indifferent about, I mean myself, I vegetate still just as I did when we parted; but I think I begin to be sensible of the autumn of the year; as well as of the autumn of my own life. I feel an internal awkwardness, which, in about three weeks, I shall carry with me to the Bath, where I hope to get rid of it, as I did last year. The best cordial I could take, would be to hear, from time to time, of your industry and diligence; for in that case I should consequently hear of your success. Remember your own motto, Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia.* Nothing is truer. Yours.
BATH, NOVEMBER 20, 1757
MY DEAR FRIEND:
I write to you now, because I love to write to you; and hope that my letters are welcome to you; for otherwise I have very little to inform you of. The King of Prussia’s late victory.* you are better informed of than we are here. It has given infinite joy to the unthinking public, who are not aware that it comes too late in the year, and too late in the war, to be attended with any very great consequence. There are six or seven thousand of the human species less than there were a month ago, and that seems to me to be all. However, I am glad of it, upon account of the pleasure and the glory which it gives the King of Prussia, to whom I wish well as a Man, more than as a King. And surely he is so great a man, that had he lived seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago, and his life been transmitted to us in a language that we could not very well understand, I mean either Greek or Latin, we should have talked of him as we do now of your Alexanders, your Caesars, and others, with whom, I believe, we have but a very slight acquaintance. Au reste, I do not see that his affairs are much mended by this victory. The same combination of the great powers of Europe against him still subsists, and must at last prevail. I believe the French army will melt away, as is usual, in Germany; but his army is extremely diminished by battles, fatigues, and desertion: and he will find great difficulties in recruiting it, from his own already exhausted dominions. He must therefore, and to be sure will, negotiate privately with the French, and get better terms that way than he could any other.
The report of the three General Officers,* the Duke of Marlborough, Lord George Sackville, and General Waldegrave, was laid before the King last Saturday, after their having sat four days upon Mordaunt’s affair: nobody yet knows what it is; but it is generally believed, that Mordaunt will be brought to a courtmartial. That you may not mistake this matter, as most people here do, I must explain to you, that this examination, before the three above-mentioned General Officers, was by no means a trial; but only a previous inquiry into his conduct, to see whether there was, or was not, cause to bring him to a regular trial before a court-martial. The case is exactly parallel to that of a grand jury; who, upon a previous and general examination, find, or do not find, a bill, to bring the matter before the petty jury; where the fact is finally tried. For my own part, my opinion is fixed upon that affair: I am convinced that the expedition was to be defeated; and nothing that can appear before a court-martial can make me alter that opinion. I have been too long acquainted with human nature, to have great regard for human testimony: and a very great degree of probability, supported by various concurrent circumstances, conspiring in one point, will have much greater weight with me, than human testimony upon oath, or even upon honour; both which I have frequently seen considerably warped by private views.
The Parliament, which now stands prorogued to the first of next month, it is thought will be put off for some time longer, till we know in what light to lay before it the state of our alliance with Prussia, since the conclusion of the Hanover neutrality;* which, if it did not quite break it, made at least a great flaw in it.
The birthday was neither fine nor crowded; and no wonder, since the King was that day seventy-five. The old Court and the young one are much better together, since the Duke’s retirement; and the King has presented the Prince of Wales with a service of plate.*
I am still unwell, though I drink these waters very regularly. I will stay here at least six weeks longer, where I am much quieter than I should be allowed to be in town. When things are in such a miserable situation as they are at present, I desire neither to be concerned nor consulted, still less quoted. Adieu!
LONDON, MAY 13, 1758
MY DEAR LORD,
I am so odd a fellow, that I have still some regard for my country, and some concern for my conscience. I cannot serve the one, and I would not hurt the other; and therefore, for its quiet and safety, give me leave to put it into your keeping, which I do by the bit of parchment here enclosed, signed, and sealed, and which your Lordship will be pleased to have filled up with your name. If I am not much mistaken, we agree entirely in opinion for the Habeas Corpus Bill.* now depending in the House of Lords; and I am confirmed in that opinion by a conversation I have lately had with a very able opposer of the Bill, in which I reduced him to this one argument, that the Bill was unnecessary. If only unnecessary, why not pass it ex abundante,* to satisfy people’s minds upon a subject of that importance? But leave it in the breasts of the Judges, and they will do what is right. I am by no means sure of that; and my doubts upon that head are warranted by the State Trials, in which there is hardly an instance of any person prosecuted by the Crown, whom the Judges have not very partially tried, and, if they could bring it about with the jury, condemned right or wrong. We have had ship-money Judges, dispensing Judges, but I never read of any patriot Judges, except in the Old Testament; and those perhaps were only so, because at that time there was no King in Israel.* There is certainly some prerogative trick in this conspiracy of the lawyers to throw out this Bill; for, as no good reason is given for it, it may fairly be presumed that the true one is a bad one. I am going next week to settle at Blackheath, in the quiet and obscurity that best become me now, where you and Lady Stanhope, when you have nothing better to do, will always find a very indifferent dinner, and
A very faithful servant.
BLACKHEATH, MAY 23, 1758
MY DEAR LORD,
I have received your letter of the 4th instant. The day afterwards I received the book which you was so kind as to send me by Major Macculough; and the day after that, by Mr. Russel,* your bill for expenses incurred and not provided for, which I have paid.
Now, first, to the first. You solicit a very poor employment so modestly, and offer your daughters as security for your good behaviour, that I cannot refuse it you, and do hereby appoint you my sole Commissioner for the kingdom of Ireland. To the second. This ninth volume of Swift will not do him so much honour, as I hope it will bring profit to my friend George Faulkner. The historical part is a party pamphlet, founded on the lie of the day, which, as Lord Bolingbroke who had read it often assured me, was coined and delivered out to him, to write Examiners, and other political papers upon. That spirit remarkably runs through it. Macartney, for instance, murdered Duke Hamilton; nothing is falser, for though Macartney was very capable of the vilest actions, he was guiltless of that, as I myself can testify, who was at his trial in the King’s Bench, when he came over voluntarily to take it, in the late King’s time. There did not appear even the least ground for a suspicion of it; nor did Hamilton, who appeared in Court, pretend to tax him with it, which would have been in truth accusing himself of the utmost baseness, in letting the murderer of his friend go off from the field of battle, without either resentment, pursuit, or even accusation, till three days afterwards. This lie was invented to inflame the Scotch nation against the Whigs; as the other, that Prince Eugene intended to murder Lord Oxford, by employing a set of people called Mohocks (which Society, by the way, never existed), was calculated to inflame the mob of London. Swift took those hints de la meilleure foi du monde, and thought them materials for history.* So far he is blameless.
Thirdly and lastly, I have paid Mr. Russel the twenty-seven pounds five shillings, for which you drew your bill. I hope you are sensible that I need not have paid it till I had received the goods, or at least till I had proofs of your having sent them; but where I have in general a good opinion of the person, I always proceed frankly, and do not stand upon forms; and I have without flattery so good an opinion of you, that I would trust you not only with twenty-seven pounds, but even as far as thirty-seven.
Your friend’s letter to you, inclosed in the book, is an honest and melancholic one, but what can I do in it? He seems not to know the nature of factions in Ireland, the prevailing for the time being is absolute, and whoso transgresseth the least of their commandments is guilty of the whole.* A Lord-Lieutenant may if he pleases govern alone, but then he must, as I know by experience, take a great deal more trouble upon himself than most Lord-Lieutenants care to do, and he must not be afraid; but as they commonly prefer otium cum dignitate,* their guards, their battle-axes, and their trumpets, not to mention perhaps the profits of their post, to a laborious execution of it, they must necessarily rule by a faction, of which faction for the time being they are only the first slaves. The condition of the obligation is this: Your Excellency or your Grace wants to carry on his Majesty’s business smoothly, and to have it to say, when you go back, that you met with no difficulties; this we have sufficient strength in Parliament to engage for, provided we appear to have the favour and countenance of the Government; the money, be it what it will, shall be cheerfully voted; as for the public you shall do what you will, or nothing at all, for we care for that no more than we suppose your Grace or Excellency does, but we repeat it again, our recommendation to places, pensions, etc. must prevail, or we shall not be able to keep our people in order. These are always the expressed, or at least the implied, conditions of these treaties, which either the indolence or the insufficiency of the Governors ratify: from that moment these undertakers bury the Governor alive, but indeed pompously; different from the worshipful Company of Undertakers here, who seldom bury any body alive, or at least never without the consent and privity of the next heirs.
I am now settled here for the summer, perhaps for ever, in great tranquillity of mind, not equally of body; I make the most of it, I vegetate with the vegetables, and I crawl with the insects in my garden, and I am, such as I am, most faithfully and sincerely Yours.
BLACKHEATH, MAY 30, 1758
MY DEAR FRIEND:
I have no letter from you to answer, so this goes to you unprovoked. But à propos of letters; you have had great honour done you, in a letter from a fair and Royal hand, no less than that of her Royal Highness the Princess of Cassel; she has written your panegyric to her sister, Princess Amelia,* who sent me a compliment upon it. This has likewise done you no harm with the King, who said gracious things upon that occasion. I suppose you had for her Royal Highness those attentions, which I wish to God you would have, in due proportions, for everybody. You see, by this instance, the effects of them; they are always repaid with interest. I am more confirmed by this in thinking that, if you can conveniently, you should ask leave to go for a week to Cassel, to return your thanks for all favours received.
I cannot expound to myself the conduct of the Russians. There must be a trick in their not marching with more expedition. They have either had a sop from the King of Prussia, or they want an animating dram from France and Austria.* The Ring of Prussia’s conduct always explains itself by the events; and, within a very few days, we must certainly hear of some very great stroke from that quarter. I think I never in my life remember a period of time so big with great events as the present: within two months, the fate of the House of Austria will probably be decided: within the same space of time, we shall certainly hear of the taking of Cape Breton, and of our army’s proceeding to Quebec: within a few days, we shall know the good or ill success of our great expedition; for it is sailed; and it cannot be long before we shall hear something of the Prince of Brunswick’s operations, from whom I also expect good things. If all these things turn out, as there is good reason to believe they will, we may once, in our turn, dictate a reasonable peace to France, who now pays seventy per cent, insurance upon its trade, and seven per cent, for all the money raised for the service of the year.*
Comte Bothmar has got the small-pox, and of a bad kind. Kniphausen diverts himself much here; he sees all places and all people, and is ubiquity itself. Michel.* who was much threatened, stays at last at Berlin, at the earnest request of the King of Prussia. Lady Coventry is safely delivered of a son, to the great joy of that noble family. The expression of a woman’s having brought her husband a son, seems to be a proper and cautious one; for it is never said, from whence.
I was going to ask you how you passed your time now at Hamburgh, since it is no longer the seat of strangers and of business; but I will not, because I know it is to no purpose. You have sworn not to tell me.
Sir William Stanhope told me that you promised to send him some Old Hock from Hamburgh, and so you did—not. If you meet with any superlatively good, and not else, pray send over a foudre* of it, and write to him. I shall have a share in it. But unless you find some, either at Hamburgh or at Bremen, uncommonly and almost miraculously good, do not send any. Dixi.*
Yours.
LONDON, NEW-YEAR’S DAY, 1759
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Molti e felici,* and I have done upon that subject, one truth being fair, upon the most lying day in the whole year.
I have now before me your last letter of the 21st December, which I am glad to find is a bill of health; but, however, do not presume too much upon it, but obey and honour your physician, ‘that thy days may be long in the land’.*
Since my last, I have heard nothing more concerning the riband; but I take it for granted it will be disposed of soon. By the way, upon reflection, I am not sure that any body but a Knight can, according to form, be employed to make a Knight. I remember that Sir Clement Cotterel was sent to Holland, to dub the late Prince of Orange, only because he was a Knight himself; and I know that the proxies of Knights, who cannot attend their own installations, must always be Knights.* This did not occur to me before, and perhaps will not to the person who was to recommend you: I am sure I will not stir it; and I only mention it now, that you may be in all events prepared for the disappointment, if it should happen.
Grevenkop is exceedingly flattered with your account, that three thousand of his countrymen, all as little as himself, should be thought a sufficient guard upon three and twenty thousand of all the nations in Europe;* not that he thinks himself, by any means, a little man, for when he would describe a tall handsome man, he raises himself up at least half an inch to represent him.
The private news from Hamburg is, that his Majesty’s Resident there is woundily in love with Madame——; if this be true, God send him, rather than her, a good delivery! She must be étrennéé* at this season, and therefore I think you should be so to; so draw upon me as soon as you please, for one hundred pounds.
Here is nothing new, except the unanimity with which the Parliament gives away a dozen of millions sterling;* and the unanimity of the public is as great in approving of it, which has stifled the usual political and polemical argumentations.
Cardinal Bernis’s.* disgrace is as sudden, and hitherto as little understood, as his elevatidn was. I have seen his poems, printed at Paris, not by a friend, I dare say; and to judge by them, I humbly conceive his Eminency is a puppy. I will say nothing of that excellent head-piece that made him and unmade him in the same month, except O King, live for ever.
Good-night to you, whomever you pass it with.
LONDON, MARCH 30, 1759
MY DEAR FRIEND:
I do not like these frequent, however short, returns of your illness; for I doubt they imply either want of skill in your physician, or want of care in his patient. Rhubarb, soap, and chalybeate* medicines and waters, are always specifics for obstructions of the liver; but then a very exact regimen is necessary, and that for a long countinuance. Acids are good for you, but you do not love them; and sweet things are bad for you, and you do love them. There is another thing very bad for you, and I fear you love it too much. When I was in Holland, I had a slow fever, that hung upon me a great while; I consulted Boerhaave, who prescribed me what I suppose was proper, for it cured me; but he added, by way of postscript to his prescription, Venus rarius colatur:* which I observed, and perhaps that made the medicines more effectual.
I doubt we shall be mutually disappointed in our hopes of seeing one another this spring, as I believe you will find, by a letter which you will receive at the same time with this, from Lord Holderness; but as Lord Holderness will not tell you all, I will, between you and me, supply that defect. I must do him the justice to say, that he has acted in the most kind and friendly manner possible to us both. When the King read your letter, in which you desired leave to return, for the sake of drinking the Tunbridge waters, he said, ‘If he wants steel waters, those of Pyrmont* are better than Tunbridge, and he can have them very fresh at Hamburgh. I would rather he had asked to come last autumn, and had passed the winter here; for if he returns now, I shall have nobody in those quarters to inform me of what passes; and yet it will be a very busy and important scene.’ Lord Holderness, who found that it would not be liked, resolved to push it no farther; and replied, he was very sure, that when you knew his Majesty had the least objection to your return at this time, you would think of it no longer; and he owned that he (Lord Holderness) had given you encouragement for this application, last year, then thinking and hoping that there would be little occasion for your presence at Hamburgh this year. Lord Holderness will only tell you, in his letter, that, as he had some reason to believe his moving this matter would be disagreeable to the King, he resolved, for your sake, not to mention it. You must answer his letter upon that foot singly, and thank him for this mark of his friendship, for he has really acted as your friend. I make no doubt of your having willing leave to return in autumn, for the whole winter. In the mean time, make the best of your séjour, where you are; drink the Pyrmont waters, and no wine but Rhenish, which, in your case, is the only proper one for you.
Next week, Mr. Harte will send you his Gustavus Adolphus* in two quartos; it will contain many new particulars of the life of that real hero, as he has had abundant and authentic materials which have never yet appeared. It will, upon the whole, be a very curious and valuable history; though, between you and me, I could have wished that he had been more correct and elegant in his style. You will find it dedicated to one of your acquaintance, who was forced to prune the luxuriant praises bestowed upon him, and yet has left enough of all conscience to satisfy a reasonable man. Harte has been very much out of order these last three or four months, but is not the less intent upon sowing his Lucerne, of which he had six crops last year, to his infinite joy, and, as he says, profit. As a gardener, I shall probably have as much joy, though not quite so much profit, by thirty or forty shillings; for there is the greatest promise of fruit this year at Blackheath, that ever I saw in my life. Vertumnus and Pomona have been very propitious to me; as for Priapus,* that tremendous garden god, as I no longer invoke him, I cannot expect his protection from the birds and the thieves.
Adieu! I will conclude like a pedant, Levius fit patientia quicquid corrigere est nefas.*
LONDON, APRIL l6, 1759
MY DEAR FRIEND:
With humble submission to you, I still say, that if Prince Ferdinand can make a defensive campaign this year, he will have done a great deal, considering the great inequality of numbers. The little advantages of taking a regiment or two prisoners, or cutting another to pieces, are but trifling articles in the great account; they are only the pence, the pounds are yet to come; and I take it for granted, that neither the French, nor the Court of Vienna, will have le démenti of their main object, which is unquestionably Hanover; for that is the summa summarum; and they will certainly take care to draw a force together for this purpose, too great for any that Prince Ferdinand has, or can have, to oppose them. In short, mark the end on’t, j’en augure mal. If France, Austria, the Empire, Russia, and Sweden, are not, at long run, too hard for the two electors of Hanover and Brandenburgh, there must be some invisible Powers, some tutelar Deities, that miraculously interpose in favour of the latter.*
You encourage me to accept all the powers that goats, asses, and bulls, can give me, by engaging for my not making an ill use of them; but I own, I cannot help distrusting myself a little, or rather human nature: for it is an old and very true observation, that there are misers of money, but none of power; and the non-use of the one, and the abuse of the other, increase in proportion to their quantity.
I am very sorry to tell you, that Harte’s Gustavus Adolphus does not take at all, and consequently sells very little: it is certainly informing, and full of good matter; but it is as certain too, that the style is execrable: where the devil he picked it up, I cannot conceive, for it is a bad style, of a new and singular kind; it is full of Latinisms, Gallicisms, Germanisms, and all isms but Anglicisms; in some places pompous, in others vulgar and low. Surely, before the end of the world, people, and you in particular, will discover, that the manner, in everything, is at least as important as the matter; and that the latter never can please, without a good degree of elegancy in the former. This holds true in everything in life: in writing, conversing, business, the help of the Graces is absolutely necessary; and whoever vainly thinks himself above them, will find he is mistaken, when it will be too late to court them, for they will not come to strangers of an advanced age. There is an History lately come out, of the Reign of Mary Queen of Scots, and her son (no matter by whom) King James, written by one Robertson, a Scotchman, which for clearness, purity, and dignity of style, I will not scruple to compare with the best historians extant, not excepting Davila, Guicciardini, and perhaps Livy.* Its success has consequently been great, and a second edition is already published and bought up. I take it for granted that it is to be had, or at least borrowed, at Hamburgh, or I would send it you.
I hope you drink the Pyrmont waters every morning. The health of the mind depends so much on the health of the body, that the latter deserves the utmost attention, independently of the senses. God send you a very great share of both! Adieu!
LONDON, APRIL 27, 1759
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I have received your two letters of the 10th and 13th, by the last mail; and I will begin my answer to them, by observing to you, that a wise man, without being a Stoic, considers, in all misfortunes that befall him, their best as well as their worst side; and everything has a better and a worse side. I have strictly observed that rule for many years, and have found by experience that some comfort is to be extracted, under most moral ills, by considering them in every light, instead of dwelling, as people are too apt to do, upon the gloomy side of the object. Thank God, the disappointment that you so pathetically groan under, is not a calamity which admits of no consolation. Let us simplify it, and see what it amounts to. You were pleased with the expectation of coming here next month, to see those who would have been pleased with seeing you. That, from very natural causes, cannot be; and you must pass this summer at Hamburgh, and next winter in England, instead of passing this summer in England, and next winter at Hamburgh. Now, estimating things fairly, is not the change rather to your advantage? Is not the summer more eligible, both for health and pleasure, than the winter, in that northern, frozen Zone?—and will not the winter in England supply you with more pleasures than the summer in an empty capital could have done? So far then it appears that you are rather a gainer by your misfortune.
The tour, too, which you propose making to Lubeck, Altona,* etc., will both amuse and inform you; for, at your age, one cannot see too many different places and people, since at the age you are now of, I take it for granted, that you will not see them superficially, as you did, when you first went abroad.
This whole matter then, summed up, amounts to no more than this—that you will be here next winter, instead of this summer. Do not think that all I have said is the consolation only of an old philosophical fellow, almost insensible of pleasure or pain, offered to a young fellow, who has quick sensations of both. No; it is the rational philosophy taught me by experience and knowledge of the world, and which I have practised above thirty years. I always made the best of the best, and never made bad worse, by fretting. This enabled me to go through the various scenes of life, in which I have been an actor, with more pleasure, and less pain, than most people. You will say perhaps, one cannot change one’s nature; and that, if a person is born of a very sensible gloomy temper, and apt to see things in the worst light, they cannot help it, nor new-make themselves. I will admit it to a certain degree, and but to a certain degree; for, though we cannot totally change our nature, we may in a great measure correct it, by reflection and philosophy; and some philosophy is a very necessary companion in this world, where, even to the most fortunate, the chances are greatly against happiness.
I am not old enough, nor tenacious enough, to pretend not to understand the main purport of your last letter; and to show you that I do, you may draw upon me for two hundred pounds, which I hope will more than clear you.
Good-night! aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem;* be neither transported nor depressed by the accidents of life.
BLACKHEATH, MAY l6, 1759
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Your secretary’s last letter of the 4th, which I received yesterday, has quieted my fears a good deal, but has not entirely dissipated them. Your fever still continues, he says, though in a less degree. Is it a continued fever, or an intermitting one? If the former, no wonder that you are weak, and that your head aches. If the latter, why has not the bark,* in substance and large doses, been administered? for, if it had, it must have stopped it by this time. Next post, I hope, will set me quite at ease. Surely you have not been so regular as you ought, either in your medicines or in your general regimen, otherwise this fever would not have returned; for the Doctor calls it, your fever returned, as if you had an exclusive patent for it. “You have now had illnesses enough, to know the value of health, and to make you implicitly follow the prescriptions of your physician in medicines, and the rules of your own common sense in diet; in which, I can assure you, from my own experience, that quantity is often worse than quality; and I would rather eat half a pound of bacon at a meal, than two pounds of any the most wholesome food.
I have been settled here near a week, to my great satisfaction; c’est ma place, and I know it, which is not given to everybody. Cut off from social life by my deafness, as well as other physical ills, and being at best but the ghost of my former self, I walk here in silence and solitude as becomes a ghost: with this only difference, that I walk by day, whereas, you know, to be sure, that other ghosts only appear by night. My health, however, is better than it was last year, thanks to my almost total milk diet. This enables me to vary my solitary amusements, and alternately to scribble as well as read, which I could not do last year. Thus I saunter away the remainder, be it more or less, of an agitated and active life, now reduced (and I am not sure I am a loser by the change) to so quiet and serene a one, that it may properly be called, still life.
The French whisper in confidence, in order that it may be the more known and the more credited, that they intend to invade us this year, in no less than three places; that is, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Some of our great men, like the Devils, believe and tremble*; others, and one little one, whom I know, laugh at it; and in general, it seems to be but a poor, instead of a formidable scarecrow. While somebody was at the head of a moderate army, and wanted (I know why) to be at the head of a great one, intended invasions were made an article of political faith;* and the belief of them was required, as in the Church the belief of some absurdities, and even impossibilities, is required upon pain of heresy, excommunication, and consequently damnation, if they tend to the power and interest of the Heads of the Church. But now there is a general toleration, and that the best Subjects, as well as the best Christians, may believe what their reason and their consciences suggest. It is generally and rationally supposed, the French will threaten and not strike, since we are so well prepared, both by armies and fleets, to receive, and, I may add, to destroy them. Adieu! God bless you.
BLACKHEATH, SEPTEMBER 29, 1764
SIR,
I have forwarded your letters to their respective owners. That to Edwyn Stanhope was a very proper one. You must know that our kinsman has very strong and warm animal spirits, with a genius not quite so warm, and having nothing to do, is of course busy about trifles, which he takes for business, and sits upon them assiduously, as a certain bird, much in request upon this day particularly, does upon a piece of chalk, taking it for an egg. My boy I was with me on Thursday for the last time this season. He was very well, but had a little breaking out about his lips, for which I made him take a little manna,* which has done him good. He has an excellent appetite, and prefers the haut gout, when he can get it: and the more so, I believe, because he cannot get it at school. I indulge him but little in it, when he dines with me; for you know that I do not deal much in it myself. But when he spies anything in that taste at table, he begs so hard, that I dare not refuse him, having promised him, provided he learns well, not to refuse him anything he asks for: which promise he often puts me in mind of, without putting me to any great expense; for his last demand was a hoop to drive, value twopence. It is certain that there is a great deal of stuff put into his noddle by snatches and starts, and by no means digested as it ought to be, and will certainly be in time. When you write to him, pray tell him that his sister’s application and knowledge often make you wish that she were your son, and he your daughter; for I have hinted to him, that I was informed you had said something like it to Dr. Plumptre.*
I am, etc.
LONDON, OCTOBER 12, 1765
SIR,
In answer to the favour of your last letter, in which you desire my opinion concerning your third marriage,* I must freely tell you, that in matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody’s torments in this world or the next laid to my charge. You say that you find yourself lonely and melancholic at Mansfield, and I believe it; but then the point for your mature consideration is, whether it is not better to be alone than in bad company, which may very probably be your case with a wife. I may possibly be in the wrong, but I tell you very sincerely, with all due regard to the sex, that I never thought a woman good company for a man tête-à-tête, unless for one purpose, which, I presume, is not yours now. You had singular good fortune with your last wife, who has left you two fine children, which are as many as any prudent man would desire. And how would you provide for more? Suppose you should have five or six, what would you do for them? You have sometimes expressed concern about leaving your daughter a reasonable fortune: then what must be your anxiety, if to Miss Margaret, now existing, you should add a Miss Mary, a Miss Betty, a Miss Dolly, etc.; not to mention a Master Ferdinando, a Master Arthur, etc. My brother gave me exactly the same reasons that you do for marrying his third wife. He was weary of being alone, and had, by God’s good providence, found out a young woman of a retired disposition, and who had been bred up prudently under an old grandmother in the country; she hated and dreaded a London life, and chose to amuse herself at home with her books, her drawing, and her music. How this fine prospect turned out, I need not tell you. It turned out well, however, for my boy.*
Notwithstanding all these objections, I made your proposal to my sister and her girl, because you desired it. But it would not do: for they considered that her fortune, which is no great one, joined to yours, which is no great one neither, would not be sufficient for you both, even should you have no children; but if you should have any, which is the most probable side of the question, they could not have a decent provision. And that is true. Moreover, she has always led a town life, and cannot bear the thoughts of living in the country even in summer. Upon the whole, you will marry or not marry, as you think best; but to take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake. Shakespeare seems to be a good deal of my opinion, when he allows them only this department,
To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.*
I am just now come to town to settle for the winter, except an excursion to Bath. I shall see my boy on Monday or Tuesday next, and I am apt to think that we shall be very glad to meet. I shall now soon know what to trust to with Mr. Dodd.*
I am, etc.
BATH, OCT. 31, 1765
MY DEAR LITTLE BOY,
Our correspondence has hitherto been very desultory and various, my letters have had little or no relation to each other, and I endeavoured to suit them to your age and passion for variety. I considered you as a child, and trifled with you accordingly, and though I cannot yet look upon you as a man, I shall consider you as being capable of some serious reflections. You are now above half a man, for before your present age is doubled you will be quite a man: Therefore paulo major a canamus.* You already know your religious and moral duties, which indeed are exceedingly simple and plain; the former consist in fearing and loving your Creator, and in observing His laws which He has writ in every man’s heart, and which your conscience will always remind you of, if you will but give it a fair hearing. The latter, I mean your moral duties, are fully contained in these few words do as you would wish to be done by.* Your Classical Knowledge, others more able than myself, will instruct you in. There remains therefore nothing in which I can be useful to you, except to communicate to your youth and inexperience, what a long observation and knowledge of the world enables me to give you. I shall then for the future write you a series of letters, which I desire you will read over twice and keep by you, upon the Duty, the Utility, and the Means of pleasing, that is, of being what the French call Aimable, an art, which, it must be owned, they possess almost exclusively. They have studied it the most, and they practise it the best. I shall therefore often borrow their expressions in my following letters, as answering my ideas better than any I can find in my own language. Remember then and fix it well in your mind, that whoever is not Aimable is in truth no body at all with regard to the general intercourse of life. His learning is Pedantry, and even his virtues have no Lustre.
Perhaps my subject may sometimes oblige me to say things above your present portée, but in proportion as your understanding opens and extends itself, you will understand them, and then haec olim meminisse juvabit.* I presume you will not expect elegancy, or even accuracy, in letters of this kind which I write singly for your use. I give you my matter just as it occurs to me. May it be useful to you, for I do not mean it for public perusal.
If you were in this place it would quite turn your little head, here would be so much of your dear variety, that you would think rather less if possible than most of the company, who saunter away their whole time, and do nothing.
BATH, NOVEMBER 28, 1765
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I have this moment received your letter of the 10th. I have now been here near a month, bathing and drinking the waters, for complaints much of the same kind as yours, I mean pains in my legs, hips, and arms; whether gouty or rheumatic, God knows; but, I believe, both, that fight without a decision in favour of either, and have absolutely reduced me to the miserable situation of the Sphynx’s riddle,* to walk upon three legs; that is, with the assistance of my stick, to walk, or rather hobble, very indifferently. I wish it were a declared gout, which is the distemper of a gentleman; whereas the rheumatism is the distemper of a hackney-coachman or chairman, who are obliged to be out in all weathers and at all hours.
I think you will do very right to ask leave, and I dare say you will easily get it, to go to the baths in Suabia;* that is, supposing you have consulted some skilful physician, if such a one there be, either at Dresden or at Leipsig, about the nature of your distemper, and the nature of those baths; but, suos quisque patimur manes.* We have but a bad bargain, God knows, of this life, and patience is the only way not to make bad worse. Mr. Pitt keeps his bed here, with a very real gout, and not a political one, as is often suspected.
Here has been a Congress of most of the ex Ministres,* as the Duke of Bedford, George Grenville, Lord Sandwich, Lord Gower; in short, all of them but Lord Halifax. If they have raised a battery, as I suppose they have, it is a masked one, for nothing has transpired; only they confess that they intend a most vigorous attack. D’ailleurs, there seems to be a total suspension of all business, till the meeting of the Parliament, and then Signa canant.* I am very glad that, at this time, you are out of it; and for reasons that I need not mention: you would certainly have been sent for over, and, as before, not paid for your journey.
Poor Harte is very ill, and condemned to the Hot-well at Bristol. He is a better poet than philosopher;* for all this illness and melancholy proceeds originally from the ill success of his Gustavus Adolphus. He is grown extremely devout, which I am very glad of, because that is always a comfort to the afflicted.
I cannot present Mr. Larpent* with my New-year’s gift till I come to town, which will be before Christmas at farthest; till when, God bless you! Adieu.
BATH, DEC. 12, 1765
MY DEAR LITTLE BOY,
If you have not command enough over yourself to conquer your humour, as I hope you will, and as I am sure every rational creature may have, never go into company while the fit of ill humour is upon you. Instead of companies diverting you in those moments, you will displease and probably shock them, and you will part worse friends than you met. But whenever you find in yourself a disposition to sullenness, contradiction, or testiness, it will be in vain to seek for a cure abroad; stay at home, let your humour ferment and work itself off. Cheerfulness and good humour are of all qualifications the most amiable in company, for though they do not necessarily imply good nature and good breeding, they act them at least very well, and that is all that is required in mixed company. I have indeed known some very ill-natured people who are very good humoured in company, but I never knew any body generally ill humoured in company, who was not essentially ill natured. Where there is no malevolence in the heart, there is always a cheerfulness and ease in the countenance and the manners. By good humour and cheerfulness, I am far from meaning noisy mirth and loud peals of laughter, which art the distinguishing characteristics of the vulgar and of the ill-bred, whose mirth is a kind of a storm. Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance. A glaring absurdity, a blunder, a silly accident, and those things that are generally called Comical may excite a momentary laugh, though never a loud nor a long one among well bred people. Sudden passion is called a short lived madness; it is a madness indeed, but the fits of it generally return so often in choleric people that it may well be called a continual madness. Should you happen to be of this unfortunate disposition, which God forbid, make it your constant study to subdue, or at least to check it. When you find your choler rising, resolve neither to speak to, nor answer the person who excites it, but stay till you find it subsiding, and then speak deliberately. I have known many people, who by the rapidity of their speech have run away with themselves into a passion. I will mention to you a trifling and perhaps you will think a ridiculous receipt, towards checking the excess of passion, of which I think that I have experienced the utility myself. Do everything in Minuet time, speak, think, and move always in that measure, equally free from the dulness of slow, or the hurry and huddle of quick time. This movement moreover will allow you some moments to think forwards, and the Graces to accompany what you say or do, for they are never represented as either running, or dozing. Observe a man in a passion, see his eyes glaring, his face inflamed, his limbs trembling, and his tongue stammering, and faltering with rage, and then ask yourself calmly, whether you would upon any account be that human wild beast. Such creatures are hated and dreaded in all companies where they are let loose, as people do not choose to be exposed to the disagreeable necessity of either knocking down these brutes or being knocked down by them. Do on the contrary endeavour to be cool and steady upon all occasions. The advantages of such a steady calmness, are innumerable, and would be too tedious to relate. It may be acquired by care and reflection. If it could not, that reason which distinguishes men from brutes, would be given us to very little purpose. As a proof of this, I never saw, and scarcely ever heard of a quaker in a passion. In truth there is in that sect, a decorum, a decency, and an amiable simplicity, that I know in no other. Having mentioned the Graces in this letter, I cannot end it, without recommending to you most earnestly the advice of the wisest of the Ancients, to sacrifice to them devoutly and daily. When they are propitious they adorn everything and engage everybody.—But are they to be acquired? Yes to a certain degree they are, by attention, observation, and assiduous worship. Nature, I admit, must first have made you capable of adopting them, and then observation and imitation will make them in time your own. There are Graces of the mind as well as of the body; the former giving an easy engaging turn to the thoughts and the expressions, the latter to motions, attitude and address. No man perhaps ever possessed them all; he would be too happy that did, but if you will attentively observe those graceful and engaging manners, which please you most in other people, you may easily collect what will equally please others in you, and engage the majority of the Graces on your side, insure the casting vote, and be returned Aimable. There are people whom the Précieuse of Moliere, very justly, though very affectedly calls, les Antipodes des Graces.* If these unhappy people are formed by nature invincibly Maussades* and awkward, they are to be pitied, rather than blamed or ridiculed, but nature has disinherited few people to that degree.
BATH, DEC. 18, 1765
MY DEAR LITTLE BOY,
If God gives you Wit, which I am not sure that I wish you, unless He gives you at the same time an equal portion at least of judgment to keep it in good order, wear it like your sword in the scabbard, and do not brandish it to the terror of the whole company. If you have real wit it will flow spontaneously and you need not aim at it, for in that case the rule of the Gospel is reversed, and it will prove, seek and you shall not find.* Wit is so shining a quality, that everybody admires it, most people aim at it, all people fear it, and few love it unless in themselves. A man must have a good share of wit himself to endure a great share of it in another. When wit exerts itself in satire it is a most malignant distemper; wit it is true may be shown in satire, but satire does not constitute wit, as most fools imagine it does. A man of real wit will find a thousand better occasions of showing it. Abstain therefore most carefully from satire, which though it fall upon no particular person in company, and momentarily from the malignity of the human heart, pleases all; upon reflection, it frightens all too, they think it may be their turn next, and will hate you for what they find you could say of him, more than be obliged to you for what you do not say. Fear and hatred are next door neighbours. The more wit you have the more good nature and politeness you must show, to induce people to pardon your superiority, for that is no easy matter. Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in, take their tone whatever it may be, and excel in it if you can, but never pretend to give the tone; a free conversation will no more bear a Dictator than a free Government will. The character of a man of wit is a shining one that every man would have if he could, though it is often attended by some inconveniences; the dullest Alderman ever aims at it, cracks his dull joke, and thinks, or at least hopes that it is Wit. But the denomination of a Wit, is always formidable, and very often ridiculous. These titular wits have commonly much less wit, than petulance and presumption. They are at best les rieurs de leur quartier,* in which narrow sphere they are at once feared and admired. You will perhaps ask me, and justly, how considering the delusion of self-love and vanity, from which no man living is absolutely free, how you shall know whether you have Wit or not. To which the best answer I can give you is, not to trust to the voice of your own judgment, for it will deceive you. Nor to your ears, which will always greedily receive flattery, if you are worth being flattered; but trust only to your eyes, and read in the countenances of good company, their approbation, or dislike of what you say. Observe carefully too, whether you are sought for, solicited, and in a manner pressed into good company. But even all this will not absolutely ascertain your wit, therefore do not upon this encouragement flash your wit in people’s faces a ricochets, in the shape of bon mots, epigrams, small repartées, etc., have rather less, than more, wit than you really have. A wise man will live at least as much within his wit as within his income. Content yourself with good sense and reason, which at long run are sure to please everybody who has either. If wit comes into the bargain, welcome it, but never invite it. Bear this truth always in your mind, that you may be admired for your wit if you have any, but that nothing but good sense and good qualities can make you be loved. They are substantial, every day’s wear. Wit is for les jours de Gala, where people go chiefly to be stared at.
I received your last letter which is very well writ. I shall see you next week, and bring you some pretty things from hence, because I am told that you have been a very good boy, and have learned well.
LONDON, DECEMBER 27, 1765
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I arrived here from Bath last Monday, rather, but not much better than when I went thither. My rheumatic pains, in my legs and hips, plague me still; and I must never expect to be quite free from them.
You have, to be sure, had from the office an account of what the Parliament did, or rather did not do, the day of their meeting; and the same point will be the great object at their next meeting; I mean the affair of our American Colonies, relatively to the late imposed Stamp-duty, which our colonists absolutely refuse to pay. The administration are for some indulgence and forbearance to those froward children of their mother country; the Opposition are for taking vigorous, as they call them, but I call them violent measures; not less than les dragonades;* and to have the tax collected by the troops we have there. For my part, I never saw a froward child mended by whipping; and I would not have the mother country become a step-mother. Our trade to America brings in, communibus annis, two millions a year; and the Stamp-duty is estimated at but one hundred thousand pounds a year; which I would by no means bring into the stock of the Exchequer, at the loss or even the risk of a million a year to the national stock.
I do not tell you of the Garter given away yesterday, because the newspapers will; but I must observe that the Prince of Brunswick’s riband* is a mark of great distinction to that family; which, I believe, is the first (except our own Royal family) that has ever had two blue ribands at a time; but it must be owned they deserve them.
One hears of nothing now, in town, but the separation of men and their wives. Will Finch the ex-Vice Chamberlain, Lord Warwick, your friend Lord Bolingbroke.* I wonder at none of them for parting; but I wonder at many for still living together; for in this country it is certain that marriage is not well understood.
I have this day sent Mr. Larpent two hundred pounds for your Christmas box, of which I suppose he will inform you by this post. Make this Christmas as merry a one as you can; for pour le peu de bon terns qui nous reste, rien n’est si funeste qu’un noir chagrin.* For the new years; God send-you many, and happy ones! Adieu.
BATH, DEC. 28, 1765
MY DEAR LITTLE BOY,
There is a species of minor wit, which is much used and much more abused, I mean Raillery. It is a most mischievous and dangerous weapon, when in unskilful or clumsy hands, and it is much safer to let it quite alone than to play with it, and yet almost everybody does play with it though they see daily the quarrels and heart burnings that it occasions. In truth it implies a supposed superiority, in the railleur to the rattlé, which no man likes even the suspicion of in his own case, though it may divert him in other people’s. An innocent raillerie is often inoffensively begun, but very seldom inoffensively ended, for that depends upon the Rattlé who, if he cannot defend himself well grows brutal, and if he can, very possibly his railleur, baffled and disappointed, becomes so. It is a sort of trial of wit, in which no man can patiently bear to have his inferiority made appear. The character of a Railleur is more generally feared, and more heartily hated than any one I know in the world. The injustice of a bad man is sooner forgiven than the insult of a witty one. The former only hurts one’s liberty or property, but the latter hurts and mortifies that secret pride, which no human breast is free from. I will allow that there is a sort of raillery which may not only be inoffensive but even flattering, as when by a genteel irony you accuse people of those imperfections which they are most notoriously free from, and consequently insinuate that they possess the contrary virtues. You may safely call Aristides* a knave, or a very handsome woman an ugly one; but take care, that neither the man’s character, nor the Lady’s beauty, be in the least doubtful. But this sort of raillery requires a very light and steady hand to administer it. A little too rough, it may be mistaken into an offence, and a little too smooth, it may be thought a sneer, which is a most odious thing. There is another sort, I will not call it of wit, but rather of merriment and buffoonery, which is mimicry; the most successful mimic in the world is always the most absurd fellow, and an Ape is infinitely his superior. His profession is to imitate and ridicule those natural defects and deformities for which no man is in the least accountable, and in their imitation of them, make themselves for the time as disagreeable and shocking as those they mimic. But I will say no more of those creatures, who only amuse the lowest rabble of mankind. There is another sort of human animals, called wags, whose profession is to make the company laugh immoderately, and who always succeed provided the company consist of fools, but who are greatly disappointed in finding that they never can alter a muscle in the face of a Man of sense. This is a most contemptible character, and never esteemed, even by those who are silly enough to be diverted by them. Be content both for yourself, with sound good sense, and good manners, and let Wit be thrown into the bargain where it is proper and inoffensive. Good sense will make you be esteemed, good manners be loved, and wit give a lustre to both. In whatever company you happen to be, whatever pleasures you are engaged in, though perhaps not of a very laudable kind, take care to preserve a great Personal dignity. I do not in the least mean a pride of birth or rank, that would be too silly, but I mean a dignity of character. Let your moral character of Honesty and Honour, be unblemished and even unsuspected; I have known some people dignify even their vices, first, by never boasting of them, and next by not practising them in an illiberal and indecent manner. … If they loved drinking too well, they did not practise at least that beastly vice in beastly company, but only indulged it sometimes in those companies whose wit and good humour, in some degree seemed to excuse it, though nothing can justify it. When you see a drunken man, as probably you will see many, study him with attention, and ask yourself soberly whether you would upon any account, be that Beast, that disgrace to human reason. The Lacedaemonians very wisely made their slaves drunk, to deter their children from being so, and with good effect, for nobody ever yet heard of a Lacedaemonian drunk.*
[Undated.
MY DEAR LITTLE BOY,
Carefully avoid all affectation either of mind or body. It is a very true and a very trite observation that no Man is ridiculous for being what he really is, but for affecting to be what he is not. No Man is awkward by nature, but by affecting to be genteel; and I have known many a man of common sense pass generally for a fool, because he affected a degree of wit that God had denied him. A Ploughman is by no means awkward in the exercise of his trade, but would be exceedingly ridiculous, if he attempted the air and graces of a Man of Fashion. You learned to dance but it was not for the sake of dancing, but it was to bring your air and motions back to what they would naturally have been, if they had had fair play, and had not been warped in your youth by bad examples and awkward imitations of other boys. Nature may be cultivated and improved both as to the body and as to the mind, but it is not to be extinguished by art, and all endeavours of that kind are absurd, and an inexhaustible fund for ridicule. Your body and mind must be at ease, to be agreeable; but Affectation is a perpetual constraint, under which no man can be genteel in his carriage, or pleasing in his conversation. Do you think that your motions would be easy or graceful if you wore the clothes of another Man much slenderer or taller than yourself? Certainly not; it is the same thing with the mind, if you affect a character that does not fit you, and that nature never intended for you. But here do not mistake, and think that it follows from hence that you should exhibit your whole character to the Public because it is your natural one. No. Many things must be suppressed, and many occasionally concealed in the best character. Never force Nature, but it is by no means necessary to show it all. Here discretion must come to your assistance, that sure and safe Guide through life; discretion that necessary companion to reason, and the useful Garde-fou,* if I may use that expression, to wit and imagination. Discretion points out the A propos, the Decorum, the Ne quid Nimis,* and will carry a Man of moderate parts further, than the most shining parts would without it. It is another word for Judgment though not quite synonymous to it. Judgment is not upon all occasions required, but discretion always is. Never affect nor assume a particular character, for it will never fit you but will probably give you a ridicule, but leave it to your conduct, your virtues, your morals and your manners, to give you one. Discretion will teach you to have particular attention to your Mœurs which we have no one word in our language to express exactly. Morals, are too much, Manners too little, Decency comes the nearest to it, though rather short of it. Cicero’s word Decorum is properly the thing, and I see no reason why that expressive word, should not be adopted, and naturalized in our language, I have never scrupled using it in that sense. A propos of words, study your own language more carefully than most English people do. Get a habit of speaking it with propriety and elegance. For there are few things more disagreeable than to hear a Gentleman talk the barbarisms, the solecisms, and the Vulgarisms of Porters. Avoid on the other hand, a stiff and formal accuracy, especially what the women call hard words, when plain ones as expressive are at hand. The French make it a study to bien narrer, and to say the truth they are apt to narrer trop,* and with too affected an elegancy. The three commonest topics of conversation are Religion, Politics and News. All people think that they understand the two first perfectly, though they never studied either, and are therefore very apt to talk of them both, dogmatically and ignorantly, consequently with warmth. But Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in a mixed company. It should only be treated among a very few people of learning, for mutual instruction. It is too awful and respectable a subject to become a familiar one. Therefore, never mingle yourself in it, any further than to express a universal toleration and indulgence to all errors in it, if conscientiously entertained; for every man has as good a right to think as he does, as you have to think as you do, nay in truth he cannot help it. As for Politics, they are still more universally understood, and as every one thinks his private interest more or less concerned in them, nobody hesitates to pronounce decisively upon them, not even the ladies; the copiousness of whose eloquence is more to be admired upon that subject, than the conclusiveness of their logic. It will be impossible for you to avoid engaging in these conversations, for there are hardly any others, but take care to do it very coolly and with great good humour; and whenever you find that the company begins to be heated and noisy for the good of their country, be only a patient hearer, unless you can interpose by some agreeable badinage and restore good-humour to the company. And here I cannot help observing to you that nothing is more useful either to put off or to parry disagreeable and puzzling affairs, than a good humoured and genteel badinage. I have found it so by long experience, but this badinage must not be carried to mauvaise plaisanterie. It must be light, without being frivolous, sensible without being sententious, and in short have that pleasing je ne sçay quoy, which everybody feels and nobody can describe.
I shall now suspend for a time the course of these letters, but as the subject is inexhaustible, I shall occasionally resume it, in the meantime believe and remember that a man who does not generally please is nobody, and that constant endeavours to please, will infallibly please, to a certain degree, at least.
BLACKHEATH, AUGUST 1, 1766
MY DEAR FRIEND:
The curtain was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and discovered the new actors, together with some of the old ones. I do not name them to you, because to-morrow’s Gazette will do it full as well as I could. Mr. Pitt, who had carte blanche given him, named every one of them; but what would you think he named himself for? Lord Privy Seal; and (what will astonish you, as it does every mortal here) Earl of Chatham.* The joke here is, that he has had a fall upstairs, and has done himself so much hurt, that he will never be able to stand upon his legs again. Everybody is puzzled how to account for this step; and in my mind it can have but two causes; either he means to retire from business, or he has been the dupe of Lord Bute and a great lady.* The latter seems to me, of the two, the most probable, though it would not be the first time that great abilities have been duped by low cunning. But be it what it will, he is now certainly only Earl of Chatham; and no longer Mr. Pitt, in any respect whatever. Such an event, I believe, was never read nor heard of. To withdraw, in the fulness of his power, and in the utmost gratification of his ambition, from the House of Commons (which procured him his power, and which alone could insure it to him), and to go into that Hospital of Incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so unaccountable, that nothing but proof positive could have made me believe it: but true it is. Hans Stanley is to go Embassador to Russia; and my nephew, Ellis, to Spain, decorated with the red riband. Lord Shelburne is your Secretary of State, which I suppose he has notified to you this post, by a circular letter. He has abilities, but is proud above them, so pray lay him on pretty thick in your answer to his circular. Charles Townshend has now the sole management of the House of Commons; but how long he will be content to be only Lord Chatham’s vicegerent there, is a question which I will not pretend to decide.* There is one very bad sign for Lord Chatham, in his new dignity; which is, that all his enemies, without exception, rejoice at it; and all his friends are stupified and dumb-founded. If I mistake not much, he will, in the course of a year, enjoy perfect otium cum dignitate.* Enough of politics.
Is the fair, or at least the fat, Miss Chudleigh with you still? It must be confessed that she knows the arts of Courts; to be so received at Dresden, and so connived at in Leicester-fields.*
There never was so wet a summer as this has been, in the memory of man; we have not had one single day, since March, without some rain; but most days a great deal. I hope that does not affect your health, as great cold does; for, with all these inundations, it has not been cold. God bless you!
(WRITTEN IN THE CHARACTER OF HIS FOOTMAN)
BATH, NOVEMBER 6, 1766
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LADYSHIP,
My Lord told me as how that it was your Ladyship’s orders that I should write you a card to acquaint you how he did after his journey hither; but with submission to his Lordship, I thought that that would be too great a presumption in one like me, to a lady of your quality, to send you such a card as we carry twenty times a day in town, and therefore I chose the way of a letter as the most respectful of the two. For you must know that we London footmen pick up a sort of second-hand good manners from keeping good company, and especially from waiting at table, where we glean up some scraps of our master’s good-breeding—if they have any.
To say the truth, I cannot very well understand why my Lord would rather employ my hand than his own in writing to your Ladyship; and, if I dare say so, I think he was a good deal out in point of breeding, which I wonder at the more, because I have heard him say that there was nobody in the world that he honoured and respected more than your Ladyship, and that you was the oldest acquaintance, friend, and fellow-servant that he had; and, indeed, I believe he spoke what he thought, for you know he could have no reason for telling an untruth in my hearing, who was not then very likely to have an opportunity of telling it you again.
But to come to the point, my Lord was very much fatigued with his journey, not being (as I heard him say) what he was thirty years ago—I believe he might have said fifty. However, he is pretty well for him, but often complains that he feels a sensible decay both of body and mind, and, between you and I, I think not without reason; for I, who see him every day, can, notwithstanding, observe a considerable alteration in him, and by no means for the better; and so I rest, with duty and respect, etc.
THOMAS ALLEN.
(WRITTEN IN THE CHARACTER OF HIS FOOTMAN)
BATH, NOVEMBER, 1766
MADAM,
When I made bould to write last to your Ladyship it was by my Lord’s order, and, as he said, by your Ladyship’s too; but I fear it is great presumption in me to trouble you now, as I do, upon my own account. The case is this: I received a letter some time agone from one Mrs. Wagstaff,* whom I am not acquainted with, and so do not know in what manner to address her, but must beg your Ladyship’s directions, for fear of offending her. If she is Mrs. with a surname, she is above the livery, and belongs to the upper servants; but if she be Mrs. only with her Christian name—as, Mrs. Betty, Mrs. Mary, Mrs. Dolly, etc., our cloth often looks as high as that, and they often condescend to look as low as us. Now, when I know Mrs. Wag-staff’s station in life, I will either answer her letter, or refer it to my Lord’s valet-de-chamber; for we of the cloth have lately improved very much both in style and propriety, by the great number of cards that we daily carry to and from the nobility and gentry, which are models of fine writing.
Now, Madam, it is time to give you some account of my Lord, for whom you show so friendly a regard. He is as well as can be expected in his condition; as is usually said of ladies in child-bed, or in great affliction for the death of somebody they did not care for. Now, I heard his Lordship say very lately at table, that he was seventy-three complete, with a shattered carcase, as he was pleased to call it. To say the truth, I believe my Lord did live a little too freely formerly; but I can assure your Ladyship that he is now very regular, and even more so, I believe, than I am. But he is still very cheerful; and as an instance of it, a gentleman having said at table that the women dressed their heads here three or four stories high—‘Yes,’ said my Lord, ‘and I believe every story is inhabited, like the lodging-houses here; for I observe a great deal of scratching.’ I thought this comical enough to tell it your Ladyship; and to confess the truth, I repeated it as my own to some of my brethren of the cloth, and they relished it wonderfully. My Lord often mentions your Ladyship with great regard and respect, and Miss Hotham* with great affection and warmth for an old gentleman. And so I remain, etc.
THOMAS ALLEN.
BLACKHEATH, JULY 9, 1767
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I have received yours of the 21st past, with the enclosed proposal from the French réfugiés, for a subscription towards building them un Temple.* I have shown it to the very few people I see, but without the least success. They told me (and with too much truth) that whilst such numbers of poor were literally starving here from the dearness of all provisions, they could not think of sending their money into another country, for a building which they reckoned useless. In truth, I never knew such misery as is here now; and it affects both the hearts and the purses of those who have either; for my own part, I never gave to a building in my life; which I reckon is only giving to masons and carpenters, and the treasurer of the undertaking.
Contrary to the expectations of all mankind here, everything still continues in statu quo. General Conway has been desired by the King to keep the seals till he has found a successor for him, and the Lord President* the same. Lord Chatham is relapsed, and worse than ever: he sees nobody, and nobody sees him; it is said, that a bungling physician has checked his gout, and thrown it upon his nerves; which is the worst distemper that a minister or a lover can have, as it debilitates the mind of the former, and the body of the latter. Here is at present an interregnum. We must soon see what order will be produced from this chaos. It will be what Lord Bute pleases.*
The Electorate, I believe, will find the want of Comte Flemming;* for he certainly had abilities; and was as sturdy and inexorable as a Minister at the head of finances ought always to be. When you see Comtesse Flemming, which I suppose cannot be of some time, pray make her Lady Chesterfield’s and my compliments of condolence.
You say that Dresden is very sickly; I am sure London is at least as sickly now, for there reigns an epidemical distemper, called by the genteel name of l’influenza. It is a little fever, of which scarcely anybody dies; and it generally goes off with a little looseness. I have escaped it, I believe, by being here. God keep you from all distempers, and bless you!
BATH, DECEMBER 19, 1767
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Yesterday I received your letter of the 29th past, and am very glad to find that you are well enough to think that you may perhaps stand the winter at Dresden; but if you do, pray take care to keep both your body and your limbs exceedingly warm.
As to my own health, it is, in general, as good as I could expect it, at my age; I have a good stomach, a good digestion, and sleep well; but find that I shall never recover the free use of my legs, which are now full as weak as when I first came hither.
You ask me questions concerning Lord Chatham, which neither I, nor, I believe, anybody but himself can answer; however, I will tell you all that I do know, and all that I guess, concerning him. This time twelvemonth he was here, and in good health and spirits, except now and then some little twinges of the gout. We saw one another four or five times, at our respective houses; but for these last eight months, he has been absolutely invisible to his most intimate friends, les sous Ministres: he would receive no letters, nor so much as open any packet about business.
His physician, Dr. Addington,* as I am told, had very ignorantly checked a coming fit of the gout, and scattered it about his body; and it fell particularly upon his nerves, so that he continues exceedingly vapourish; and would neither see nor speak to anybody, while he was here. I sent him my compliments, and asked leave to wait upon him; but he sent me word, that he was too ill to see anybody whatsoever. I met him frequently taking the air in his post-chaise, and he looked very well. He set out from hence for London, last Tuesday; but what to do, whether to resume, or finally to resign the Administration, God knows; conjectures are various. In one of our conversations here, this time twelvemonth, I desired him to secure you a seat in the new Parliament; he assured me he would, and, I am convinced, very sincerely; he said even that he would make it his own affair; and desired I would give myself no more trouble about it. Since that, I have heard no more of it; which made me look out for some venal borough: and I spoke to a borough-jobber, and offered five and twenty hundred pounds for a secure seat in Parliament; but he laughed at my offer, and said, that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for that the rich East and West Indians had secured them all, at the rate of three thousand pounds at least; but many at four thousand; and two or three that he knew, at five thousand,* This, I confess, has vexed me a good deal, and made me the more impatient to know whether Lord Chatham had done anything in it; which I shall know when I go to town, as I propose to do in about a fortnight; and as soon as I know it you shall. To tell you truly what I think—I doubt, from all these nervous disorders, that Lord Chatham is hors de combat, as a Minister; but do not even hint this to anybody. God bless you!
LONDON, MARCH 12, 1768
MY DEAR FRIEND:
The day after I received your letter of the 21st past, I wrote to Lord Weymouth, as you desired; and I send you his answer enclosed, from which (though I have not heard from him since) I take it for granted, and so may you, that his silence signifies his Majesty’s consent to your request.* Your complicated complaints give me great uneasiness, and the more, as I am convinced that the Montpellier physicians have mistaken a material part of your case; as indeed all physicians here did, except Dr. Maty.* In my opinion, you have no gout, but a very scorbutic and rheumatic habit of body, which should be treated in a very different manner from the gout; and, as I pretend to be a very good quack, at least, I would prescribe to you a strict milk diet, with the seeds, such as rice, sago, barley, millet, etc., for the three summer months at least, and without ever tasting wine. If climate signifies anything (in which, by the way, I have very little faith) you are, in my mind, in the finest climate in the world; neither too hot nor too cold, and always clear; you are with the gayest people living; be gay with them, and do not wear out your eyes with reading at home. L’ennui is the English distemper; and a very bad one it is, as I find by every day’s experience; for my deafness deprives me of the only rational pleasure that I can have at my age, which is society; so that I read my eyes out every day, that I may not hang myself.
You will not be in this Parliament, at least not in the beginning of it. I relied too much upon Lord Chatham’s promise above a year ago, at Bath. He desired that I would leave it to him; that he would make it his own affair, and give it in charge to the Duke of Grafton.* whose province it was to make the parliamentary arrangement. This I depended upon, and I think with reason; but, since that, Lord Chatham has neither seen nor spoken to anybody, and has been in the oddest way in the world. I sent to the Duke of Grafton, to know if Lord Chatham had either spoken or sent to him about it; but he assured me that he had done neither: that all was full, or rather running over, at present: but that, if he could crowd you in upon a vacancy, he would do it with great pleasure. I am extremely sorry for this accident; for I am of a very different opinion from you, about being in Parliament, as no man can be of consequence in this country, who is not in it; and, though one may not speak like a Lord Mansfield or a Lord Chatham, one may make a very good figure in a second rank. Locus est etpluribus umbris. I do not pretend to give you any account of the present state of this country, or Ministry, not knowing nor guessing it myself.*
God bless you, and send you health, which is the first and greatest of all blessings!
BATH, OCTOBER 17, 1768
MY DEAR FRIEND:
Your two last letters, to myself and Grevenkop, have alarmed me extremely; but I comfort myself a little, by hoping that you, like all people who suffer, think yourself worse than you are. A dropsy never comes so suddenly; and I flatter myself, that it is only that gouty or rheumatic humour, which has plagued you so long, that has occasioned the temporary swelling of your legs. Above forty years ago, after a violent fever, my legs were swelled as much as you describe yours to be; I immediately thought that I had a dropsy; but the Faculty* assured me, that my complaint was only the effect of my fever, and would soon be cured; and they said true. Pray let your amanuensis, whoever he may be, write an account regularly once a week, either to Grevenkop or myself, for that is the same thing, of the state of your health.
I sent you, in four successive letters, as much of the Duchess of Somerset’s* snuff as a letter could well convey to you. Have you received all or any of them? and have they done you any good? Though, in your present condition, you cannot go into company, I hope you have some acquaintances that come and sit with you; for if originally it was not good for man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so; he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it. Some men of learning among the Ecclesiastics, I daresay, would be glad to sit with you; and you could give them as good as they brought.
Poor Harte, who is here still, is in a most miserable condition; he has entirely lost the use of his left side, and can hardly speak intelligibly. I was with him yesterday. He inquired after you with great affection, and was in the utmost concern when I showed him your letter.
My own health is as it has been ever since I was here last year. I am neither well nor ill, but unwell. I have in a manner, lost the use of my legs; for though I can make a shift to crawl upon even ground for a quarter of an hour, I cannot go up or down stairs, unless supported by a servant.
God bless, and grant you a speedy recovery!*
(AT PARIS)
LONDON, MARCH 16, 1769
MADAM,
A troublesome and painful inflammation in my eyes obliges me to use another hand than my own, to acknowledge the receipt of your letter from Avignon, of the 27th past.
I am extremely surprised that Mrs. du Bouchet should have any objection to the manner in which your late husband desired to be buried, and which you, very properly, complied with.* All I desire, for my own burial, is not to be buried alive; but how or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.
I have no commission to trouble you with, during your stay at Paris; from whence, I wish you and the boys a good journey home; where I shall be very glad to see you all, and assure you of my being, with great truth,
Your faithful, humble servant.
LONDON, MARCH 25, 1769
MY WORTHY FRIEND,
A violent inflammation in my eyes, which is not yet quite removed, hindered me from acknowledging your last letter sooner; I regretted this delay the more, as I was extremely impatient to return, through you, my heartiest thanks to the Dublin Society, for the honour they have done me, by remembering in so advantageous a manner, and after so long an interval, an old and hearty friend and well-wisher.* Pray tell them, that I am much prouder of the place they have given me amongst those excellent citizens, my old friends Prior, Madden, Swift, etc., who benefited and improved mankind, than I should be of one amongst heroes, conquerors, and monarchs, who generally disturb and destroy their species. I did nothing for the Society but what everybody, in my then situation, must and would have done; so that I have not the least merit upon that score; and I was aware that jobs would creep into the Society, as they do now into every Society in England, as well as in Ireland, but neither that fear nor that danger should hinder one from founding or encouraging establishments that are in the main useful. Considering the times, I am afraid it is necessary that jobs should come; and all one can do is to say, woe be to him from whom the job cometh; and to extract what public good one can out of it. You give me great pleasure in telling me that drinking is a good deal lessened; may it diminish more and more every day! I am convinced, that could an exact calculation be made of what Ireland has lost within these last fifty years in its trade, manufactures, manners, and morals, by drunkenness, the sum total would frighten the most determined guzzler of either claret or whisky, into sobriety.
I have received, and thank you for, the volumes you sent me of Swift, whom you have enriched me with in every shape and size. Your liberality makes me ashamed, and I could wish that you would rather be my book-seller than my book-giver. Adieu, I am, very sincerely,
Yours, etc.
(IN LONDON)
WEDNESDAY (1769)
MADAM,
The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, I was so taken up in playing with the boys, that I forgot their more important affairs. How soon would you have them placed at school? When I know your pleasure as to that, I will send to Monsieur Perny,* to prepare everything for their reception. In the mean time, I beg that you will equip them thoroughly with clothes, linen, etc., all good, but plain; and give me the account, which I will pay; for I do not intend, that, from this time forwards, the two boys should cost you one shilling.
I am with great truth, yours, etc.
THURSDAY MORNING (1769)
MADAM,
As some day must be fixed for sending the boys to school, do you approve of the 8th of next month? by which time the weather will probably be warm and settled, and you will be able to equip them completely.
I will, upon that day, send my coach to you, to carry you and the boys to Loughborough House, with all their immense baggage. I must recommend to you, when you leave them there, to suppress, as well as you can, the overflowings of maternal tenderness; which would grieve the poor boys the more, and give them a terror of their new establishment. I am with great truth,
Yours, etc.
BATH, OCTOBER 11, 1769
MADAM,
Nobody can be more willing or ready to obey orders than I am; but then I must like the orders and the orderer. Your orders and yourself come under this description; and therefore I must give you an account of my arrival and existence, such as it is, here. I got hither last Sunday, the day after I left London, less fatigued than I expected to have been; and now crawl about this place upon my three legs, but am kept in countenance by many of my fellow crawlers: the last part of the Sphynx’s riddle* approaches, and I shall soon end, as I began, upon all fours.
When you happen to see either Monsieur or Madame Perny, I beg you will give them this melancholic proof of my caducity, and tell them, that the last time I went to see the boys, I carried the Michaelmas quarterage in my pocket, and when I was there I totally forgot it; but assure them, that I have not the least intention to bilk them, and will pay them faithfully, the two quarters together, at Christmas.
I hope our two boys are well; for then I am sure you are so.
I am, etc.
BATH, NOVEMBER 5, 1769
MADAM,
I remember very well the paragraph which you quote from a letter of mine to Mrs. du Bouchet, and see no reason yet to retract that opinion, in general, which at least nineteen widows in twenty had authorised. I had not then the pleasure of your acquaintance; I had seen you but twice or thrice; and I had no reason to think that you would deviate, as you have done, from other widows, so much, as to put perpetual shackles upon yourself, for the sake of your children; but (if I may use a vulgarism) one swallow makes no summer: five righteous were formerly necessary to save a city, and they could not be found;* so, till I find four more such righteous widows as yourself, I shall entertain my former notions of widowhood in general.
I can assure you that I drink here very soberly and cautiously, and at the same time keep so cool a diet, that I do not find the least symptom of heat, much less of inflammation. By the way, I never had that complaint, in consequence of having drank these waters; for I have had it but four times, and always in the middle of summer. Mr. Hawkins* is timorous, even to minuties, and my sister delights in them.
Charles will be a scholar, if you please; but our little Philip, without being one, will be something or other as good, though I do not yet guess what. I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country, that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown in to the bargain, in compliance with custom and for closet amusement.
You are, by this time, certainly tired with this long letter, which I could prove to you from Horace’s own words (for I am a scholar) to be a bad one; he says, that water-drinkers can write nothing good;* so I am, with real truth and esteem,
Yours etc.
LONDON, AUGUST 15, 1770
MY DEAR LORD,
The linen, which you were so kind as to procure me, dropped out of the clouds into my house in town last week, and is declared, by better judges than I am, very good, and very cheap. I shall not thank you for it; but, on the contrary, expect your thanks for giving you an opportunity of doing what always gives you pleasure, clothing the naked.* I am sure that, could you equally relieve all my other wants, you would; but there is no relief for the miseries of a crazy old age, but patience; and, as I have many of Job’s ills, I thank God, I have some of his patience too; and I consider my present wretched old age as a just compensation for the follies, not to say sins, of my youth.
I send you here inclosed some melon-seed, of the best and largest Cantelupe kind; and also of the green Persian sort, as much as I can venture at one time with the post; but, as none can be sown at this time of the year, I will from time to time send you more, so that you shall have of different kinds before the season. Adieu, my dear Lord; my eyes will have it so.
LONDON, AUGUST 12, 1771
MY DEAR LORD,
I received your kind letter three days ago, and make haste to acknowledge it, never knowing nor guessing what may happen to me from one day to another. I am most prodigiously old, and every month of the calendar adds at least a year to my age. My hand trembles to that degree that I can hardly hold my pen, my understanding stutters, and my memory fumbles. I have exhausted all the physical ills of Pandora’s box.* without finding hope at the bottom of it; but who can hope at seventy-seven? One must only seek for little comforts at that age. One of mine is, that all my complaints are rather teasing than torturing; and my lot, compared with that of many other people’s, who deserve a better, seems rather favourable. Philosophy, and confidence in the mercy of my Creator, mutually assist me in bearing my share of physical ills, without murmuring.
I send you here inclosed two little papers of melon-seed, of the best kind I ever tasted; and I shall from time to time send you more, as you cannot sow any till February.
I had the pleasure of your son’s company at dinner six weeks ago, where he met Lord Bristol,* who observed exactly his diet, in eating no animal food, and drinking no wine, and is in better health and spirits than I ever knew him. I am glad that he goes to Nice, which I have known to do a great deal of good to many people in his case. May you and he have all you wish for!
Adieu, my dear Lord; I am to you and yours, etc.
BATH, OCTOBER 27, 1771
MADAM,
Upon my word, you interest yourself in the state of my existence more than I do myself; for it is worth the care of neither of us. I ordered my valet de chambre, according to your orders, to inform you of my safe arrival here; to which I can add nothing, being neither better nor worse than I was then.
I am very glad that our boys are well. Pray give them the enclosed.
I am not at all surprised at Mr. ——‘s conversion;* for he was, at seventeen, the idol of old women, for his gravity, devotion, and dullness.
I am, Madam,
Yours, etc.
BATH, OCTOBER 27, 1771
I received, a few days ago, two of the best written letters that I ever saw in my life; the one signed Charles Stanhope, the other Philip Stanhope. As for you, Charles, I did not wonder at it; for you will take pains, and are a lover of letters; but you idle rogue, you Phil, how came you to write so well, that one can almost say of you two, et cantare pares et respondere parati*? Charles will explain this Latin to you.
I am told, Phil, that you have got a nick-name at school, from your intimacy with Master Strangeways; and that they call you Master Strangerways; for to be sure, you are a strange boy. Is this true?
Tell me what you would have me bring you both from hence, and I will bring it you, when I come to town. In the mean time, God bless you both!
LONDON, DECEMBER 19, 1771
MY DEAR LORD,
I am sure you will believe me when I tell you that 1 am sincerely sorry for your loss, which I received the account of yesterday, and upon which I shall make you none of the trite compliments of condolence. Your grief is just; but your religion, of which I am sure you have enough, (with the addition of some philosophy,) will make you keep it within due bounds, and leave the rest to time and avocations. When your son was with me here, just before he embarked for France, I plainly saw that his consumption was too far gone to leave the least hopes of a cure; and, if he had dragged on this wretched life some few years longer, that life could have been but trouble and sorrow to you both. This consideration alone should mitigate your grief, and the care of your grandson will be a proper avocation from it. Adieu, my dear Lord. May this stroke of adversity be the last you may ever experience from the hand of Providence!
Yours most affectionately and sincerely.
BLACKHEATH, SEPTEMBER 10, 1772
DEAR DAYROLLES,
I know, by long experience of your friendship, that you will not grudge in a manner any trouble that I may desire of you, that can either be of use or pleasure to me. My present request to you is of that kind.
I have had several letters from the boy since he has been abroad, and hitherto all seems to go very well between him and M. d’Eyverdunf But I am too old to trust to appearances, and therefore I will beg of you to write to M. d’Eyverdun*, and desire him to send you a confidential letter concerning everything good or bad of his élève,* and I promise you upon my honour not to discover the secret correspondence to any mortal living. You must be sensible of the great importance which it is of for me, to be thoroughly informed of his faults as well as of his perfections (if he has any); and this is, if not the only one, I am sure the best, method of my knowing them really and truly.
I am rather better than I was when you saw me last, but indeed very little, and extremely weak. I hope you and tutu quanti are in a better plight. My compliments to them all, and believe me to be, what I sincerely am,
Yours, etc.
BLACKHEATH, SEPTEMBER 24, 1772
DEAR DAYROLLES,
I have just now received your letter, and likewise the copy of that which, at my request, you wrote to Monsieur d’Eyverdun. I think it must have its effect, and that I shall be able to find out by it how matters go on at Leipsig.
I am extremely sorry for Mrs. Dayrolles’s situation, but I am a little in her case; for it is now four months since I have been labouring under a diarrhoea, which our common Doctor Warren.* has not been able to cure. To be nearer him, and all other helps, I shall settle in town this day se’nnight, which is the best place for sick people, or well people, to reside at, for health, business, or pleasure. God bless you all.
(TO BE DELIVERED AFTER HIS OWN DEATH)
Extracts.
MY DEAR BOY,
You will have received by my will solid proofs of my esteem and affection. This paper is not a will, and only conveys to you my most earnest requests, for your good alone, which requests, from your gratitude for my past care, from your good heart, and your good sense, I persuade myself, you will observe as punctually as if you were obliged by law to do so. They are not the dictates of a peevish, sour old fellow, who affects to give good rules, when he can no longer give bad examples, but the advice of an indulgent and tender friend (I had almost said parent), and the result of the long experience of one hackneyed in the ways of life, and calculated only to assist and guide your unexperienced youth.
You will probably come to my title and estate too soon, and at an age at which you will be much less fit to conduct yourself with discretion than you were at ten years old. This I know is a very unwelcome truth to a sprightly young fellow, and will hardly be believed by him, but it is nevertheless a truth, and a truth which I most sincerely wish, though I cannot reasonably hope, that you may be firmly convinced of. At that critical period of life, the dangerous passions are busy, impetuous, and stifle all reflection, the spirits high, the examples in general bad. It is a state of continual ebriety for six or seven years at least, and frequently attended by fatal and permanent consequences, both to body and mind. Believe yourself then to be drunk, and as drunken men, when reeling, catch hold of the next thing in their way to support them, do you, my dear boy, hold by the rails of my experience. I hope they will hinder you from falling, though perhaps not from staggering a little sometimes.
As to your religious and moral obligations I shall say nothing, because I know that you are thoroughly informed of them, and hope that you will scrupulously observe them, for if you do not you can neither be happy here nor hereafter.
I suppose you of the age of one-and-twenty, and just returned from your travels much fuller of fire than reflection; the first impressions you give of yourself, at your first entrance upon the great stage of life in your own country, are of infinite consequence, and to a great degree decisive of your future character. You will be tried first by the grand jury of Middlesex, and if they find a Bill against you, you must not expect a very favourable verdict from the many petty juries who will try you again in Westminster.*
Do not set up a tawdry, flaunting equipage, nor affect a grave one: let it be the equipage of a sensible young fellow, and not the gaudy one of a thoughtless young heir; a frivolous éclat and profusion will lower you in the opinion of the sober and sensible part of mankind. Never wear over-fine clothes; be as fine as your age and rank require, but do not distinguish yourself by any uncommon magnificence or singularity of dress. Follow the example of Martin, and equally avoid that of Peter or Jack.* Do not think of shining by any one trifling circumstance, but shine in the aggregate, by the union of great and good qualities, joined to the amiable accomplishments of manners, air and address.
At your first appearance in town, make as many acquaintances as you please, and the more the better, but for some time contract no friendships. Stay a little and inform yourself of the characters of those young fellows with whom you must necessarily live more or less, but connect yourself intimately with none but such whose moral characters are unblemished. For it is a true saying tell me who you live with and I will tell you what you are;* and it is equally true, that, when a man of sense makes a friend of a knave or a fool he must have something bad to do, or to conceal. A good character will be soiled at least by frequent contact with a bad one.
Do not be seduced by the fashionable word spirit. A man of spirit in the usual acceptation of that word is, in truth, a creature of strong and warm animal life with a weak understanding; passionate, wrong-headed, captious, jealous of his mistaken honour, and suspecting intended affronts, and, which is worse, willing to fight in support of his wrong head. Shun this kind of company, and content yourself with a cold, steady firmness and resolution. By the way, a woman of spirit is mutatis mutandis, the duplicate of this man of spirit; a scold and a vixen.
I shall say little to you against gaming, for my example cries aloud to you DO NOT GAME. Gaming is rather a rage than a passion; it will break in upon all your rational pleasures, and perhaps with some stain upon your character, if you should happen to win; for whoever plays deep must necessarily lose his money or his character. I have lost great sums at play, and am sorry I lost them, but I should now be much more sorry if I had won as much. As it is, I can only be accused of folly, to which I plead guilty. But as in the common intercourse of the world you will often be obliged to play at social games, observe strictly this rule: Never sit down to play with men only, but let there always be a woman or two of the party, and then the loss or the gain cannot be considerable.
Do not be in haste to marry, but look about you first, for the affair is important. There are but two objects in marriage, love or money. If you marry for love, you will certainly have some very happy days, and probably many very uneasy ones, if for money, you will have no happy days and probably no uneasy ones; in this latter case let the woman at least be such a one that you can live decently and amicably with, otherwise it is a robbery; in either case, let her be of an unblemished and unsuspected character, and of a rank not indecently below your own.
You will doubtless soon after your return to England be a Member of one of the two Houses of Parliament; there you must take pains to distinguish yourself as a speaker. The task is not very hard if you have common sense, as I think you have, and a great deal more. The Pedarii Senatores.* who were known only by their feet, and not by their heads, were always the objects of general contempt. If on your first, second or third attempt to speak, you should fail, or even stop short, from that trepidation and concern, which every modest man feels upon those occasions, do not be discouraged, but persevere; it will do at last. Where there is a certain fund of parts and knowledge, speaking is but a knack, which cannot fail of being acquired by frequent use. I must however add this caution, never write down your speeches beforehand; if you do you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater. Prepare and digest your matter well in your own thoughts, and Verba non invita sequentur.* But if you can properly introduce into your speech a shining declamatory period or two which the audience may carry home with them, like the favourite song of an opera, it will have a good effect. The late Lord Bolingbroke had accustomed himself so much to a florid eloquence even in his common conversation (which anybody with care may do) that his real extempore speeches seemed to be studied. Lord Mansfield was, in my opinion, the next to him in undeviating eloquence, but Mr. Pitt carried with him, unpremeditated, the strength of thunder, and the splendour of lightning. The best matter in the world if ill-dressed and ungracefully spoken, can never please. Conviction or conversion are equally out of the question in both Houses, but he will come the nearest to them who pleases the most. In that, as in everything else, sacrifice to the Graces. Be very modest in your exordium, and as strong as you can be in your peroratio.*
I can hardly bring myself to caution you against drinking, because I am persuaded that I am writing to a rational creature, a gentleman, and not to a swine. However, that you may not be insensibly drawn into that beastly custom of even sober drinking and sipping, as the sots call it, I advise you to be of no club whatsoever. The object of all clubs is either drinking or gaming, but commonly both. A sitting member of a drinking club is not indeed always drunk, perhaps seldom quite so, but he is certainly never quite sober, and is beclareted next morning with the guzzle of the preceding evening. A member of a gaming club should be a cheat, or he will soon be a beggar.
You will and you ought to be in some employment at Court. It is the best school for manners, and whatever ignorant people may think or say of it, no more the seat of vice than a village is; human nature is the same everywhere, the modes only are different. In the village they are coarse; in the Court they are polite; like the different clothes in the two several places, frieze in the one, and velvet in the other.
Be neither a servile courtier nor a noisy patriot; custom, that governs the world instead of reason, authorizes a certain latitude in political matters not always consistent with the strictest morality, but in all events remember servare modum, finemque tueri.*
Be not only tender and jealous of your moral, but of your political, character. In your political warfare, you will necessarily make yourself enemies, but make them only your political and temporary, not personal, enemies. Pursue your own principles with steadiness, but without personal reflection or acrimony, and behave yourself to those who differ from you with all the politeness and good humour of a gentleman, for in the frequent jumble of political atoms, the hostile and the amicable ones often change places.
In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity. Every man can be cunning if he pleases, by simulation, dissimulation, and in short by lying. But that character is universally despised and detested, and justly too; no truly great man was ever cunning. Preserve a dignity of character by your virtue and veracity. You are by no means obliged to tell all that you know and think, but you are obliged by all the most sacred ties of morality and prudence, never to say anything contrary to what you know or think to be true. Be master of your countenance, and let not every fool who runs read it. One of the fundamental rules, and almost the only honest one of Italian politics, is Volto sciolto* pensieri stretti, an open countenance and close thoughts.
Never be proud of your rank or birth, but be as proud as you please of your character. Nothing is so contrary to true dignity as the former kind of pride. You are, it is true, of a noble family, but whether of a very ancient one or not I neither know nor care, nor need you, and I dare say there are twenty fools in the House of Lords who could out-descend you in pedigree. That sort of stately pride is the standing jest of all people who can make one; but dignity of character is universally respected. Acquire and preserve that most carefully. Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum; at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.
Carefully avoid every singularity that may give a handle to ridicule, for ridicule (with submission to Lord Shaftesbury), though not founded upon truth, will stick for some time, and if thrown by a skilful hand perhaps for ever.* Be wiser and better than your contemporaries, but seem to take the world as it is, and men as they are, for you are too young to be a censor morum;* you would be an object of ridicule. Act contrary to many Churchmen, practise virtue, but do not preach it whilst you are young.
If you should ever fill a great station at Court, take care above all things to keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life. I call corruption the taking of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment, under any pretence whatsoever. Use what power and credit you may have at Court in the service of merit rather than of kindred, and not to get pensions and reversions for yourself or your family, for I call that also, what it really is, scandalous pollution, though of late it has been so frequent that it has almost lost its name.
Never run in debt, for it is neither honest nor prudent, but on the contrary, live so far within your annual income as to leave yourself room sufficient for acts of generosity and charity. Give nobly to indigent merit, and do not refuse your charity even to those who have no merit but their misery. Voltaire expresses my thought much better than I can myself:
Repandez vos bienfaits avec magnificence,
Même aux moms vertueux ne les refusez pas,
Ne vous informez pas de leur reconnaissance:
Il est grand, il est beau, de faire des ingrats.*
Such expense will do you more honour, and give you more pleasure, than the idle profusion of a modish and erudite luxury.
These few sheets will be delivered to you by Dr. Dodd at your return from your travels, probably long after I shall be dead; read them with deliberation and reflection, as the tender and last testimonies of my affection for you. They are not the severe and discouraging dictates of an old parent, but the friendly and practicable advice of a sincere friend, who remembers that he has been young himself and knows the indulgence that is due to youth and inexperience. Yes, I have been young, and a great deal too young. Idle dissipation and innumerable indiscretions, which I am now heartily ashamed and repent of, characterized my youth. But if my advice can make you wiser and better than I was at your age, I hope it may be some little atonement.
God bless you!
CHESTERFIELD.