Letters to His Son quotes

and, if one had a mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which every man meets with in his journey through life.

In this journey, the understanding is the ‘voiture’ that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better or worse; though at best you will now and then find some bad roads, and some bad inns.

Take care, therefore, to keep that necessary ‘voiture’ in perfect good repair; examine, improve, and strengthen it every day: it is in the power, and ought to be the care, of every man to do it;

alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar, ‘Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.’ You seem to want that ‘vivida vis animi,’ which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel.

Without the desire and the pains necessary to be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the desire and attention necessary to please, you never can please.

‘Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia,’ is unquestionably true, with regard to everything except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet.

‘A propos’ of negligence: I must say something to you upon that subject.

You know I have often told you, that my affection for you was not a weak, womanish one; and, far from blinding me, it makes me but more quick-sighted as to your faults; those it is not only my right, but my duty to tell you of; and it is your duty and your interest to correct them.

In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank God) hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar weakness of the head: but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and indifference;

… application are necessary to the acquiring of those qualifications, without which you can never be considerable, nor make a figure in the world, they are not less necessary with regard to the lesser accomplishments, which are requisite to make you agreeable and pleasing in society.

In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: I therefore carry the necessity of attention down to the lowest things, even to dancing and dress.

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act. Dress is of the same nature; you must dress;

Take great care always to be dressed like the reasonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whose dress is never spoken of one way or another, as either too negligent or too much studied.

What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very weak, or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure, a very disagreeable man in company.

He fails in all the common offices of civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, whom yesterday he appeared to live in intimacy with. He takes no part in the general conversation;

However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for them.

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

If, therefore, you would rather please than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than hated; remember to have that constant attention about you which flatters every man’s little vanity;

I mean your invariable practice of virtue, and your indefatigable pursuit of knowledge.

Adieu! and be persuaded that I shall love you extremely, while you deserve it; but not one moment longer.

DEAR BOY: Though I have very little time, and though I write by this post to Mr. Harte, yet I cannot send a packet to Lausanne without a word or two to yourself.

Many young people adopt pleasures, for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name.

They often mistake so totally, as to imagine that debauchery is pleasure.

You must allow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scrapes, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure;

I am thoroughly persuaded you will not fall into such errors; and that, in the choice of your amusements, you will be directed by reason, and a discerning taste.

The true pleasures of a gentleman are those of the table, but within the bound of moderation; good company, that is to say, people of merit; moderate play, which amuses, without any interested views; and sprightly gallant conversations with women of fashion and sense.

These are the real pleasures of a gentleman; which occasion neither sickness, shame, nor repentance. Whatever exceeds them, becomes low vice, brutal passion, debauchery, and insanity of, mind; all of which, far from giving satisfaction, bring on dishonor and disgrace. Adieu.

The true pleasures of a gentleman are those of the table, but within the bound of moderation; good company, that is to say, people of merit; moderate play, which amuses, without any interested views; and sprightly gallant conversations with women of fashion and sense.

These are the real pleasures of a gentleman; which occasion neither sickness, shame, nor repentance.

Whatever exceeds them, becomes low vice, brutal passion, debauchery, and insanity of, mind; all of which, far from giving satisfaction, bring on dishonor and disgrace. Adieu.

for, as I have often told you, those lesser talents, of an engaging, insinuating manner, an easy good-breeding, a genteel behavior and address, are of infinitely more advantage than they are generally thought to be, especially here in England.

Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster; and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

What a number of sins does the cheerful, easy good-breeding of the French frequently cover? Many of them want common sense, many more common learning; but in general, they make up so much by their manner, for those defects, that frequently they pass undiscovered:

Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster; and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.

What a number of sins does the cheerful, easy good-breeding of the French frequently cover?

Many of them want common sense, many more common learning; but in general, they make up so much by their manner, for those defects, that frequently they pass undiscovered:

This perfection you may, if you please, and I hope you will, arrive at.

You know what virtue is: you may have it if you will; it is in every man’s power; and miserable is the man who has it not.

Good sense God has given you. Learning you already possess enough of, to have, in a reasonable time, all that a man need have.

DEAR BOY:

Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon: they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compass to direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.

Do not think that I mean to snarl at pleasure, like a Stoic, or to preach against it, like a parson; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend it to you, like an Epicurean: I wish you a great deal;

they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compass to direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.

Do not think that I mean to snarl at pleasure, like a Stoic, or to preach against it, like a parson; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend it to you, like an Epicurean: I wish you a great deal; and my only view is to hinder you from mistaking it.

The character which most young men first aim at, is that of a man of pleasure; but they generally take it upon trust;

I was even absurd enough, for a little while, to swear, by way of adorning and completing the shining character which I affected; but this folly I soon laid aside, upon finding berth the guilt and the indecency of it.

Thus seduced by fashion, and blindly adopting nominal pleasures, I lost real ones; and my fortune impaired, and my constitution shattered, are, I must confess, the just punishment of my errors.

Take warning then by them: choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you. Follow nature and not fashion:

Thus seduced by fashion, and blindly adopting nominal pleasures, I lost real ones; and my fortune impaired, and my constitution shattered, are, I must confess, the just punishment of my errors.

Take warning then by them: choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.

Follow nature and not fashion: weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them, and then let your own common sense determine your choice.

Take warning then by them: choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.

Follow nature and not fashion: weigh the present enjoyment of your pleasures against the necessary consequences of them, and then let your own common sense determine your choice.

Were I to begin the world again, with the experience which I now have of it, I would lead a life of real, not of imaginary pleasures. I would enjoy the pleasures of the table, and of wine;

I have not mentioned the pleasures of the mind (which are the solid and permanent ones); because they do not come under the head of what people commonly call pleasures; which they seem to confine to the senses.

The pleasure of virtue, of charity, and of learning is true and lasting pleasure; with which I hope you will be well and long acquainted.

Adieu!

Harte has thought this last edition of mine worth so fine a binding; and, as he has bound it in red, and gilt it upon the back, I hope he will take care that it shall be LETTERED too.

A showish binding attracts the eyes, and engages the attention of everybody; but with this difference, that women, and men who are like women, mind the binding more than the book; whereas men of sense and learning immediately examine the inside; and if they find that it does not answer the finery on the outside, they throw it by with the greater indignation and contempt.

I hope that, when this edition of my works shall be opened and read, the best judges will find connection, consistency, solidity, and spirit in it. Mr. Harte may ‘recensere’ and ‘emendare,’ as much as he pleases;

I mean that you should have your pleasures too; and that you should attend to them for the time; as much as to your studies; and, if you do not attend equally to both, you will neither have improvement nor satisfaction from either.

A man is fit for neither business nor pleasure, who either cannot, or does not, command and direct his attention to the present object, and, in some degree, banish for that time all other objects from his thoughts.

If at a ball, a supper, or a party of pleasure, a man were to be solving, in his own mind, a problem in Euclid, he would be a very bad companion, and make a very poor figure in that company;

or if, in studying a problem in his closet, he were to think of a minuet, I am apt to believe that he would make a very poor mathematician.

There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.

The Pensionary de Witt, who was torn to pieces in the year 1672, did the whole business of the Republic, and yet had time left to go to assemblies in the evening, and sup in company.

for that it was only doing one thing at a time, and never putting off anything till to-morrow that could be done to-day.

This steady and undissipated attention to one object is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.

When you read Horace, attend to the justness of his thoughts, the happiness of his diction, and the beauty of his poetry; and do not think of Puffendorf de Homine el Cive; and, when you are reading Puffendorf, do not think of Madame de St.

Do you consider your air and manner of presenting yourself enough, and not too much? Neither negligent nor stiff? All these things deserve a degree of care, a second-rate attention; they give an additional lustre to real merit.

My Lord Bacon says, that a pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation.

It is certainly an agreeable forerunner of merit, and smoothes the way for it.

which I expect that you shall not only hear, but attend to, and retain. I also expect that you make yourself perfectly master of the German language; which you may very soon do there, if you please.

I give you fair warning, that at Leipsig I shall have an hundred invisible spies about you; and shall be exactly informed of everything that you do, and of almost everything that you say.

I hope that, in consequence of those minute informations, I may be able to say of you, what Velleius Paterculus says of Scipio; that in his whole life, ‘nihil non laudandum aut dixit, aut fecit, aut sensit.’

Remember that I shall see you at Hanover next summer, and shall expect perfection; which if I do not meet with, or at least something very near it, you and I shall, not be very well together.

I shall dissect and analyze you with a microscope; so that I shall discover the least speck or blemish.

This is fair warning; therefore take your measures accordingly. Yours.

Every man seeks for truth; but God only knows who has found it. It is, therefore, as unjust to persecute, as it is absurd to ridicule, people for those several opinions, which they cannot help entertaining upon the conviction of their reason.

It is the man who tells, or who acts a lie, that is guilty, and not he who honestly and sincerely believes the lie.

I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected sooner or later.

It is the man who tells, or who acts a lie, that is guilty, and not he who honestly and sincerely believes the lie.

I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying.

It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected sooner or later.

and only increase, instead of avoiding, the danger and the shame; I show myself to be the lowest and the meanest of mankind, and am sure to be always treated as such.

Fear, instead of avoiding, invites danger; for concealed cowards will insult known ones.

If one has had the misfortune to be in the wrong, there is something noble in frankly owning it; it is the only way of atoning for it, and the only way of being forgiven.

and only increase, instead of avoiding, the danger and the shame; I show myself to be the lowest and the meanest of mankind, and am sure to be always treated as such. Fear, instead of avoiding, invites danger; for concealed cowards will insult known ones.

If one has had the misfortune to be in the wrong, there is something noble in frankly owning it; it is the only way of atoning for it, and the only way of being forgiven.

Equivocating, evading, shuffling, in order to remove a present danger or inconveniency, is something so mean, and betrays so much fear, that whoever practices them always deserves to be, and often will be kicked.

These are chiefly narrative and historical lies, all intended to do infinite honor to their author.

He is always the hero of his own romances; he has been in dangers from which nobody but himself ever escaped; he has seen with his own eyes, whatever other people have heard or read of: he has had more ‘bonnes fortunes’ than ever he knew women; and has ridden more miles post in one day, than ever courier went in two.

He is soon discovered, and as soon becomes the object of universal contempt and ridicule. Remember, then, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded.

He is soon discovered, and as soon becomes the object of universal contempt and ridicule. Remember, then, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded.

It is not only your duty, but your interest; as a proof of which you may always observe, that the greatest fools are the greatest liars.

For my own part, I judge of every man’s truth by his degree of understanding.

But remember, at the same time, that errors and mistakes, however gross, in matters of opinion, if they are sincere, are to be pitied, but not punished nor laughed at.

The blindness of the understanding is as much to be pitied as the blindness of the eye; and there is neither jest nor guilt in a man’s losing his way in either case.

Charity bids us set him right if we can, by arguments and persuasions; but charity, at the same time, forbids, either to punish or ridicule his misfortune. Every man’s reason is, and must be, his guide;

and there is neither jest nor guilt in a man’s losing his way in either case. Charity bids us set him right if we can, by arguments and persuasions; but charity, at the same time, forbids, either to punish or ridicule his misfortune.

Every man’s reason is, and must be, his guide; and I may as well expect that every man should be of my size and complexion, as that he should reason just as I do.

Every man seeks for truth; but God only knows who has found it. It is, therefore, as unjust to persecute, as it is absurd to ridicule, people for those several opinions, which they cannot help entertaining upon the conviction of their reason.

Every man’s reason is, and must be, his guide; and I may as well expect that every man should be of my size and complexion, as that he should reason just as I do.

Every man seeks for truth; but God only knows who has found it.

It is, therefore, as unjust to persecute, as it is absurd to ridicule, people for those several opinions, which they cannot help entertaining upon the conviction of their reason.

A moderate share of penetration, with great attention, will infallibly make these necessary discoveries.

This is the true knowledge of the world; and the world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one’s self to be acquainted with it.

The scholar, who in the dust of his closet talks or writes of the world, knows no more of it, than that orator did of war, who judiciously endeavored to instruct Hannibal in it.

The scholar, who in the dust of his closet talks or writes of the world, knows no more of it, than that orator did of war, who judiciously endeavored to instruct Hannibal in it.

Courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in.

There alone all kinds of characters resort, and human nature is seen in all the various shapes and modes, which education, custom, and habit give it;

whereas, at a capital, where the Prince or the Supreme Power resides, some of all these various modes are to be seen and seen in action too, exerting their utmost skill in pursuit of their several objects.

Human nature is the same all over the world; but its operations are so varied by education and habit, that one must see it in all its dresses in order to be intimately acquainted with it.

The passion of ambition, for instance, is the same in a courtier, a soldier, or an ecclesiastic; but, from their different educations and habits, they will take very different methods to gratify it.

that is, with regard to all things which are not wrong in themselves. The ‘versatile ingenium’ is the most useful of all. It can turn itself instantly from one object to another, assuming the proper manner for each.

It can be serious with the grave, cheerful with the gay, and trifling with the frivolous.

Endeavor by all means, to acquire this talent, for it is a very great one.

they tell one another all they know, and often more too, when, of a sudden, some accident disperses them, and they think no more of each other, unless it be to betray and laugh, at their imprudent confidence.

Remember to make a great difference between companions and friends; for a very complaisant and agreeable companion may, and often does, prove a very improper and a very dangerous friend.

People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you, upon that which they have of your friends;

You may be a declared enemy to their vices and follies, without being marked out by them as a personal one. Their enmity is the next dangerous thing to their friendship.

Have a real reserve with almost everybody; and have a seeming reserve with almost nobody; for it is very disagreeable to seem reserved, and very dangerous not to be so.

Few people find the true medium; many are ridiculously mysterious and reserved upon trifles; and many imprudently communicative of all they know.

Receive them with great civility, but with great incredulity too; and pay them with compliments, but not with confidence. Do not let your vanity and self-love make you suppose that people become your friends at first sight, or even upon a short acquaintance.

Real friendship is a slow grower and never thrives unless engrafted upon a stock of known and reciprocal merit.

There is another kind of nominal friendship among young people, which is warm for the time, but by good luck, of short duration. This friendship is hastily produced, by their being accidentally thrown together, and pursuing the course of riot and debauchery.

The next thing to the choice of your friends, is the choice of your company.

Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you: there you rise, as much as you sink with people below you; for (as I have mentioned before) you are whatever the company you keep is.

Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to, their birth: that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.

and who flatter every vice and every folly you have, in order to engage you to converse with them.

The pride of being the first of the company is but too common; but it is very silly, and very prejudicial.

Nothing in the world lets down a character quicker than that wrong turn.

and how? I say, Yes, he has, by deserving it; providing he is but in circumstances which enable him to appear upon the footing of a gentleman.

Merit and good-breeding will make their way everywhere.

Knowledge will introduce him, and good-breeding will endear him to the best companies: for, as I have often told you, politeness and good-breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents.

for, as I have often told you, politeness and good-breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any, or all other good qualities or talents. Without them, no knowledge, no perfection whatever, is seen in its best light.

The scholar, without good-breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier, a brute; and every man disagreeable.

I long to hear, from my several correspondents at Leipsig, of your arrival there, and what impression you make on them at first; for I have Arguses, with an hundred eyes each, who will watch you narrowly, and relate to me faithfully.

and even then, throw out that you do not love to tell stories; but that the shortness of it tempted you.

Of all things, banish the egotism out of your conversation, and never think of entertaining people with your own personal concerns, or private, affairs; though they are interesting to you, they are tedious and impertinent to everybody else; besides that, one cannot keep one’s own private affairs too secret.

Whatever you think your own excellencies may be, do not affectedly display them in company; nor labor, as many people do, to give that turn to the conversation, which may supply you with an opportunity of exhibiting them.

DEAR BOY: The art of pleasing is a very necessary one to possess; but a very difficult one to acquire. It can hardly be reduced to rules; and your own good sense and observation will teach you more of it than I can.

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method that I know of pleasing.

Observe carefully what pleases you in others, and probably the same thing in you will please others.

But the incense which they gave him, the smoke of which they knew would turn his head in their favor, was as a ‘bel esprit’ and a poet. Why? Because he was sure of one excellency, and distrustful as to the other.

You will easily discover every man’s prevailing vanity, by observing his favorite topic of conversation; for every man talks most of what he has most a mind to be thought to excel in.

Touch him but there, and you touch him to the quick. The late Sir Robert Walpole (who was certainly an able man) was little open to flattery upon that head; for he was in no doubt himself about it;

of which he had undoubtedly less than any man living: it was his favorite and frequent subject of conversation: which proved, to those who had any penetration, that it was his prevailing weakness. And they applied to it with success.

Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow.

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person; if her face is so shocking, that she must in some degree, be conscious of it, her figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends for it.

Women have, in general, but one object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow.

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person; if her face is so shocking, that she must in some degree, be conscious of it, her figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends for it.

If her figure is deformed, her face, she thinks, counterbalances it. If they are both bad, she comforts herself that she has graces; a certain manner; a ‘je ne sais quoi,’ still more engaging than beauty.

If they are both bad, she comforts herself that she has graces; a certain manner; a ‘je ne sais quoi,’ still more engaging than beauty. This truth is evident, from the studied and elaborate dress of the ugliest women in the world.

An undoubted, uncontested, conscious beauty, is of all women, the least sensible of flattery upon that head; she knows that it is her due, and is therefore obliged to nobody for giving it her.

She must be flattered upon her understanding; which, though she may possibly not doubt of herself, yet she suspects that men may distrust.

Do not mistake me, and think that I mean to recommend to you abject and criminal flattery: no; flatter nobody’s vices or crimes: on the contrary, abhor and discourage them.

But there is no living in the world without a complaisant indulgence for people’s weaknesses, and innocent, though ridiculous vanities.

If a man has a mind to be thought wiser, and a woman handsomer than they really are, their error is a comfortable one to themselves, and an innocent one with regard to other people;

These are some of the arcana necessary for your initiation in the great society of the world.

I wish I had known them better at your age; I have paid the price of three-and-fifty years for them, and shall not grudge it, if you reap the advantage.

Adieu.

DEAR BOY: I am very well pleased with your ‘Itinerarium,’ which you sent me from Ratisbon. It shows me that you observe and inquire as you go, which is the true end of traveling.

Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.

Those who only mind the raree-shows of the places which they go through, such as steeples, clocks, town-houses, etc., get so little by their travels, that they might as well stay at home.

Do the same thing afterward with regard to the Electorate of Saxony: you will find a short history of it in Puffendorf’s Introduction, which will give you a general idea of it, and point out to you the proper objects of a more minute inquiry.

In short, be curious, attentive, inquisitive, as to everything; listlessness and indolence are always blameable, but, at your age, they are unpardonable.

Consider how precious, and how important for all the rest of your life, are your moments for these next three or four years; and do not lose one of them. Do not think I mean that you should study all day long;

on the contrary, a certain portion of your time, employed in those pleasures, is very usefully employed. Such are public spectacles, assemblies of good company, cheerful suppers, and even balls; but then, these require attention, or else your time is quite lost.

There are a great many people, who think themselves employed all day, and who, if they were to cast up their accounts at night, would find that they had done just nothing.

They have read two or three hours mechanically, without attending to what they read, and consequently without either retaining it, or reasoning upon it.

Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than from what they say. But then keep all those observations to yourself, for your own private use, and rarely communicate them to others.

Observe, without being thought an observer, for otherwise people will be upon their guard before you.

Consider seriously, and follow carefully, I beseech you, my dear child, the advice which from time to time I have given, and shall continue to give you; it is at once the result of my long experience, and the effect of my tenderness for you.

Why were they thinking of something else? and if they were, why did they come there? The truth is, that the fools were thinking of nothing.

Remember the ‘hoc age,’ do what you are about, be what it will; it is either worth doing well, or not at all.

Wherever you are, have (as the low vulgar expression is) your ears and your eyes about you. Listen to everything that is said, and see everything that is done.

it is either worth doing well, or not at all. Wherever you are, have (as the low vulgar expression is) your ears and your eyes about you. Listen to everything that is said, and see everything that is done.

Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than from what they say.

But then keep all those observations to yourself, for your own private use, and rarely communicate them to others. Observe, without being thought an observer, for otherwise people will be upon their guard before you.

I recommend to you to take care of the minutes; for hours will take care of themselves. I am very sure, that many people lose two or three hours every day, by not taking care of the minutes.

Never think any portion of time whatsoever too short to be employed; something or other may always be done in it.

While you are in Germany, let all your historical studies be relative to Germany; not only the general history of the empire as a collective body; but the respective electorates, principalities, and towns; and also the genealogy of the most considerable families.

I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow, who used frequently to say, “Take care of the pence; for the pounds will take care of themselves.” This was a just and sensible reflection in a miser.

I recommend to you to take care of the minutes; for hours will take care of themselves.

I am very sure, that many people lose two or three hours every day, by not taking care of the minutes. Never think any portion of time whatsoever too short to be employed; something or other may always be done in it.

DEAR BOY:

As often as I write to you (and that you know is pretty often), so often I am in doubt whether it is to any purpose, and whether it is not labor and paper lost.

This entirely depends upon the degree of reason and reflection which you are master of, or think proper to exert. If you give yourself time to think, and have sense enough to think right, two reflections must necessarily occur to you;

But if anybody, capable of advising me, had taken the same pains with me, which I have taken, and will continue to take with you, I should have avoided many follies and inconveniences, which undirected youth run me into.

My father was neither desirous nor able to advise me; which is what, I hope, you cannot say of yours.

You see that I make use, only of the word advice; because I would much rather have the assent of your reason to my advice, than the submission of your will to my authority.

My father was neither desirous nor able to advise me; which is what, I hope, you cannot say of yours.

You see that I make use, only of the word advice; because I would much rather have the assent of your reason to my advice, than the submission of your will to my authority.

This, I persuade myself, will happen, from that degree of sense which I think you have; and therefore I will go on advising, and with hopes of success.

The friendship which you may contract with people of your own age may be sincere, may be warm; but must be, for some time, reciprocally unprofitable, as there can be no experience on either side.

The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; (they will both fall into the ditch.)

The only sure guide is, he who has often gone the road which you want to go. Let me be that guide; who have gone all roads, and who can consequently point out to you the best.

but must be, for some time, reciprocally unprofitable, as there can be no experience on either side. The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; (they will both fall into the ditch.)

The only sure guide is, he who has often gone the road which you want to go.

Let me be that guide; who have gone all roads, and who can consequently point out to you the best.

DEAR Boy:

There is nothing which I more wish that you should know, and which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time.

It is in everybody’s mouth; but in few people’s practice. Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove, at once, the value and the fleetness of time.

but I will only give you some hints with regard to the use of one particular period of that long time which, I hope, you have before you; I mean, the next two years.

Remember, then, that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be the master of while you breathe.

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

I mean, the next two years. Remember, then, that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be the master of while you breathe.

Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

I neither require nor expect from you great application to books, after you are once thrown out into the great world. I know it is impossible; and it may even, in some cases, be improper;

I know it is impossible; and it may even, in some cases, be improper; this, therefore, is your time, and your only time, for unwearied and uninterrupted application.

If you should sometimes think it a little laborious, consider that labor is the unavoidable fatigue of a necessary journey.

The more hours a day you travel, the sooner you will be at your journey’s end. The sooner you are qualified for your liberty, the sooner you shall have it;

DEAR Boy: There is nothing which I more wish that you should know, and which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time. It is in everybody’s mouth; but in few people’s practice.

Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove, at once, the value and the fleetness of time.

The sun-dials, likewise all over Europe, have some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that nobody squanders away their time, without hearing and seeing, daily, how necessary it is to employ it well, and how irrecoverable it is if lost.

I wish you them both most heartily; but, at the same time, I confess they are by no means my principal care.

My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all.

My affection for you then is, and only will be, proportioned to your merit; which is the only affection that one rational being ought to have for another. Hitherto I have discovered nothing wrong in your heart, or your head:

My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all.

My affection for you then is, and only will be, proportioned to your merit; which is the only affection that one rational being ought to have for another.

Hitherto I have discovered nothing wrong in your heart, or your head: on the contrary I think I see sense in the one, and sentiments in the other. This persuasion is the only motive of my present affection;

I have no such weakness about me: and, as I will never quarrel with you but upon some essential point; if once we quarrel, I will never forgive. But I hope and believe, that this declaration (for it is no threat) will prove unnecessary.

You are no stranger to the principles of virtue; and, surely, whoever knows virtue must love it.

As for knowledge, you have already enough of it, to engage you to acquire more. The ignorant only, either despise it, or think that they have enough:

for remember, that knowing any language imperfectly, is very little better than not knowing it at all: people being as unwilling to speak in a language which they do not possess thoroughly, as others are to hear them.

Your thoughts are cramped, and appear to great disadvantage, in any language of which you are not perfect master.

Let modern history share part of your time, and that always accompanied with the maps of the places in question; geography and history are very imperfect separately, and, to be useful, must be joined.

Go to the Duchess of Courland’s as often as she and your leisure will permit.

The company of women of fashion will improve your manners, though not your understanding; and that complaisance and politeness, which are so useful in men’s company, can only be acquired in women’s.

Remember always, what I have told you a thousand times, that all the talents in the world will want all their lustre, and some part of their use too, if they are not adorned with that easy good-breeding, that engaging manner, and those graces, which …

they will know something, at least, of the laws, customs, government, and considerable families of their respective countries; all which are better known than not, and consequently worth inquiring into.

There is hardly any body good for every thing, and there is scarcely any body who is absolutely good for nothing.

A good chemist will extract some spirit or other out of every substance; and a man of parts will, by his dexterity and management, elicit something worth knowing out of every being he converses with.

all which are better known than not, and consequently worth inquiring into. There is hardly any body good for every thing, and there is scarcely any body who is absolutely good for nothing.

A good chemist will extract some spirit or other out of every substance; and a man of parts will, by his dexterity and management, elicit something worth knowing out of every being he converses with.

As you have been introduced to the Duchess of Courland, pray go there as often as ever your more necessary occupations will allow you. I am told she is extremely well bred, and has parts.

DEAR BOY: I willingly accept the new-year’s gift which you promise me for next year; and the more valuable you make it, the more thankful I shall be.

That depends entirely upon you; and therefore I hope to be presented, every year, with a new edition of you, more correct than the former, and considerably enlarged and amended.

Since you do not care to be an assessor of the imperial chamber, and that you desire an establishment in England; what do you think of being Greek Professor at one of our universities?

dexterity enough to conceal a truth without telling a lie; sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances; and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness with a real reserve.

These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.

Three mails are now due from Holland; so that I have no letters from you to acknowledge. I therefore conclude with recommending myself to your favor and protection when you succeed. Yours.

but, if you consider them in their opposite, and very false light, as the dictates of a morose and sermonizing father, I am sure they will be not only unattended to, but unread. Which is the case, you can best tell me.

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.

I hope that your want of experience, of which you must be conscious, will convince you, that you want advice; and that your good sense will incline you to follow it.

I know you have not many; and I have too good an opinion of you to think, that, at this age, you would desire more. Have you assemblies, or public spectacles? and of what kind are they?

Whatever they are, see them all; seeing everything, is the only way not to admire anything too much.

If you ever take up little tale-books, to amuse you by snatches, I will recommend two French books, which I have already mentioned; they will entertain you, and not without some use to your mind and your manners.

Nor do I regret the time that I have passed in business, for the same reason; those who see only the outside of it, imagine it has hidden charms, which they pant after; and nothing but acquaintance can undeceive them.

I, who have been behind the scenes, both of pleasure and business, and have seen all the springs and pullies of those decorations which astonish and dazzle the audience, retire, not only without regret, but with contentment and satisfaction.

But what I do, and ever shall regret, is the time which, while young, I lost in mere idleness, and in doing nothing. This is the common effect of the inconsideracy of youth, against which I beg you will be most carefully upon your guard.

I, who have been behind the scenes, both of pleasure and business, and have seen all the springs and pullies of those decorations which astonish and dazzle the audience, retire, not only without regret, but with contentment and satisfaction.

But what I do, and ever shall regret, is the time which, while young, I lost in mere idleness, and in doing nothing.

This is the common effect of the inconsideracy of youth, against which I beg you will be most carefully upon your guard. The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.

But what I do, and ever shall regret, is the time which, while young, I lost in mere idleness, and in doing nothing. This is the common effect of the inconsideracy of youth, against which I beg you will be most carefully upon your guard.

The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable.

Every moment may be put to some use, and that with much more pleasure, than if unemployed. Do not imagine, that by the employment of time, I mean an uninterrupted application to serious studies. No;

neither enjoying the one, nor doing the other; thinking themselves men of pleasure, because they were mingled with those who were, and men of business, because they had business to do, though they did not do it.

Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially.

‘Approfondissez’: go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done or half known, is, in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay worse, it often misleads.

Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. ‘Approfondissez’: go to the bottom of things.

Any thing half done or half known, is, in my mind, neither done nor known at all.

Nay worse, it often misleads. There is hardly any place or any company, where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk upon that one thing.

Nay worse, it often misleads. There is hardly any place or any company, where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk upon that one thing.

Seek and you will find, in this world as well as in the next.

See everything; inquire into everything; and you may excuse your curiosity, and the questions you ask which otherwise might be thought impertinent, by your manner of asking them; for most things depend a great deal upon the manner.

But, when you frequent places of public worship, as I would have you go to all the different ones you meet with, remember, that however erroneous, they are none of them objects of laughter and ridicule.

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.

The object of all the public worships in the world is the same; it is that great eternal Being who created everything. The different manners of worship are by no means subjects of ridicule. Each sect thinks its own is the best;

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed. The object of all the public worships in the world is the same; it is that great eternal Being who created everything. The different manners of worship are by no means subjects of ridicule.

Each sect thinks its own is the best; and I know no infallible judge in this world, to decide which is the best.

Make the same inquiries, wherever you are, concerning the revenues, the military establishment, the trade, the commerce, and the police of every country. And you would do well to keep a blank paper book, which the Germans call an ALBUM;

I have now but one anxiety left, which is concerning you.

I would have you be, what I know nobody is—perfect.

As that is impossible, I would have you as near perfection as possible. I know nobody in a fairer way toward it than yourself, if you please. Never were so much pains taken for anybody’s education as for yours;

DEAR Boy:

Every excellency, and every virtue, has its kindred vice or weakness; and if carried beyond certain bounds, sinks into one or the other.

Generosity often runs into profusion, economy into avarice, courage into rashness, caution into timidity, and so on:—insomuch that, I believe, there is more judgment required, for the proper conduct of our virtues, than for avoiding their opposite vices.

Generosity often runs into profusion, economy into avarice, courage into rashness, caution into timidity, and so on:—insomuch that, I believe, there is more judgment required, for the proper conduct of our virtues, than for avoiding their opposite vices.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight, and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not, at first, wear the mask of some virtue.

But virtue is, in itself, so beautiful, that it charms us at first sight; engages us more and more upon further acquaintance; and, as with other beauties, we think excess impossible;

the consequence of which is, that mankind, provoked by the insult, and injured by the oppression, revolt; and, in order to shake off the tyranny, even call the lawful authority in question.

The more you know, the modester you should be: and (by the bye) that modesty is the surest way of gratifying your vanity.

Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful; represent, but do not pronounce, and, if you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

and, in order to shake off the tyranny, even call the lawful authority in question. The more you know, the modester you should be: and (by the bye) that modesty is the surest way of gratifying your vanity.

Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful; represent, but do not pronounce, and, if you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

Others, to show their learning, or often from the prejudices of a school education, where they hear of nothing else, are always talking of the ancients, as something more than men, and of the moderns, as something less.

I would by no means have you disown your acquaintance with the ancients: but still less would I have you brag of an exclusive intimacy with them.

Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their ages; and if you happen to have an Elzevir classic in your pocket neither show it nor mention it.

Some great scholars, most absurdly, draw all their maxims, both for public and private life, from what they call parallel cases in the ancient authors; without considering, that, in the first place, there never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel;

Reason upon the case itself, and the several circumstances that attend it, and act accordingly; but not from the authority of ancient poets, or historians. Take into your consideration, if you please, cases seemingly analogous; but take them as helps only, not as guides.

We are really so prejudiced by our education, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen; of which, with all due regard for antiquity, I take Leonidas and Curtius to have been two distinguished ones.

And yet a solid pedant would, in a speech in parliament, relative to a tax of two pence in the pound upon some community or other, quote those two heroes, as examples of what we ought to do and suffer for our country.

Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.

If you are asked what o’clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.

Upon the whole, remember that learning (I mean Greek and Roman learning) is a most useful and necessary ornament, which it is shameful not to be master of;

If, therefore, you would avoid the accusation of pedantry on one hand, or the suspicion of ignorance on the other, abstain from learned ostentation.

Speak the language of the company that you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.

Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.

If, therefore, you would avoid the accusation of pedantry on one hand, or the suspicion of ignorance on the other, abstain from learned ostentation. Speak the language of the company that you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.

Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with.

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. If you are asked what o’clock it is, tell it;

Speak the language of the company that you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with.

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.

If you are asked what o’clock it is, tell it; but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.

And reflect, on the other hand, how much the opposites of all these things prepossess you, at first sight, in favor of those who enjoy them. You wish to find all good qualities in them, and are in some degree disappointed if you do not.

A thousand little things, not separately to be defined, conspire to form these graces, this je ne sais quoi, that always please.

A pretty person, genteel motions, a proper degree of dress, an harmonious voice, something open and cheerful in the countenance, but without laughing; a distinct and properly varied manner of speaking:

Observe carefully, then, what displeases or pleases you in others, and be persuaded, that in general; the same things will please or displease them in you.

Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily wish, that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live.

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and in manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry.

SACRIFICE TO THE GRACES. The different effects of the same things, said or done, when accompanied or abandoned by them, is almost inconceivable.

They prepare the way to the heart; and the heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.

It is the whole of women, who are guided by nothing else: and it has so much to say, even with men, and the ablest men too, that it commonly triumphs in every struggle with the understanding.

the same things will please or displease them in you. Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily wish, that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live.

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and in manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry.

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it: They please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance.

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and in manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry.

In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.

True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it: They please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter;

it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.

True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it: They please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance.

But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above.

But the frequency does not justify the thing, and all these vulgar habits and awkwardnesses, though not criminal indeed, are most carefully to be guarded against, as they are great bars in the way of the art of pleasing.

Remember, that to please is almost to prevail, or at least a necessary previous step to it.

You, who have your fortune to make, should more particularly study this art. You had not, I must tell you, when you left England, ‘les manieres prevenantes’; and I must confess they are not very common in England;

If you desire to make yourself considerable in the world (as, if you have any spirit, you do), it must be entirely your own doing; for I may very possibly be out of the world at the time you come into it.

Your own rank and fortune will not assist you; your merit and your manners can alone raise you to figure and fortune.

I have laid the foundations of them, by the education which I have given you; but you must build the superstructure yourself.

for I may very possibly be out of the world at the time you come into it. Your own rank and fortune will not assist you; your merit and your manners can alone raise you to figure and fortune.

I have laid the foundations of them, by the education which I have given you; but you must build the superstructure yourself.

I must now apply to you for some informations, which I dare say you can, and which I desire you will give me.

Monsieur de Rochefoucault, in his “Maxims,” says, that ‘l’esprit est souvent la dupe du coeur.’ If he had said, instead of ‘souvent, tresque toujours’, I fear he would have been nearer the truth. This being the case, aim at the heart.

Intrinsic merit alone will not do; it will gain you the general esteem of all; but not the particular affection, that is, the heart of any.

To engage the affections of any particular person, you must, over and above your general merit, have some particular merit to that person by services done, or offered; by expressions of regard and esteem; by complaisance, attentions, etc., for him.

Observe the difference there is between minds cultivated, and minds uncultivated, and you will, I am sure, think that you cannot take too much pains, nor employ too much of your time in the culture of your own.

A drayman is probably born with as good organs as Milton, Locke, or Newton; but, by culture, they are as much more above him as he is above his horse.

Sometimes, indeed, extraordinary geniuses have broken out by the force of nature, without the assistance of education; but those instances are too rare for anybody to trust to;

If Shakespeare’s genius had been cultivated, those beauties, which we so justly admire in him, would have been undisgraced by those extravagancies, and that nonsense, with which they are frequently accompanied.

People are, in general, what they are made, by education and company, from fifteen to five-and-twenty; consider well, therefore, the importance of your next eight or nine years; your whole depends upon them.

I will tell you sincerely, my hopes and my fears concerning you. I think you will be a good scholar; and that you will acquire a considerable stock of knowledge of various kinds;

At least see everything that you can see, and know everything that you can know of it, by asking questions. See likewise everything at the fair, from operas and plays, down to the Savoyard’s raree-shows.

Everything is worth seeing once; and the more one sees, the less one either wonders or admires.

Make my compliments to Mr. Harte, and tell him that I have just now received his letter, for which I thank him. I am called away, and my letter is therefore very much shortened. Adieu.

Nay, I cannot help carrying my Pyrrhonism still further, and extending it often to historical facts themselves, at least to most of the circumstances with which they are related; and every day’s experience confirms me in this historical incredulity.

Do we ever hear the most recent fact related exactly in the same way, by the several people who were at the same time eyewitnesses of it?

No. One mistakes, another misrepresents, and others warp it a little to their own, turn of mind, or private views. A man who has been concerned in a transaction will not write it fairly; and a man who has not, cannot.

No. One mistakes, another misrepresents, and others warp it a little to their own, turn of mind, or private views.

A man who has been concerned in a transaction will not write it fairly; and a man who has not, cannot.

But notwithstanding all this uncertainty, history is not the less necessary to be known, as the best histories are taken for granted, and are the frequent subjects both of conversation and writing.

and therefore I look with some contempt upon those refining and sagacious historians, who ascribe all, even the most common events, to some deep political cause; whereas mankind is made up of inconsistencies, and no man acts invariably up to his predominant character.

The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest sometimes wisely.

Our jarring passions, our variable humors, nay, our greater or lesser degree of health and spirits, produce such contradictions in our conduct, that, I believe, those are the oftenest mistaken, who ascribe our actions to the most seemingly obvious motives;

but this I think myself sure of, from your good sense, that in leaving Dresden, you have left dissipation too; and have resumed at Leipsig that application which, if you like courts, can alone enable you to make a good figure at them.

A mere courtier, without parts or knowledge, is the most frivolous and contemptible of all beings; as, on the other hand, a man of parts and knowledge, who acquires the easy and noble manners of a court, is the most perfect.

It is a trite, commonplace observation, that courts are the seats of falsehood and dissimulation. That, like many, I might say most, commonplace observations, is false. Falsehood and dissimulation are certainly to be found at courts; but where are they not to be found?

It is a trite, commonplace observation, that courts are the seats of falsehood and dissimulation. That, like many, I might say most, commonplace observations, is false.

Falsehood and dissimulation are certainly to be found at courts; but where are they not to be found?

Cottages have them, as well as courts; only with worse manners.

… in a village will contrive and practice as many tricks, to over-reach each other at the next market, or to supplant each other in the favor, of the squire, as any two courtiers can do to supplant each other in the favor of their prince.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true that shepherds and ministers are both men; their nature and passions the same, the modes of them only different.

Having mentioned commonplace observations, I will particularly caution you against either using, believing, or approving them. They are the common topics of witlings and coxcombs;

which some people mistake for abject flattery, and having no opinion of one’s own; whereas it is only the decent and genteel manner of maintaining your own opinion, and possibly of bringing other people to it.

The manner of doing things is often more important than the things themselves; and the very same thing may become either pleasing or offensive, by the manner of saying or doing it.

‘Materiam superabat opus’, is often said of works of sculpture; where though the materials were valuable, as silver, gold, etc., the workmanship was still more so. This holds true, applied to manners; which adorn whatever knowledge or parts people may have;

they trembled, endeavored to put their hands in their pockets, and missed them; let their hats fall, and were ashamed to take them up; and in short, put themselves in every attitude but the right, that is, the easy and natural one.

The characteristic of a well-bred man, is to converse with his inferiors without insolence, and with his superiors with respect and ease.

He talks to kings without concern; he trifles with women of the first condition with familiarity, gayety, but respect;

What then will you have to rely on but your own merit? That alone must raise you, and that alone will raise you, if you have but enough of it.

I have often heard and read of oppressed and unrewarded merit, but I have oftener (I might say always) seen great merit make its way, and meet with its reward, to a certain degree at least, in spite of all difficulties.

By merit, I mean the moral virtues, knowledge, and manners; as to the moral virtues, I say nothing to you; they speak best for themselves, nor can I suspect that they want any recommendation with you;

and always read with the map by you, in which you will constantly look for every place mentioned: this is the only way of retaining geography; for, though it is soon learned by the lump, yet, when only so learned, it is still sooner forgot.

Manners, though the last, and it may be the least ingredient of real merit, are, however, very far from being useless in its composition; they adorn, and give an additional force and luster to both virtue and knowledge.

They prepare and smooth the way for the progress of both; and are, I fear, with the bulk of mankind, more engaging than either. Remember, then, the infinite advantage of manners;

Upon the whole, if you have a mind to be considerable, and to shine hereafter, you must labor hard now.

No quickness of parts, no vivacity, will do long, or go far, without a solid fund of knowledge; and that fund of knowledge will amply repay all the pains that you can take in acquiring it.

Reflect seriously, within yourself, upon all this, and ask yourself whether I can have any view, but your interest, in all that I recommend to you.

Their lives are well worth your reading. They were poisoned themselves by the poisoned wine which they had prepared for others; the father died of it, but Caesar recovered.

Sixtus the Fifth was the son of a swineherd, and raised himself to the popedom by his abilities: he was a great knave, but an able and singular one.

Here is history enough for to-day: you shall have some more soon. Adieu.

and particularly that he must not be vastus, that is, overgrown and clumsy. He shows by it that he knew mankind well, and knew the powers of an agreeable figure and a graceful, manner.

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.

The way to the heart is through the senses; please their eyes and their ears and the work is half done. I have frequently known a man’s fortune decided for ever by his first address.

He shows by it that he knew mankind well, and knew the powers of an agreeable figure and a graceful, manner. Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.

The way to the heart is through the senses; please their eyes and their ears and the work is half done.

I have frequently known a man’s fortune decided for ever by his first address. If it is pleasing, people are hurried involuntarily into a persuasion that he has a merit, which possibly he has not;

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings. The way to the heart is through the senses; please their eyes and their ears and the work is half done.

I have frequently known a man’s fortune decided for ever by his first address.

If it is pleasing, people are hurried involuntarily into a persuasion that he has a merit, which possibly he has not;

They will speak plainly, distinctly, and with the proper emphasis, be their voices ever so bad. Had Roscius spoken QUICK, THICK, and UNGRACEFULLY, I will answer for it, that Cicero would not have thought him worth the oration which he made in his favor.

Words were given us to communicate our ideas by: and there must be something inconceivably absurd in uttering them in such a manner as that either people cannot understand them, or will not desire to understand them.

I tell you, truly and sincerely, that I shall judge of your parts by your speaking gracefully or ungracefully. If you have parts, you will never be at rest till you have brought yourself to a habit of speaking most gracefully;

Many, to whom I have formerly commended him, have answered me, that they were sure he could not have parts, because he was so awkward: so much are people, as I observed to you before, taken by the eye.

Women have great influence as to a man’s fashionable character; and an awkward man will never have their votes; which, by the way, are very numerous, and much oftener counted than weighed.

You should therefore give some attention to your dress, and the gracefulness of your motions. I believe, indeed, that you have no perfect model for either at Leipsig, to form yourself upon; but, however, do not get a habit of neglecting either;

I am sorry for both; and so will you be, when it will be too late, if you continue so some time longer.

Awkwardness of carriage is very alienating; and a total negligence of dress and air is an impertinent insult upon custom and fashion.

You remember Mr.———very well, I am sure, and you must consequently remember his, extreme awkwardness: which, I can assure you, has been a great clog to his parts and merit, that have, with much difficulty, but barely counterbalanced it at last.

But as to mere interest, in the common acceptation of that word, it would be mine that you should turn out ill; for you may depend upon it, that whatever you have from me shall be most exactly proportioned to your desert.

Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal; deserve a little, and you shall have but a little; and be good for nothing at all, and, I assure you, you shall have nothing at all.

Solid knowledge, as I have often told you, is the first and great foundation of your future fortune and character;

Be convinced, that there are no persons so insignificant and inconsiderable, but may, some time or other, have it in their power to be of use to you; which they certainly will not, if you have once shown them contempt.

Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.

It implies a discovery of weaknesses, which we are much more careful to conceal than crimes.

This solid knowledge you are in a fair way of acquiring; you may, if you please; and I will add, that nobody ever had the means of acquiring it more in their power than you have.

But remember, that manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world.

Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but it will never be worn or shine if it is not polished.

It is upon this article, I confess, that I suspect you the most, which makes me recur to it so often; for I fear that you are apt to show too little attention to everybody, and too much contempt to many.

Be convinced, that there are no persons so insignificant and inconsiderable, but may, some time or other, have it in their power to be of use to you; which they certainly will not, if you have once shown them contempt.

Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weaknesses, which we are much more careful to conceal than crimes.

The constant practice of what the French call ‘les Attentions’, is a most necessary ingredient in the art of pleasing; they flatter the self-love of those to whom they are shown; they engage, they captivate, more than things of much greater importance.

The duties of social life every man is obliged to discharge; but these attentions are voluntary acts, the free-will offerings of good-breeding and good nature; they are received, remembered, and returned as such.

Women, particularly, have a right to them; and any omission in that respect is downright ill-breeding.

In the two last articles, it is unjust, they not being in his power: and in the first it is both ill-bred and ill-natured.

Good-breeding, and good-nature, do incline us rather to raise and help people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.

The constant practice of what the French call ‘les Attentions’, is a most necessary ingredient in the art of pleasing; they flatter the self-love of those to whom they are shown; they engage, they captivate, more than things of much greater importance.

Your diversions may, if you please, employ some part of your time very usefully. It depends entirely upon the nature of them. If they are futile and frivolous it is time worse than lost, for they will give you an habit of futility.

All gaming, field-sports, and such sort of amusements, where neither the understanding nor the senses have the least share, I look upon as frivolous, and as the resources of little minds, who either do not think, or do not love to think.

But the pleasures of a man of parts either flatter the senses or improve the mind; I hope at least, that there is not one minute of the day in which you do nothing at all. Inaction at your age is unpardonable.

But the pleasures of a man of parts either flatter the senses or improve the mind; I hope at least, that there is not one minute of the day in which you do nothing at all.

Inaction at your age is unpardonable.

Tell me what Greek and Latin books you can now read with ease. Can you open Demosthenes at a venture, and understand him? Can you get through an “Oration” of Cicero, or a “Satire” of Horace, without difficulty?

A spruceness of dress is also very proper and becoming at your age; as the negligence of it implies an indifference about pleasing, which does not become a young fellow.

To do whatever you do at all to the utmost perfection, ought to be your aim at this time of your life; if you can reach perfection, so much the better; but at least, by attempting it, you will get much nearer than if you never attempted it at all.

Adieu! SPEAK GRACEFULLY AND DISTINCTLY if you intend to converse ever with, Yours.

DEAR BOY:

There are two sorts of understandings; one of which hinders a man from ever being considerable, and the other commonly makes him ridiculous; I mean the lazy mind, and the trifling, frivolous mind: Yours, I hope, is neither.

The lazy mind will not take the trouble of going to the bottom of anything;

This, I confess; is a pretty large circle of knowledge, attended with some difficulties, and requiring some trouble; which, however; an active and industrious mind will overcome; and be amply repaid.

The trifling and frivolous mind is always busied, but to little purpose; it takes little objects for great ones, and throws away upon trifles that time and attention which only important things deserve.

Knick-knacks; butterflies; shells, insects, etc., are the subjects of their most serious researches. They contemplate the dress, not the characters of the company they keep. They attend more to the decorations of a play than the sense of it;

They attend more to the decorations of a play than the sense of it; and to the ceremonies of a court more than to its politics. Such an employment of time is an absolute loss of it.

You have now, at most, three years to employ either well or ill; for, as I have often told you, you will be all your life what you shall be three years hence.

For God’s sake then reflect. Will you throw this time away either in laziness, or in trifles? Or will you not rather employ every moment of it in a manner that must so soon reward you with so much pleasure, figure, and character?

Or will you not rather employ every moment of it in a manner that must so soon reward you with so much pleasure, figure, and character? I cannot, I will not doubt of your choice.

Read only useful books; and never quit a subject till you are thoroughly master of it, but read and inquire on till then.

When you are in company, bring the conversation to some useful subject, but ‘a portee’ of that company.

Points of history, matters of literature, the customs of particular countries, the several orders of knighthood, as Teutonic, Maltese, etc., are surely better subjects of conversation, than the weather, dress, or fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with them.

The characters of kings and great men are only to be learned in conversation; for they are never fairly written during their lives.

This, therefore, is an entertaining and instructive subject of conversation, and will likewise give you an opportunity of observing how very differently characters are given, from the different passions and views of those who give them. Never be ashamed nor afraid of asking questions:

for they are never fairly written during their lives. This, therefore, is an entertaining and instructive subject of conversation, and will likewise give you an opportunity of observing how very differently characters are given, from the different passions and views of those who give them.

Never be ashamed nor afraid of asking questions: for if they lead to information, and if you accompany them with some excuse, you will never be reckoned an impertinent or rude questioner.

All those things, in the common course of life, depend entirely upon the manner; and, in that respect, the vulgar saying is true, ‘That one man can better steal a horse, than another look over the hedge.’

… speaking, contribute so much to this, that I am convinced, the very same thing, said by a genteel person in an engaging way, and GRACEFULLY and distinctly spoken, would please, which would shock, if MUTTERED out by an awkward figure, with a sullen, serious countenance.

The poets always represent Venus as attended by the three Graces, to intimate that even beauty will not do without: I think they should have given Minerva three also; for without them, I am sure learning is very unattractive.

Invoke them, then, DISTINCTLY, to accompany all your words and motions. Adieu.

DEAR BOY:

Your friend, Mr. Eliot, has dined with me twice since I returned here, and I can say with truth that while I had the seals, I never examined or sifted a state prisoner with so much care and curiosity as I did him.

Nay, I did more; for, contrary to the laws of this country, I gave him in some manner, the QUESTION ordinary and extraordinary;

After that time I allow you to be as idle as ever you please; because I am sure that you will not then please to be so at all.

The ignorant and the weak are only idle; but those who have once acquired a good stock of knowledge, always desire to increase it.

Knowledge is like power in this respect, that those who have the most, are most desirous of having more. It does not clog, by possession, but increases desire; which is the case of very few pleasures.

because I am sure that you will not then please to be so at all. The ignorant and the weak are only idle; but those who have once acquired a good stock of knowledge, always desire to increase it.

Knowledge is like power in this respect, that those who have the most, are most desirous of having more.

It does not clog, by possession, but increases desire; which is the case of very few pleasures.

Gravenkop, which he assures me is extremely well written, considering the little time that you have applied yourself to that language. As you have now got over the most difficult part, pray go on diligently, and make yourself absolutely master of the rest.

Whoever does not entirely possess a language, will never appear to advantage, or even equal to himself, either in speaking or writing it.

His ideas are fettered, and seem imperfect or confused, if he is not master of all the words and phrases necessary to express them. I therefore desire, that you will not fail writing a German letter once every fortnight to Mr. Gravenkop;

and conform your own to them. But this is not all neither; go deeper still; observe their characters, and pray, as far as you can, into both their hearts and their heads.

Seek for their particular merit, their predominant passion, or their prevailing weakness; and you will then know what to bait your hook with to catch them.

Man is a composition of so many, and such various ingredients, that it requires both time and care to analyze him: for though we have all the same ingredients in our general composition, as reason, will, passions, and appetites;

yet the different proportions and combinations of them in each individual, produce that infinite variety of characters, which, in some particular or other, distinguishes every individual from another.

Reason ought to direct the whole, but seldom does.

And he who addresses himself singly to another man’s reason, without endeavoring to engage his heart in his interest also, is no more likely to succeed, than a man who should apply only to a king’s nominal minister, and neglect his favorite.

La Rochefoucault, is, I know, blamed, but I think without reason, for deriving all our actions from the source of self-love. For my own part, I see a great deal of truth, and no harm at all, in that opinion.

It is certain that we seek our own happiness in everything we do; and it is as certain, that we can only find it in doing well, and in conforming all our actions to the rule of right reason, which is the great law of nature.

It is only a mistaken self-love that is a blamable motive, when we take the immediate and indiscriminate gratification of a passion, or appetite, for real happiness.

… not feel a very tender and real concern for the misfortune of my friend, and yet at the same time feel a pleasing consciousness at having discharged my duty to him, by comforting and assisting him to the utmost of my power in that misfortune?

Give me but virtuous actions, and I will not quibble and chicane about the motives.

And I will give anybody their choice of these two truths, which amount to the same thing: He who loves himself best is the honestest man; or, The honestest man loves himself best.

Give me but virtuous actions, and I will not quibble and chicane about the motives.

And I will give anybody their choice of these two truths, which amount to the same thing: He who loves himself best is the honestest man; or, The honestest man loves himself best.

The characters of La Bruyere are pictures from the life; most of them finely drawn, and highly colored. Furnish your mind with them first, and when you meet with their likeness, as you will every day, they will strike you the more.

take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions will therefore be more necessary.

Pleasing in company is the only way of being pleased in it yourself.

Sense and knowledge are the first and necessary foundations for pleasing in company; but they will by no means do alone, and they will never be perfectly welcome if they are not accompanied with manners and attentions.

but in this they are not singular, for it is the same with men; who will much sooner forgive an injustice than an insult.

Every man is not ambitious, or courteous, or passionate; but every man has pride enough in his composition to feel and resent the least slight and contempt.

Remember, therefore, most carefully to conceal your contempt, however just, wherever you would not make an implacable enemy. Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes;

who will much sooner forgive an injustice than an insult. Every man is not ambitious, or courteous, or passionate; but every man has pride enough in his composition to feel and resent the least slight and contempt.

Remember, therefore, most carefully to conceal your contempt, however just, wherever you would not make an implacable enemy.

Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes;

Every man is not ambitious, or courteous, or passionate; but every man has pride enough in his composition to feel and resent the least slight and contempt. Remember, therefore, most carefully to conceal your contempt, however just, wherever you would not make an implacable enemy.

Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes; and if you hint to a man that you think him silly, ignorant, or even ill-bred, or awkward, he will hate you more and longer, than if you tell him plainly, that you think him a rogue.

Never yield to that temptation, which to most young men is very strong; of exposing other people’s weaknesses and infirmities, for the sake either of diverting the company, or showing your own superiority.

but you will make enemies by it forever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, upon reflection, fear; and consequently hate you; besides that it is ill-natured, and a good heart desires rather to conceal than expose other people’s weaknesses or misfortunes.

If you have wit, use it to please, and not to hurt: you may shine, like the sun in the temperate zones, without scorching.

Here it is wished for; under the Line it is dreaded.

I will therefore, upon this subject, let you into certain Arcana that will be very useful for you to know, but which you must, with the utmost care, conceal and never seem to know.

Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid reasoning, good sense, I never knew in my life one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together.

Some little passion or humor always breaks upon their best resolutions.

… adds, that he is persuaded that when Caligula made his horse a Consul, the people of Rome, at that time, were not greatly surprised at it, having necessarily been in some degree prepared for it, by an insensible gradation of extravagances from the same quarter.

This is so true that we read every day, with astonishment, things which we see every day without surprise.

We wonder at the intrepidity of a Leonidas, a Codrus, and a Curtius;

analyze them, and discover their component parts, and see if habit and prejudice are not the principal ones; weigh the matter upon which you are to form your opinion, in the equal and impartial scales of reason.

It is not to be conceived how many people, capable of reasoning, if they would, live and die in a thousand errors, from laziness; they will rather adopt the prejudices of others, than give themselves the trouble of forming opinions of their own.

They say things, at first, because other people have said them, and then they persist in them, because they have said them themselves.

It is not to be conceived how many people, capable of reasoning, if they would, live and die in a thousand errors, from laziness; they will rather adopt the prejudices of others, than give themselves the trouble of forming opinions of their own.

They say things, at first, because other people have said them, and then they persist in them, because they have said them themselves.

The last observation that I shall now mention of the Cardinal’s is, “That a secret is more easily kept by a good many people, than one commonly imagines.” By this he means a secret of importance, among people interested in the keeping of it.

But a secret properly communicated only to those who are to be concerned in the thing in question, will probably be kept by them though they should be a good many.

Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones are generally kept.

Adieu!

Surely not. The truth is, that the wickedness of many, and the weakness of more, in those ages of ignorance and superstition, concurred to form those flagitious conspiracies against the lives and properties of unoffending people.

The Pope sanctified the villany, and annexed the pardon of sins to the perpetration of it.

This gave rise to the Crusaders, and carried such swarms of people from Europe to the conquests of the Holy Land. Peter the Hermit, an active and ambitious priest, by his indefatigable pains, was the immediate author of the first crusade;

Peter the Hermit, an active and ambitious priest, by his indefatigable pains, was the immediate author of the first crusade; kings, princes, all professions and characters united, from different motives, in this great undertaking, as every sentiment, except true religion and morality, invited to it.

The ambitious hoped for kingdoms; the greedy and the necessitous for plunder; and some were enthusiasts enough to hope for salvation, by the destruction of a considerable number of their fellow creatures, who had done them no injury.

I cannot omit, upon this occasion, telling you that the Eastern emperors at Constantinople (who, as Christians, were obliged at least to seem to favor these expeditions), seeing the immense numbers of the ‘Croisez’, and fearing that the Western Empire might have some mind to …

If you will put conversation to profit, great knowledge may be gained by it; and is it not better (since it is full as easy) to turn it upon useful than upon useless subjects?

People always talk best upon what they know most, and it is both pleasing them and improving one’s self, to put them upon that subject.

With people of a particular profession, or of a distinguished eminency in any branch of learning, one is not at a loss;

which are therefore the proper (and not altogether useless) subjects of that kind of conversation.

Women, especially, are to be talked to as below men and above children.

If you talk to them too deep, you only confound them, and lose your own labor; if you talk to them too frivolously, they perceive and resent the contempt.

if you talk to them too frivolously, they perceive and resent the contempt. The proper tone for them is, what the French call the ‘Entregent’, and is, in truth, the polite jargon of good company.

Thus, if you are a good chemist, you may extract something out of everything.

A propos of the beau monde, I must again and again recommend the Graces to you: There is no doing without them in that world;

without bespattering the company with the sauce; and without overturning the glasses into your neighbor’s pockets? These awkwardnesses are extremely disagreeable; and, if often repeated, bring ridicule. They are very easily avoided by a little attention and use.

How trifling soever these things may seem, or really be in themselves, they are no longer so when above half the world thinks them otherwise.

And, as I would have you ‘omnibus ornatum—excellere rebus’, I think nothing above or below my pointing out to you, or your excelling in. You have the means of doing it, and time before you to make use of them.

Take my word for it, I ask nothing now but what you will, twenty years hence, most heartily wish that you had done. Attention to all these things, for the next two or three years, will save you infinite trouble and endless regrets hereafter.

May you, in the whole course of your life, have no reason for any one just regret!

Adieu.

Pray let no quibbles of lawyers, no refinements of casuists, break into the plain notions of right and wrong, which every man’s right reason and plain common sense suggest to him.

To do as you would be done by, is the plain, sure, and undisputed rule of morality and justice.

Stick to that; and be convinced that whatever breaks into it, in any degree, however speciously it may be turned, and however puzzling it may be to answer it, is, notwithstanding, false in itself, unjust, and criminal.

… far from being convinced by them, that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that MATTER, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible.

Common sense (which, in truth, very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it, it will counsel you best.

Read and hear, for your amusement, ingenious systems, nice questions subtilly agitated, with all the refinements that warm imaginations suggest; but consider them only as exercitations for the mind, and turn always to settle with common sense.

Their number is, I believe, much lessened, but there are still some; and I myself have known two; who studied and firmly believed in that mystical nonsense.

What extravagancy is not man capable of entertaining, when once his shackled reason is led in triumph by fancy and prejudice!

The ancient alchemists give very much into this stuff, by which they thought they should discover the philosopher’s stone; and some of the most celebrated empirics employed it in the pursuit of the universal medicine.

which should be familiar conversations, between absent friends. As I desire to live with you upon the footing of an intimate friend, and not of a parent, I could wish that your letters gave me more particular accounts of yourself, and of your lesser transactions.

When you write to me, suppose yourself conversing freely with me by the fireside.

In that case, you would naturally mention the incidents of the day; as where you had been, who you had seen, what you thought of them, etc. Do this in your letters: acquaint me sometimes with your studies, sometimes with your diversions;

But however and wherever I am, your welfare, your character, your knowledge, and your morals, employ my thoughts more than anything that can happen to me, or that I can fear or hope for myself.

I am going off the stage, you are coming upon it; with me what has been, has been, and reflection now would come too late; with you everything is to come, even, in some manner, reflection itself; so that this is the very time when my reflections, the result of experience, may be of use to you, by supplying the want of yours.

As soon as you leave Leipsig, you will gradually be going into the great world; where the first impressions that you shall give of yourself will be of great importance to you; but those which you shall receive will be decisive, for they always stick.

who if they have wit themselves, are pleased with it, and if they have none, are sillily proud of being one of it: but it should be frequented with moderation and judgment, and you should by no means give yourself up to it.

A wit is a very unpopular denomination, as it carries terror along with it; and people in general are as much afraid of a live wit, in company, as a woman is of a gun, which she thinks may go off of itself, and do her a mischief.

Their acquaintance is, however, worth seeking, and their company worth frequenting; but not exclusively of others, nor to such a degree as to be considered only as one of that particular set.

… be surprised that I should think it necessary to warn you against such company, but yet I do not think it wholly, unnecessary, from the many instances which I have seen of men of sense and rank, discredited, verified, and undone, by keeping such company.

Vanity, that source of many of our follies, and of some of our crimes, has sunk many a man into company, in every light infinitely, below himself, for the sake of being the first man in it.

There he dictates, is applauded, admired; and, for the sake of being the Coryphceus of that wretched chorus, disgraces and disqualifies himself soon for any better company. Depend upon it, you will sink or rise to the level of the company which you commonly keep:

There he dictates, is applauded, admired; and, for the sake of being the Coryphceus of that wretched chorus, disgraces and disqualifies himself soon for any better company.

Depend upon it, you will sink or rise to the level of the company which you commonly keep: people will judge of you, and not unreasonably, by that.

There is good sense in the Spanish saying, “Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.”

Depend upon it, you will sink or rise to the level of the company which you commonly keep: people will judge of you, and not unreasonably, by that.

There is good sense in the Spanish saying, “Tell me whom you live with, and I will tell you who you are.”

Make it therefore your business, wherever you are, to get into that company which everybody in the place allows to be the best company next to their own; which is the best definition that I can give you of good company.

and are only blemished and lowered, in the opinions of all reasonable people, and of their own, in time, by these genteel and fashionable vices. A whoremaster, in a flux, or without a nose, is a very genteel person, indeed, and well worthy of imitation.

A drunkard, vomiting up at night the wine of the day, and stupefied by the headache all the next, is, doubtless, a fine model to copy from.

And a gamester, tearing his hair, and blaspheming, for having lost more than he had in the world, is surely a most amiable character. No; these are alloys, and great ones too, which can never adorn any character, but will always debase the best.

how will he be looked upon by all sorts of people? Why, as a most contemptible and vicious animal. Therefore it is plain, that in these mixed characters, the good part only makes people forgive, but not approve, the bad.

I will hope and believe that you will have no vices; but if, unfortunately, you should have any, at least I beg of you to be content with your own, and to adopt no other body’s.

The adoption of vice has, I am convinced, ruined ten times more young men than natural inclinations.

I will hope and believe that you will have no vices; but if, unfortunately, you should have any, at least I beg of you to be content with your own, and to adopt no other body’s.

The adoption of vice has, I am convinced, ruined ten times more young men than natural inclinations.

As I make no difficulty of confessing my past errors, where I think the confession may be of use to you, I will own that when I first went to the university, I drank and smoked, notwithstanding the aversion I had to wine and tobacco, …

I will now be more regular and methodical. I shall say nothing with regard to your bodily carriage and address, but leave them to the care of your dancing-master, and to your own attention to the best models; remember, however, that they are of consequence.

Talk often, but never long: in that case, if you do not please, at least you are sure not to tire your hearers.

Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company; this being one of the very few cases in which people do not care to be treated, everyone being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.

Pay your own reckoning, but do not treat the whole company; this being one of the very few cases in which people do not care to be treated, everyone being fully convinced that he has wherewithal to pay.

Tell stories very seldom, and absolutely never but where they are very apt and very short.

Omit every circumstance that is not material, and beware of digressions. To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

Tell stories very seldom, and absolutely never but where they are very apt and very short. Omit every circumstance that is not material, and beware of digressions.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

Never hold anybody by the button or the hand, in order to be heard out; for, if people are not willing to hear you, you had much better hold your tongue than them.

Tell stories very seldom, and absolutely never but where they are very apt and very short. Omit every circumstance that is not material, and beware of digressions. To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

Never hold anybody by the button or the hand, in order to be heard out; for, if people are not willing to hear you, you had much better hold your tongue than them.

Most long talkers single out some one unfortunate man in company (commonly him whom they observe to be the most silent, or their next neighbor) to whisper, or at least in a half voice, to convey a continuity of words to.

for nothing will oblige him more than a patient hearing, as nothing would hurt him more than either to leave him in the midst of his discourse, or to discover your impatience under your affliction.

Take, rather than give, the tone of the company you are in.

If you have parts, you will show them, more or less, upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people’s than of your own choosing.

… conversation-hubbub once, by representing to them that, though I was persuaded none there present would repeat, out of company, what passed in it, yet I could not answer for the discretion of the passengers in the street, who must necessarily hear all that was said.

Above all things, and upon all occasions, avoid speaking of yourself, if it be possible.

Such is the natural pride and vanity of our hearts, that it perpetually breaks out, even in people of the best parts, in all the various modes and figures of the egotism.

Above all things, and upon all occasions, avoid speaking of yourself, if it be possible.

Such is the natural pride and vanity of our hearts, that it perpetually breaks out, even in people of the best parts, in all the various modes and figures of the egotism.

Some, abruptly, speak advantageously of themselves, without either pretense or provocation. They are impudent. Others proceed more artfully, as they imagine;

But, in these cases; justice is surely due to one’s self, as well as to others; and when our character is attacked, we may say in our own justification, what otherwise we never would have said.

This thin veil of Modesty drawn before Vanity, is much too transparent to conceal it, even from very moderate discernment.

Others go more modestly and more slyly still (as they think) to work; but in my mind still more ridiculously.

This sounds too ridiculous and ‘outre’, almost, for the stage; and yet, take my word for it, you will frequently meet with it upon the common stage of the world.

And here I will observe, by the bye, that you will often meet with characters in nature so extravagant, that a discreet dramatist would not venture to set them upon the stage in their true and high coloring.

This principle of vanity and pride is so strong in human nature that it descends even to the lowest objects;

One man affirms that he has rode post an hundred miles in six hours; probably it is a lie: but supposing it to be true, what then? Why he is a very good post-boy, that is all.

Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out of charity, I will believe him a liar; for, if I do not, I must think him a beast.

Such, and a thousand more, are the follies and extravagances, which vanity draws people into, and which always defeat their own purpose; and as Waller says, upon another subject,—

The only sure way of avoiding these evils, is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, you are obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause.

Be your character what it will, it will be known; and nobody will take it upon your own word.

Never imagine that anything you can say yourself will varnish your defects, or add lustre to your perfections! but, on the contrary, it may, and nine times in ten, will, make the former more glaring and the latter obscure.

but if you publish your own panegyric upon any occasion, or in any shape whatsoever, and however artfully dressed or disguised, they will all conspire against you, and you will be disappointed of the very end you aim at.

Take care never to seem dark and mysterious; which is not only a very unamiable character, but a very suspicious one too; if you seem mysterious with others, they will be really so with you, and you will know nothing.

The height of abilities is to have ‘volto sciolto’ and ‘pensieri stretti’; that is, a frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior; to be upon your own guard, and yet, by a seeming natural openness, to put people off theirs.

Take care never to seem dark and mysterious; which is not only a very unamiable character, but a very suspicious one too; if you seem mysterious with others, they will be really so with you, and you will know nothing.

The height of abilities is to have ‘volto sciolto’ and ‘pensieri stretti’; that is, a frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior; to be upon your own guard, and yet, by a seeming natural openness, to put people off theirs.

Depend upon it nine in ten of every company you are in will avail themselves of every indiscreet and unguarded expression of yours, if they can turn it to their own advantage. A prudent reserve is therefore as necessary as a seeming openness is prudent.

Always look people in the face when you speak to them: the not doing it is thought to imply conscious guilt; besides that you lose the advantage of serving by their countenances what impression your discourse makes upon them.

In order to know people’s real sentiments, I trust much more to my eyes than to my ears: for they can say whatever they have a mind I should hear; but they can seldom help looking, what they have no intention that I should know.

Neither retail nor receive scandal willingly; defamation of others may for the present gratify the malignity of the pride of our hearts; cool reflection will draw very disadvantageous conclusions from such a disposition;

cool reflection will draw very disadvantageous conclusions from such a disposition; and in the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought, as bad as the thief.

Mimicry, which is the common and favorite amusement of little low minds, is in the utmost contempt with great ones.

It is the lowest and most illiberal of all buffoonery. Pray, neither practice it yourself, nor applaud it in others. Besides that the person mimicked is insulted; and, as I have often observed to you before, an insult is never forgiven.

for I suppose you would not, without this caution, have talked upon the same subject, and in the same manner, to a minister of state, a bishop, a philosopher, a captain, and a woman.

A man of the world must, like the chameleon, be able to take every different hue; which is by no means a criminal or abject, but a necessary complaisance; for it relates only to manners and not to morals.

One word only as to swearing, and that, I hope and believe, is more than is necessary.

They are always subalterns, or people of low education; for that practice, besides that it has no one temptation to plead, is as silly and as illiberal as it is wicked.

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world.

A man of parts and fashion is therefore only seen to smile; but never heard to laugh.

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh since the creation of the world.

A man of parts and fashion is therefore only seen to smile; but never heard to laugh.

But to conclude this long letter; all the above-mentioned rules, however carefully you may observe them, will lose half their effect, if unaccompanied by the Graces.

Whatever you say, if you say it with a supercilious, cynical face, or an embarrassed countenance, or a silly, disconcerted grin, will be ill received. If, into the bargain, YOU MUTTER IT, OR UTTER IT INDISTINCTLY AND UNGRACEFULLY, it will be still worse received.

If your air and address are vulgar, awkward, and gauche, you may be esteemed indeed, if you have great intrinsic merit; but you will never, please; and without pleasing you will rise but heavily.

Venus, among the ancients, was synonymous with the Graces, who were always supposed to accompany her; and Horace tells us that even Youth and Mercury, the god of Arts and Eloquence, would not do without her:

and, besides, they are so obvious to common sense and reason, that commentators may (as they often do) perplex, but cannot make them clearer. My province, therefore, is to supply by my experience your hitherto inevitable inexperience in the ways of the world.

People at your age are in a state of natural ebriety; and want rails, and ‘gardefous’, wherever they go, to hinder them from breaking their necks.

This drunkenness of youth is not only tolerated, but even pleases, if kept within certain bounds of discretion and decency. These bounds are the point which it is difficult for the drunken man himself to find out;

My province, therefore, is to supply by my experience your hitherto inevitable inexperience in the ways of the world. People at your age are in a state of natural ebriety; and want rails, and ‘gardefous’, wherever they go, to hinder them from breaking their necks.

This drunkenness of youth is not only tolerated, but even pleases, if kept within certain bounds of discretion and decency.

These bounds are the point which it is difficult for the drunken man himself to find out; and there it is that the experience of a friend may not only serve, but save him.

The former will charm; but the latter will often, though innocently, implacably offend. Inform yourself of the characters and situations of the company, before you give way to what your imagination may prompt you to say.

There are, in all companies, more wrong beads than right ones, and many more who deserve, than who like censure.

Should you therefore expatiate in the praise of some virtue, which some in company notoriously want; or declaim against any vice, which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people.

The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind, it is much better not to seem to understand, than to reply to it.

Cautiously avoid talking of either your own or other people’s domestic affairs. Yours are nothing to them but tedious; theirs are nothing to you.

The subject is a tender one: and it is odds but that you touch somebody or other’s sore place: for, in this case, there is no trusting to specious appearances;

which may be, and often are, so contrary to the real situations of things, between men and their wives, parents and their children, seeming friends, etc., that, with the best intentions in the world, one often blunders disagreeably.

Remember that the wit, humor, and jokes, of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear transplanting.

Every company is differently circumstanced, has its particular cant and jargon; which may give occasion to wit and mirth within that circle, but would seem flat and insipid in any other, and therefore will not bear repeating.

‘A propos’ of repeating; take great care never to repeat (I do not mean here the pleasantries) in one company what you hear in another. Things, seemingly indifferent, may, by circulation, have much graver consequences than you would imagine.

Besides, there is a general tacit trust in conversation, by which a man is obliged not to report anything out of it, though he is not immediately enjoined to secrecy.

A retailer of this kind is sure to draw himself into a thousand scrapes and discussions, and to be shyly and uncomfortably received wherever he goes.

I hope that you will hold your place in company by a nobler tenure, and that you will hold it (you can bear a quibble, I believe, yet) ‘in capite’.

Have a will and an opinion of your own, and adhere to them steadily; but then do it with good humor, good-breeding, and (if you have it) with urbanity; for you have not yet heard enough either to preach or censure.

All other kinds of complaisance are not only blameless, but necessary in good company.

both by the deference which you will observe the whole company pay them, and by that easy, careless, and serene air, which their consciousness of power gives them.

As in this case, so in all others, aim always at the highest; get always into the highest company, and address yourself particularly to the highest in it.

The search after the unattainable philosopher’s stone has occasioned a thousand useful discoveries, which otherwise would never have been made.

As in this case, so in all others, aim always at the highest; get always into the highest company, and address yourself particularly to the highest in it.

The search after the unattainable philosopher’s stone has occasioned a thousand useful discoveries, which otherwise would never have been made.

What the French justly call ‘les manieres nobles’ are only to be acquired in the very best companies. They are the distinguishing characteristics of men of fashion:

There is always a strict, and often for the time being, a tender alliance between these two figures.

The lady looks upon her empire as founded upon the divine right of beauty (and full as good a divine right it is as any king, emperor, or pope, can pretend to); she requires, and commonly meets with, unlimited passive obedience.

And why should she not meet with it? Her demands go no higher than to have her unquestioned preeminence in beauty, wit, and fashion, firmly established. Few sovereigns (by the way) are so reasonable. The fine gentleman’s claims of right are, ‘mutatis mutandis’, the same;

for the adoration they disclaim. Nay, I will go further, as the transition from Popery to Paganism is short and easy, I will classically end poetically advise you to invoke, and sacrifice to them every day, and all the day.

It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and, I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.

Since barbarism drove them out of Greece and Rome, they seem to have taken refuge in France, where their temples are numerous, and their worship the established one.

Examine yourself seriously, why such and such people please and engage you, more than such and such others, of equal merit; and you will always find that it is because the former have the Graces and the latter not.

I have known many a woman with an exact shape, and a symmetrical assemblage of beautiful features, please nobody; while others, with very moderate shapes and features, have charmed everybody.

Why? because Venus will not charm so much, without her attendant Graces, as they will without her. Among men, how often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for want of them!

I have marked all the parts of that book that are worth your attention; for as he begins with the child, almost from its birth, the parts relative to its infancy would be useless to you.

Germany is, still less than England, the seat of the Graces; however, you had as good not say so while you are there.

But the place which you are going to, in a great degree, is; for I have known as many well-bred, pretty men come from Turin, as from any part of Europe.

It is the characteristic of a man of parts and good judgment to know, and give that degree of attention that each object deserves.

Whereas little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve.

To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribes of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.

Whereas little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribes of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc.

The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious. He applies himself intensely to the former; he only amuses himself with the latter.

Of this little sort of knowledge, which I have just hinted at, you will find at least as much as you need wish to know, in a superficial but pretty French book, entitled, ‘Spectacle de la Nature’;

which is, to extend your desire of praise a little beyond the strictly praiseworthy; or else you may be apt to discover too much contempt for at least three parts in five of the world, who will never forgive it you.

In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of fools and, knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.

And a man who will show every knave or fool that he thinks him such, will engage in a most ruinous war, against numbers much superior to those that he and his allies can bring into the field.

And a man who will show every knave or fool that he thinks him such, will engage in a most ruinous war, against numbers much superior to those that he and his allies can bring into the field.

Abhor a knave, and pity a fool in your heart; but let neither of them, unnecessarily, see that you do so.

Some complaisance and attention to fools is prudent, and not mean; as a silent abhorrence of individual knaves is often necessary and not criminal.

Abhor a knave, and pity a fool in your heart; but let neither of them, unnecessarily, see that you do so.

Some complaisance and attention to fools is prudent, and not mean; as a silent abhorrence of individual knaves is often necessary and not criminal.

As you will now soon part with Lord Pulteney, with whom, during your stay together at Leipsig, I suppose you have formed a connection, I imagine that you will continue it by letters, which I would advise you to do.

If he dresses better, as he thinks, that is, more than they, he is a fop; if he dresses worse, he is unpardonably negligent.

But, of the two, I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old.

Dress yourself fine, where others are fine; and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made, and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air.

for, I confess, I cannot help forming some opinion of a man’s sense and character from his dress; and I believe most people do as well as myself.

Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.

Most of our young fellows here display some character or other by their dress; some affect the tremendous, and wear a great and fiercely cocked hat, an enormous sword, a short waistcoat and a black cravat;

and imitate grooms, stage-coachmen, and country bumpkins so well in their outsides, that I do not make the least doubt of their resembling them equally in their insides.

A man of sense carefully avoids any particular character in his dress; he is accurately clean for his own sake; but all the rest is for other people’s.

He dresses as well, and in the same manner, as the people of sense and fashion of the place where he is. If he dresses better, as he thinks, that is, more than they, he is a fop;

I send you, my dear child (and you will not doubt it), very sincerely, the wishes of the season. May you deserve a great number of happy New-years; and, if you deserve, may you have them.

Many New-years, indeed, you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them.

These, virtue, honor, and knowledge, alone can merit, alone can procure, ‘Dii tibi dent annos, de te nam cetera sumes’, was a pretty piece of poetical flattery, where it was said: I hope that, in time, it may be no flattery when said to you.

S. Your thanks for my present, as you call it, exceed the value of the present; but the use, which you assure me that you will make of it, is the thanks which I desire to receive.

Due attention to the inside of books, and due contempt for the outside, is the proper relation between a man of sense and his books.

Now that you are going a little more into the world; I will take this occasion to explain my intentions as to your future expenses, that you may know what you have to expect from me, and make your plan accordingly.

your share of little entertainments; a few pistoles at games of mere commerce; and other incidental calls of good company. The only two articles which I will never supply, are the profusion of low riot, and the idle lavishness of negligence and laziness.

A fool squanders away, without credit or advantage to himself, more than a man of sense spends with both.

The latter employs his money as he does his time, and never spends a shilling of the one, nor a minute of the other, but in something that is either useful or rationally pleasing to himself or others.

His servants and tradesmen conspire with his own indolence to cheat him; and, in a very little time, he is astonished, in the midst of all the ridiculous superfluities, to find himself in want of all the real comforts and necessaries of life.

Without care and method, the largest fortune will not, and with them, almost the smallest will, supply all necessary expenses.

As far as you can possibly, pay ready money for everything you buy and avoid bills.

Where you must have bills (as for meat and drink, clothes, etc.), pay them regularly every month, and with your own hand.

Never, from a mistaken economy, buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap; or from a silly pride, because it is dear.

Keep an account in a book of all that you receive, and of all that you pay; for no man who knows what he receives and what he pays ever runs out.

leave such minutia to dull, penny-wise fellows; but remember, in economy, as well as in every other part of life, to have the proper attention to proper objects, and the proper contempt for little ones.

A strong mind sees things in their true proportions; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea: magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones.

I have known many a man pass for a miser, by saving a penny and wrangling for twopence, who was undoing himself at the same time by living above his income, and not attending to essential articles which were above his ‘portee’.

Remember to take the best dancing-master at Berlin, more to teach you to sit, stand, and walk gracefully, than to dance finely.

The Graces, the Graces; remember the Graces!

Adieu!

I will confess (for I am not unwilling to discover my secrets to you) that it is not many years since I have presumed to reflect for myself.

Till sixteen or seventeen I had no reflection; and for many years after that, I made no use of what I had.

I adopted the notions of the books I read, or the company I kept, without examining whether they were just or not; and I rather chose to run the risk of easy error, than to take the time and trouble of investigating truth.

I was convinced there had been no common sense nor common honesty in the world for these last fifteen hundred years; but that they were totally extinguished with the ancient Greek and Roman governments.

Homer and Virgil could have no faults, because they were ancient; Milton and Tasso could have no merit, because they were modern.

And I could almost have said, with regard to the ancients, what Cicero, very absurdly and unbecomingly for a philosopher, says with regard to Plato, ‘Cum quo errare malim quam cum aliis recte sentire’.

… they are falsely called, are only so many blemishes in the character of even a man of the world and what is called a fine gentleman, and degrade him in the opinions of those very people, to whom he, hopes to recommend himself by them.

Nay, this prejudice often extends so far, that I have known people pretend to vices they had not, instead of carefully concealing those they had.

Use and assert your own reason; reflect, examine, and analyze everything, in order to form a sound and mature judgment; let no (authority) impose upon your understanding, mislead your actions, or dictate your conversation.

We have many of those useful prejudices in this country, which I should be very sorry to see removed.

The good Protestant conviction, that the Pope is both Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon, is a more effectual preservative in this country against popery, than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.

The idle story of the pretender’s having been introduced in a warming pan into the queen’s bed, though as destitute of all probability as of all foundation, has been much more prejudicial to the cause of Jacobitism than all that Mr.

Use and assert your own reason; reflect, examine, and analyze everything, in order to form a sound and mature judgment; let no (authority) impose upon your understanding, mislead your actions, or dictate your conversation.

Be early what, if you are not, you will when too late wish you had been.

Consult your reason betimes: I do not say that it will always prove an unerring guide; for human reason is not infallible; but it will prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and conversation may assist it;

for human reason is not infallible; but it will prove the least erring guide that you can follow. Books and conversation may assist it; but adopt neither blindly and implicitly; try both by that best rule, which God has given to direct us, reason.

Of all the troubles, do not decline, as many people do, that of thinking.

The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive;

Locke and others have written, to show the unreasonableness and absurdity of the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right, and unlimited passive obedience.

And that silly, sanguine notion, which is firmly entertained here, that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen, encourages, and has sometimes enabled, one Englishman in reality to beat two.

A Frenchman ventures, his life with alacrity ‘pour l’honneur du Roi’; were you to change the object, which he has been taught to have in view, and tell him that it was ‘pour le bien de la Patrie’, he would very probably run away.

but should the contagion of vice of idleness lay hold of you there, your character, your fortune, my hopes, and consequently my favor are all blasted, and you are undone.

The more I love you now, from the good opinion I have of you, the greater will be my indignation if I should have reason to change it.

Hitherto you have had every possible proof of my affection, because you have deserved it; but when you cease to deserve it, you may expect every possible mark of my resentment.

This letter will, I believe, still find you at Venice in all the dissipation of masquerades, ridottos, operas, etc. With all my heart; they are decent evening’s amusements, and very properly succeed that serious application to which I am sure you devote your mornings.

There are liberal and illiberal pleasures as well as liberal and illiberal arts: There are some pleasures that degrade a gentleman as much as some trades could do.

Sottish drinking, indiscriminate gluttony, driving coaches, rustic sports, such as fox-chases, horse-races, etc., are in my opinion infinitely below the honest and industrious profession of a tailor and a shoemaker, which are said to ‘deroger’.

but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light; brings him into a great deal of bad company; and takes up a great deal of time, which might be much better employed.

Few things would mortify me more, than to see you bearing a part in a concert, with a fiddle under your chin, or a pipe in your mouth.

I have had a great deal of conversation with Comte du Perron and Comte Lascaris upon your subject: and I will tell you, very truly, what Comte du Perron (who is, in my opinion, a very pretty man) said of you:

and, consequently, it is this which should now be thy principal object of your attention. Observe minutely, wherever you go, the allowed and established models of good-breeding, and form yourself upon them.

Whatever pleases you most in others, will infallibly please others in you.

I have often repeated this to you; now is your time of putting it in practice.

I loved them myself when I was of your age, and it is as reasonable that you should love them now. But I insist upon it that pleasures are very combinable with both business and studies, and have a much better relish from the mixture.

The man who cannot join business and pleasure is either a formal coxcomb in the one, or a sensual beast in the other.

Your evenings I therefore allot for company, assemblies, balls, and such sort of amusements, as I look upon those to be the best schools for the manners of a gentleman; which nothing can give but use, observation, and experience.

by which means you will get a clearer notion of them than if you were to see them only upon paper for seven years together.

Go to originals whenever you can, and trust to copies and descriptions as little as possible.

At your idle hours, while you are at Turin, pray read the history of the House of Savoy, which has produced a great many very great men. The late king, Victor Amedee, was undoubtedly one, and the present king is, in my opinion, another.

People mistake grossly, to imagine that the least awkwardness, either in matter or manner, mind or body, is an indifferent thing and not worthy of attention. It may possibly be a weakness in me, but in short we are all so made:

I confess to you fairly, that when you shall come home and that I first see you, if I find you ungraceful in your address, and awkward in your person and dress, it will be impossible for me to love you half so well as I should otherwise do, let your intrinsic merit and knowledge be ever so great.

If that would be your case with me, as it really would, judge how much worse it might be with others, who have not the same affection and partiality for you, and to whose hearts you must make your own way.

and, if they fail, they have recourse to ridicule, which is harder for one of your age and inexperience to withstand than either of the former. Be upon your guard, therefore, against these batteries, which will all be played upon you.

You are not sent abroad to converse with your own countrymen: among them, in general, you will get, little knowledge, no languages, and, I am sure, no manners.

I desire that you will form no connections, nor (what they impudently call) friendships with these people; which are, in truth, only combinations and conspiracies against good morals and good manners.

a ‘mauvaise honte’ that makes them ashamed to refuse; and, at the same time, an ambition of pleasing and shining in the company they keep: these several causes produce the best effect in good company, but the very worst in bad.

If people had no vices but their own, few would have so many as they have.

For my own part, I would sooner wear other people’s clothes than their vices; and they would sit upon me just as well. I hope you will have none; but if ever you have, I beg, at least, they may be all your own.

these several causes produce the best effect in good company, but the very worst in bad. If people had no vices but their own, few would have so many as they have.

For my own part, I would sooner wear other people’s clothes than their vices; and they would sit upon me just as well.

I hope you will have none; but if ever you have, I beg, at least, they may be all your own. Vices of adoption are, of all others, the most disgraceful and unpardonable. There are degrees in vices, as well as in virtues;

Thus finished and adorned by their travels, they become the disturbers of play-houses; they break the windows, and commonly the landlords, of the taverns where they drink; and are at once the support, the terror, and the victims, of the bawdy-houses they frequent.

These poor mistaken people think they shine, and so they do indeed; but it is as putrefaction shines in the dark.

I am not now preaching to you, like an old fellow, upon their religious or moral texts; I am persuaded that you do not want the best instructions of that kind:

On the other hand, when they would engage you in these schemes, content yourself with a decent but steady refusal; avoid controversy upon such plain points.

You are too young to convert them; and, I trust, too wise to be converted by them.

Shun them not only in reality, but even in appearance, if you would be well received in good company; for people will always be shy of receiving a man who comes from a place where the plague rages, let him look ever so healthy.

On the other hand, when they would engage you in these schemes, content yourself with a decent but steady refusal; avoid controversy upon such plain points. You are too young to convert them; and, I trust, too wise to be converted by them.

Shun them not only in reality, but even in appearance, if you would be well received in good company; for people will always be shy of receiving a man who comes from a place where the plague rages, let him look ever so healthy.

There are some expressions, both in French and English, and some characters, both in those two and in other countries, which have, I dare say, misled many young men to their ruin. ‘Une honnete debauche, une jolie debauche; “An agreeable rake, a man of pleasure.”

A thousand nameless little things, which nobody can describe, but which everybody feels, conspire to form that WHOLE of pleasing; as the several pieces of a Mosaic work though, separately, of little beauty or value, when properly joined, form those beautiful figures which please everybody.

A look, a gesture, an attitude, a tone of voice, all bear their parts in the great work of pleasing.

The art of pleasing is more particularly necessary in your intended profession than perhaps in any other; it is, in truth, the first half of your business;

it is, in truth, the first half of your business; for if you do not please the court you are sent to, you will be of very little use to the court you are sent from.

Please the eyes and the ears, they will introduce you to the heart; and nine times in ten, the heart governs the understanding.

Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions to such men and women as are best at court, highest in the fashion, and in the opinion of the public;

Care and reflection, if properly used, will get the better: and a man may as surely get a habit of letting his reason prevail over his constitution, as of letting, as most people do, the latter prevail over the former.

If you find yourself subject to sudden starts of passion or madness (for I see no difference between them but in their duration), resolve within yourself, at least, never to speak one word while you feel that emotion within you.

Determine, too, to keep your countenance as unmoved and unembarrassed as possible; which steadiness you may get a habit of, by constant attention. I should desire nothing better, in any negotiation, than to have to do with one of those men of warm, quick passions;

It is so necessary at some games, such as ‘Berlan Quinze’, etc., that a man who had not the command of his temper and countenance, would infallibly be outdone by those who had, even though they played fair.

Whereas, in business, you always play with sharpers; to whom, at least, you should give no fair advantages.

It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you; I both own and justify it. It has been long said, ‘Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare’:

Whereas, in business, you always play with sharpers; to whom, at least, you should give no fair advantages.

It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you; I both own and justify it.

It has been long said, ‘Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare’: I go still further, and say, that without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all. It is SIMULATION that is false, mean, and criminal:

I both own and justify it. It has been long said, ‘Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare’: I go still further, and say, that without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.

It is SIMULATION that is false, mean, and criminal: that is the cunning which Lord Bacon calls crooked or left-handed wisdom, and which is never made use of but by those who have not true wisdom.

And the same great man says, that dissimulation is only to hide our own cards, whereas simulation is put on, in order to look into other people’s.

… a Patriot King,” which he has lately published, and which I will send you by the first opportunity, says very justly that simulation is a STILETTO,—not only an unjust but an unlawful weapon, and the use of it very rarely to be excused, never justified.

Whereas dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is armor; and it is no more possible to preserve secrecy in business, without same degree of dissimulation, than it is to succeed in business without secrecy.

He goes on, and says, that those two arts of dissimulation and secrecy are like the alloy mingled with pure ore: a little is necessary, and will not debase the coin below its proper standard;

on the contrary, he redoubles his industry and his diligence; he perseveres, and infallibly prevails at last. In any point which prudence bids you pursue, and which a manifest utility attends, let difficulties only animate your industry, not deter you from the pursuit.

If one way has failed, try another; be active, persevere, and you will conquer.

Some people are to be reasoned, some flattered, some intimidated, and some teased into a thing; but, in general, all are to be brought into it at last, if skillfully applied to, properly managed, and indefatigably attacked in their several weak places.

In any point which prudence bids you pursue, and which a manifest utility attends, let difficulties only animate your industry, not deter you from the pursuit. If one way has failed, try another; be active, persevere, and you will conquer.

Some people are to be reasoned, some flattered, some intimidated, and some teased into a thing; but, in general, all are to be brought into it at last, if skillfully applied to, properly managed, and indefatigably attacked in their several weak places.

The time should likewise be judiciously chosen; every man has his ‘mollia tempora’, but that is far from being all day long;

and consider whether it can be prudent, by the same means, to excite the same sentiments in others against you.

It is a decided folly to lose a friend for a jest; but, in my mind, it is not a much less degree of folly to make an enemy of an indifferent and neutral person, for the sake of a ‘bon mot’.

When things of this kind happen to be said of you, the most prudent way is to seem not to suppose that they are meant at you, but to dissemble and conceal whatever degree of anger you may feel inwardly;

and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases or offends you, in others will, ‘mutatis mutandis’, engage, disgust, please, or offend others, in you.

Observe with the utmost attention all the operations of your own mind, the nature of your passions, and the various motives that determine your will; and you may, in a great degree, know all mankind.

For instance, do you find yourself hurt and mortified when another makes you feel his superiority, and your own inferiority, in knowledge, parts, rank, or fortune?

This torn sheet, which I did not observe when I began upon it, as it alters the figure, shortens, too, the length of my letter. It may very well afford it: my anxiety for you carries me insensibly to these lengths.

I am apt to flatter myself, that my experience, at the latter end of my life, may be of use to you at the beginning of yours; and I do not grudge the greatest trouble, if it can procure you the least advantage.

I even repeat frequently the same things, the better to imprint them on your young, and, I suppose, yet giddy mind; and I shall think that part of my time the best employed, that contributes to make you employ yours well. God bless you, child!

The Last Supper, of Paul Veronese, in the church of St. George, is reckoned his capital performance, and deserves your attention; as does also the famous picture of the Cornaro Family, by Titian.

A taste for sculpture and painting is, in my mind, as becoming as a taste for fiddling and piping is unbecoming, a man of fashion.

The former is connected with history and poetry; the latter, with nothing that I know of but bad company.

Harte’s written accounts of you, and the verbal ones which I now and then receive from people who have seen you.

However, I believe it would do you no harm, if you would always imagine that I were present, and saw and heard everything you did and said.

There is a certain concurrence of various little circumstances which compose what the French call ‘l’aimable’; and which, now that you are entering into the world, you ought to make it your particular study to acquire.

and which, now that you are entering into the world, you ought to make it your particular study to acquire. Without them, your learning will be pedantry, your conversation often improper, always unpleasant, and your figure, however good in itself, awkward and unengaging.

A diamond, while rough, has indeed its intrinsic value; but, till polished, is of no use, and would neither be sought for nor worn.

Its great lustre, it is true, proceeds from its solidity and strong cohesion of parts; but without the last polish, it would remain forever a dirty, rough mineral, in the cabinets of some few curious collectors. You have;

but without the last polish, it would remain forever a dirty, rough mineral, in the cabinets of some few curious collectors. You have; I hope, that solidity and cohesion of parts; take now as much pains to get the lustre.

Good company, if you make the right use of it, will cut you into shape, and give you the true brilliant polish.

A propos of diamonds: I have sent you by Sir James Gray, the King’s Minister, who will be at Venice about the middle of September, my own diamond buckles; which are fitter for your young feet than for my old ones:

However, to err, if I do err, on the surer side, I shall continue to communicate to you those observations upon the world which long experience has enabled me to make, and which I have generally found to hold true.

Your youth and talents, armed with my experience, may go a great way; and that armor is very much at your service, if you please to wear it.

I premise that it is not my imagination, but my memory, that gives you these rules: I am not writing pretty; but useful reflections. A man of sense soon discovers, because he carefully observes, where, and how long, he is welcome;

and that armor is very much at your service, if you please to wear it. I premise that it is not my imagination, but my memory, that gives you these rules: I am not writing pretty; but useful reflections.

A man of sense soon discovers, because he carefully observes, where, and how long, he is welcome; and takes care to leave the company, at least as soon as he is wished out of it. Fools never perceive where they are either ill-timed or illplaced.

I am this moment agreeably stopped, in the course of my reflections, by the arrival of Mr. Harte’s letter of the 13th July, N. S., to Mr. Grevenkop, with one inclosed for your Mamma.

You may inclose your answer to me, and I will take care to give it him. Those attentions ought never to be omitted; they cost little, and please a great deal; but the neglect of them offends more than you can yet imagine.

Great merit, or great failings, will make you be respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done, or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world.

Examine yourself why you like such and such people, and dislike such and such others; and you will find, that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes. Moral virtues are the foundation of society in general, and of friendship in particular;

Examine yourself why you like such and such people, and dislike such and such others; and you will find, that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes.

Moral virtues are the foundation of society in general, and of friendship in particular; but attentions, manners, and graces, both adorn and strengthen them.

My heart is so set upon your pleasing, and consequently succeeding in the world, that possibly I have already (and probably shall again) repeat the same things over and over to you.

so that those which remain for study must be not only attentively, but greedily employed. But indeed I do not suspect you of one single moment’s idleness in the whole day.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.

I do not call good company and liberal pleasures, idleness; far from it: I recommend to you a good share of both.

where I hope you have now been some time, and which is a much better place for you to reside at, till you go to Naples, than either Tieffer or Laubach.

I love capitals extremely; it is in capitals that the best company is always to be found; and consequently, the best manners to be learned.

The very best provincial places have some awkwardness, that distinguish their manners from those of the metropolis. ‘A propos’ of capitals, I send you here two letters of recommendation to Naples, from Monsieur Finochetti, the Neapolitan Minister at The Hague;

At this rate, you will never speak it well, which I am very desirous that you should do, and of which you would, in time, find the advantage.

Whoever has not the command of a language, and does not speak it with facility, will always appear below himself when he converses in that language; the want of words and phrases will cramp and lame his thoughts.

As you now know German enough to express yourself tolerably, speaking it very often will soon make you speak it very well: and then you will appear in it whatever you are.

and I do very seriously desire that you will, or else all the pains that you have already taken about it are lost. You will remember likewise, that, till you can write in Italian, you are always to write to me in German.

Mr. Harte’s conjecture concerning your distemper seems to be a very reasonable one; it agrees entirely with mine, which is the universal rule by which every man judges of another man’s opinion.

But, whatever may have been the cause of your rheumatic disorder, the effects are still to be attended to;

and one single stone wanting in that foundation is of more consequence than fifty in the superstructure; which can always be mended and embellished if the foundation is solid. To carry on the metaphor of building:

I would wish you to be a Corinthian edifice upon a Tuscan foundation; the latter having the utmost strength and solidity to support, and the former all possible ornaments to decorate.

The Tuscan column is coarse, clumsy, and unpleasant; nobody looks at it twice; the Corinthian fluted column is beautiful and attractive; but without a solid foundation, can hardly be seen twice, because it must soon tumble down. Yours affectionately.

both which should be of a sweetening alkaline nature, and promotive of perspiration. Rheumatic complaints are very apt to return, and those returns would be very vexatious and detrimental to you; at your age, and in your course of travels.

Your time is, now particularly, inestimable; and every hour of it, at present, worth more than a year will be to you twenty years hence.

You are now laying the foundation of your future character and fortune; and one single stone wanting in that foundation is of more consequence than fifty in the superstructure; which can always be mended and embellished if the foundation is solid.

at your age, and in your course of travels. Your time is, now particularly, inestimable; and every hour of it, at present, worth more than a year will be to you twenty years hence.

You are now laying the foundation of your future character and fortune; and one single stone wanting in that foundation is of more consequence than fifty in the superstructure; which can always be mended and embellished if the foundation is solid.

To carry on the metaphor of building: I would wish you to be a Corinthian edifice upon a Tuscan foundation; the latter having the utmost strength and solidity to support, and the former all possible ornaments to decorate.

for I have known many of my countrymen die of bloody-fluxes, by indulging in too great a quantity of fruit, in those countries where, from the goodness and ripeness of it, they thought it could do them no harm.

‘Ne quid nimis’, is a most excellent rule in everything; but commonly the least observed, by people of your age, in anything.

As to your future motions, I am very well pleased with them, and greatly prefer your intended stay at Verona to Venice, whose almost stagnating waters must, at this time of the year, corrupt the air.

but then those few examples, instead of inviting us to imitation, should only put us the more upon our guard against such weaknesses: and whoever thinks them fashionable, will not be so himself;

I have often known a fashionable man have some one vice; but I never in my life knew a vicious man a fashionable man.

Vice is as degrading as it is criminal. God bless you, my dear child!

and whoever thinks them fashionable, will not be so himself; I have often known a fashionable man have some one vice; but I never in my life knew a vicious man a fashionable man.

Vice is as degrading as it is criminal.

God bless you, my dear child!

Consider, therefore, how precious every moment of time is to you now. The more you apply to your business, the more you will taste your pleasures.

The exercise of the mind in the morning whets the appetite for the pleasures of the evening, as much as the exercise of the body whets the appetite for dinner.

Business and pleasure, rightly understood, mutually assist each other, instead of being enemies, as silly or dull people often think them. No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business, and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

Business and pleasure, rightly understood, mutually assist each other, instead of being enemies, as silly or dull people often think them.

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business, and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

Remember that when I speak of pleasures, I always mean the elegant pleasures of a rational being, and, not the brutal ones of a swine. I mean ‘la bonne Chere’, short of gluttony; wine, infinitely short of drunkenness; play, without the least gaming;

Consider, therefore, how precious every moment of time is to you now.

The more you apply to your business, the more you will taste your pleasures.

The exercise of the mind in the morning whets the appetite for the pleasures of the evening, as much as the exercise of the body whets the appetite for dinner.

practice is absolutely necessary; but surely it is of great use to a young man, before he sets out for that country full of mazes, windings, and turnings, to have at least a general map of it, made by some experienced traveler.

There is a certain dignity of manners absolutely necessary, to make even the most valuable character either respected or respectable.

—[Meaning worthy of respect.]

we will ask another, because he plays deep at all games, or because he can drink a great deal. These are all vilifying distinctions, mortifying preferences, and exclude all ideas of esteem and regard.

Whoever is HAD (as it is called) in company for the sake of any one thing singly, is singly that thing and will never be considered in any other light; consequently never respected, let his merits be what they will.

This dignity of manners, which I recommend so much to you, is not only as different from pride, as true courage is from blustering, or true wit from joking; but is absolutely inconsistent with it; for nothing vilifies and degrades more than pride.

They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man. Indiscriminate familiarity either offends your superiors, or else dubbs you their dependent and led captain. It gives your inferiors just, but troublesome and improper claims of equality.

A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.

Whoever is admitted or sought for, in company, upon any other account than that of his merit and manners, is never respected there, but only made use of. We will have such-a-one, for he sings prettily;

Indiscriminate familiarity either offends your superiors, or else dubbs you their dependent and led captain. It gives your inferiors just, but troublesome and improper claims of equality. A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.

Whoever is admitted or sought for, in company, upon any other account than that of his merit and manners, is never respected there, but only made use of.

We will have such-a-one, for he sings prettily; we will invite such-a-one to a ball, for he dances well; we will have such-a-one at supper, for he is always joking and laughing;

This dignity of manners, which I recommend so much to you, is not only as different from pride, as true courage is from blustering, or true wit from joking; but is absolutely inconsistent with it; for nothing vilifies and degrades more than pride.

The pretensions of the proud man are oftener treated with sneer and contempt, than with indignation; as we offer ridiculously too little to a tradesman, who asks ridiculously too much for his goods; but we do not haggle with one who only asks a just and reasonable price.

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one’s own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence to other people’s, preserve dignity.

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust.

But a modest assertion of one’s own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence to other people’s, preserve dignity.

Vulgar, low expressions, awkward motions and address, vilify, as they imply either a very low turn of mind, or low education and low company.

Vulgar, low expressions, awkward motions and address, vilify, as they imply either a very low turn of mind, or low education and low company.

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and a laborious attention to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment’s thought, lower a man; who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters.

Cardinal de Retz, very sagaciously, marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment that he told him he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still.

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and a laborious attention to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment’s thought, lower a man; who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters.

Cardinal de Retz, very sagaciously, marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment that he told him he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still.

A certain degree of exterior seriousness in looks and motions gives dignity, without excluding wit and decent cheerfulness, which are always serious themselves. A constant smirk upon the face, and a whifing activity of the body, are strong indications of futility.

A certain degree of exterior seriousness in looks and motions gives dignity, without excluding wit and decent cheerfulness, which are always serious themselves.

A constant smirk upon the face, and a whifing activity of the body, are strong indications of futility.

Whoever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is about is too big for him. Haste and hurry are very different things.

A certain degree of exterior seriousness in looks and motions gives dignity, without excluding wit and decent cheerfulness, which are always serious themselves. A constant smirk upon the face, and a whifing activity of the body, are strong indications of futility.

Whoever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.

Haste and hurry are very different things.

A constant smirk upon the face, and a whifing activity of the body, are strong indications of futility. Whoever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.

Haste and hurry are very different things.

I have only mentioned some of those things which may, and do, in the opinion of the world, lower and sink characters, in other respects valuable enough,—but I have taken no notice of those that affect and sink the moral characters. They are sufficiently obvious.

I have only mentioned some of those things which may, and do, in the opinion of the world, lower and sink characters, in other respects valuable enough,—but I have taken no notice of those that affect and sink the moral characters. They are sufficiently obvious.

A man who has patiently been kicked may as well pretend to courage, as a man blasted by vices and crimes may to dignity of any kind.

But an exterior decency and dignity of manners will even keep such a man longer from sinking, than otherwise he would be: of such consequence is the [****], even though affected and put on!

In my next I will send you a general map of courts; a region yet unexplored by you, but which you are one day to inhabit.

The ways are generally crooked and full of turnings, sometimes strewed with flowers, sometimes choked up with briars; rotten ground and deep pits frequently lie concealed under a smooth and pleasing surface; all the paths are slippery, and every slip is dangerous.

Sense and discretion must accompany you at your first setting out; but, notwithstanding those, till experience is your guide, you will every now and then step out of your way, or stumble.

You will soon be at courts, where, though you will not be concerned, yet reflection and observation upon what you see and hear there may be of use to you, when hereafter you may come to be concerned in courts yourself.

Nothing in courts is exactly as it appears to be; often very different; sometimes directly contrary.

Interest, which is the real spring of everything there, equally creates and dissolves friendship, produces and reconciles enmities: or, rather, allows of neither real friendships nor enmities; for, as Dryden very justly observes, POLITICIANS NEITHER LOVE NOR HATE.

observe, therefore, such a degree of reserve with your friends as not to put yourself in their power, if they should become your enemies; and such a degree of moderation with your enemies, as not to make it impossible for them to become your friends.

Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good-breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation.

Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab each other, if manners did not interpose; but ambition and avarice, the two prevailing passions at courts, found dissimulation more effectual than violence;

and dissimulation introduced that habit of politeness, which distinguishes the courtier from the country gentleman. In the former case the strongest body would prevail; in the latter, the strongest mind.

A man of parts and efficiency need not flatter everybody at court; but he must take great care to offend nobody personally; it being in the power of every man to hurt him, who cannot serve him.

Homer supposes a chain let down from Jupiter to the earth, to connect him with mortals. There is, at all courts, a chain which connects the prince or the minister with the page of the back stairs, or the chamber-maid.

but he must take great care to offend nobody personally; it being in the power of every man to hurt him, who cannot serve him. Homer supposes a chain let down from Jupiter to the earth, to connect him with mortals.

There is, at all courts, a chain which connects the prince or the minister with the page of the back stairs, or the chamber-maid.

The king’s wife, or mistress, has an influence over him; a lover has an influence over her; the chambermaid, or the valet de chambre, has an influence over both, and so ad infinitum.

a lover has an influence over her; the chambermaid, or the valet de chambre, has an influence over both, and so ad infinitum. You must, therefore, not break a link of that chain, by which you hope to climb up to the prince.

You must renounce courts if you will not connive at knaves, and tolerate fools. Their number makes them considerable.

You should as little quarrel as connect yourself with either.

Great caution is therefore necessary; and if, to great caution, you can join seeming frankness and openness, you will unite what Machiavel reckons very difficult but very necessary to be united; ‘volto sciolto e pensieri stretti’.

Women are very apt to be mingled in court intrigues; but they deserve attention better than confidence; to hold by them is a very precarious tenure.

I am agreeably interrupted in these reflections by a letter which I have this moment received from Baron Firmian. It contains your panegyric, and with the strongest protestations imaginable that he does you only justice.

I have profited of it, both here and at Vienna; and shall esteem myself very happy to make use of the permission he has given me of continuing it by letter.”

Reputation, like health, is preserved and increased by the same means by which it is acquired.

Continue to desire and deserve praise, and you will certainly find it. Knowledge, adorned by manners, will infallibly procure it. Consider, that you have but a little way further to get to your journey’s end; therefore, for God’s sake, do not slacken your pace;

Blinded by prejudices, soured by misfortunes, and tempted by their necessities, they are as incapable of reasoning rightly, as they have hitherto been of acting wisely.

The late Lord Pembroke never would know anything that he had not a mind to know; and, in this case, I advise you to follow his example.

Never know either the father or the two sons, any otherwise than as foreigners; and so, not knowing their pretensions, you have no occasion to dispute them.

DEAR BOY:

It seems extraordinary, but it is very true, that my anxiety for you increases in proportion to the good accounts which I receive of you from all hands.

I promise myself so much from you, that I dread the least disappointment.

My wishes and my plan were to make you shine and distinguish yourself equally in the learned and the polite world. Few have been able to do it.

Deep learning is generally tainted with pedantry, or at least unadorned by manners: as, on the other hand, polite manners and the turn of the world are too often unsupported by knowledge, and consequently end contemptibly, in the frivolous dissipation of drawing-rooms and ruelles.

You are now got over the dry and difficult parts of learning; what remains requires much more time than trouble. You have lost time by your illness; you must regain it now or never.

Stanhope.

If I don’t mind his orders he won’t mind my draughts.

Englishman. What, does the old prig threaten then? threatened folks live long; never mind threats.

No. He may be in the best companies all his lifetime (if they will admit him, which, if I were they, I would not) and never be one jot the wiser.

I never will converse with an absent man; one may as well talk to a deaf one.

It is, in truth, a practical blunder, to address ourselves to a man who we see plainly neither hears, minds, or understands us.

and was as attentive to my manners, my dress, and my air, in company of evenings, as to my books and my tutor in the mornings.

A young fellow should be ambitious to shine in everything—and, of the two, always rather overdo than underdo.

These things are by no means trifles: they are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great world, and who would make a figure or a fortune in it. It is not sufficient to deserve well;

These things are by no means trifles: they are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great world, and who would make a figure or a fortune in it.

It is not sufficient to deserve well; one must please well too.

Awkward, disagreeable merit will never carry anybody far. Wherever you find a good dancing-master, pray let him put you upon your haunches; not so much for the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room, and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully.

they are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great world, and who would make a figure or a fortune in it. It is not sufficient to deserve well; one must please well too.

Awkward, disagreeable merit will never carry anybody far.

Wherever you find a good dancing-master, pray let him put you upon your haunches; not so much for the sake of dancing, as for coming into a room, and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully.

which is a proof that every man can get the better of that DISTRACTION, when he thinks it worth his while to do so; and, take my word for it, it is always worth his while.

For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man, than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure; at least he shows me no contempt; whereas, the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.

Besides, can an absent man make any observations upon the characters customs, and manners of the company? No.

I am very glad that you have received the diamond buckles safe; all I desire in return for them is, that they may be buckled even upon your feet, and that your stockings may not hide them.

I should be sorry that you were an egregious fop; but, I protest, that of the two, I would rather have you a fop than a sloven.

I think negligence in my own dress, even at my age, when certainly I expect no advantages from my dress, would be indecent with regard to others. I have done with fine clothes;

It is a complaisance due to the custom of the place, and by no means, as some silly people have imagined, an implied approbation of their doctrine.

Bodily attitudes and situations are things so very indifferent in themselves, that I would quarrel with nobody about them.

It may, indeed, be improper for Mr. Harte to pay that tribute of complaisance, upon account of his character.

if the company happens to laugh, he is persuaded they laugh at him; he grows angry and testy, says something very impertinent, and draws himself into a scrape, by showing what he calls a proper spirit, and asserting himself.

A man of fashion does not suppose himself to be either the sole or principal object of the thoughts, looks, or words of the company; and never suspects that he is either slighted or laughed at, unless he is conscious that he deserves it.

And if (which very seldom happens) the company is absurd or ill-bred enough to do either, he does not care twopence, unless the insult be so gross and plain as to require satisfaction of another kind.

Vulgarism in language is the next and distinguishing characteristic of bad company and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that.

Proverbial expressions and trite sayings are the flowers of the rhetoric of a vulgar man.

Would he say that men differ in their tastes; he both supports and adorns that opinion by the good old saying, as he respectfully calls it, that WHAT IS ONE MAN’S MEAT, IS ANOTHER MAN’S POISON.

destroys them first, and then accompanies them in their fall. His sword is formidable only to his own legs, which would possibly carry him fast enough out of the way of any sword but his own.

His clothes fit him so ill, and constrain him so much, that he seems rather, their prisoner than their proprietor.

He presents himself in company like a criminal in a court of justice; his very air condemns him; and people of fashion will no more connect themselves with the one, than people of character will with the other.

Form a taste of painting, sculpture, and architecture, if you please, by a careful examination of the works of the best ancient and modern artists; those are liberal arts, and a real taste and knowledge of them become a man of fashion very well.

But, beyond certain bounds, the man of taste ends, and the frivolous virtuoso begins.

Your friend Mendes, the good Samaritan, dined with me yesterday. He has more good-nature and generosity than parts. However, I will show him all the civilities that his kindness to you so justly deserves.

Sir Charles Williams has puffed you (as the mob call it) here extremely. If three or four more people of parts do the same, before you come back, your first appearance in London will be to great advantage.

Many people do, and indeed ought, to take things upon trust; many more do, who need not; and few dare dissent from an established opinion.

Adieu!

from your infancy to this day, I never grudged any expense in your education, and still less do it now, that it is become more important and decisive: I attend to the objects of your expenses, but not to the sums.

I will certainly not pay one shilling for your losing your nose, your money, or your reason; that is, I will not contribute to women, gaming, and drinking.

But I will most cheerfully supply, not only every necessary, but every decent expense you can make. I do not care what the best masters cost.

Since your health is so well restored, I am not sorry that you have returned to Venice, for I love capitals. Everything is best at capitals; the best masters, the best companions, and the best manners.

Many other places are worth seeing, but capitals only are worth residing at.

I am very glad that Madame Capello received you so well. Monsieur I was sure would: pray assure them both of my respects, and of my sensibility of their kindness to you. Their house will be a very good one for you at Rome;

and equal in elegancy to Yes, my Lady, and No, my Lady. The word VAST and VASTLY, you will have found by my former letter that I had proscribed out of the diction of a gentleman, unless in their proper signification of sizes and BULK.

Not only in language, but in everything else, take great care that the first impressions you give of yourself may be not only favorable, but pleasing, engaging, nay, seducing.

They are often decisive; I confess they are a good deal so with me: and I cannot wish for further acquaintance with a man whose first ‘abord’ and address displease me.

but this is soon done, for they are only outsides. It is not so with more important objects; the insides of which must be seen; and they require and deserve much more attention.

The characters, the heads, and the hearts of men, are the useful science of which I would have you perfect master.

That science is best taught and best learned in capitals, where every human passion has its object, and exerts all its force or all its art in the pursuit.

It is not so with more important objects; the insides of which must be seen; and they require and deserve much more attention. The characters, the heads, and the hearts of men, are the useful science of which I would have you perfect master.

That science is best taught and best learned in capitals, where every human passion has its object, and exerts all its force or all its art in the pursuit.

I believe there is no place in the world, where every passion is busier, appears in more shapes, and is conducted with more art, than at Rome.

S., from Verona. Your reasons for leaving that place were very good ones; and as you stayed there long enough to see what was to be seen, Venice (as a capital) is, in my opinion, a much better place for your residence.

Capitals are always the seats of arts and sciences, and the best companies.

I have stuck to them all my lifetime, and I advise you to do so too.

‘Y file-t-on le parfait amour? Y debite-t-on les beaux sentimens? Ou est-ce yu’on y parle Epigramme? And pray which is your department? ‘Tutis depone in auribus’. Whichever it is, endeavor to shine and excel in it.

Aim at least at the perfection of everything that is worth doing at all; and you will come nearer it than you would imagine; but those always crawl infinitely short of it whose aim is only mediocrity.

Adieu.

And indeed they are so plain and clear, that they require but a very moderate degree of understanding, either to comprehend or practice them.

Lord Shaftesbury says, very prettily, that he would be virtuous for his own sake, though nobody were to know it; as he would be clean for his own sake, though nobody were to see him.

I have therefore, since you have had the use of your reason, never written to you upon those subjects: they speak best for themselves;

As to the modes of it, indeed, they vary according to persons, and places, and circumstances; and are only to be acquired by observation and experience: but the substance of it is everywhere and eternally the same.

Good manners are, to particular societies, what good morals are to society in general; their cement and their security.

And, as laws are enacted to enforce good morals, or at least to prevent the ill effects of bad ones; so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied and received, to enforce good manners and punish bad ones.

so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied and received, to enforce good manners and punish bad ones. And, indeed, there seems to me to be less difference, both between the crimes and between the punishments than at first one would imagine.

The immoral man, who invades another man’s property, is justly hanged for it; and the ill-bred man, who, by his ill-manners, invades and disturbs the quiet and comforts of private life, is by common consent as justly banished society.

Mutual complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences, are as natural an implied compact between civilized people, as protection and obedience are between kings and subjects; whoever, in either case, violates that compact, justly forfeits all advantages arising from it.

and so they may, provided it be within certain bounds, which are upon no occasion to be transgressed. But, upon these occasions, though no one is entitled to distinguished marks of respect, everyone claims, and very justly, every mark of civility and good-breeding.

Ease is allowed, but carelessness and negligence are strictly forbidden.

If a man accosts you, and talks to you ever so dully or frivolously, it is worse than rudeness, it is brutality, to show him, by a manifest inattention to what he says, that you think him a fool or a blockhead, and not worth …

were I to yawn extremely, snore, or break wind in your company, I should think that I behaved myself to you like a beast, and should not expect that you would care to frequent me. No.

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, and friendships, require a degree of good-breeding, both to preserve and cement them.

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good-breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

No. The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, and friendships, require a degree of good-breeding, both to preserve and cement them.

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good-breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

The best of us have our bad sides, and it is as imprudent, as it is ill-bred, to exhibit them. I shall certainly not use ceremony with you; it would be misplaced between us:

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good-breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust.

The best of us have our bad sides, and it is as imprudent, as it is ill-bred, to exhibit them.

I shall certainly not use ceremony with you; it would be misplaced between us:

and there, undoubtedly, a greater degree of ease is not only allowed, but proper, and contributes much to the comforts of a private, social life. But that ease and freedom have their bounds too, which must by no means be violated.

A certain degree of negligence and carelessness becomes injurious and insulting, from the real or supposed inferiority of the persons: and that delightful liberty of conversation among a few friends is soon destroyed, as liberty often has been, by being carried to licentiousness.

But example explains things best, and I will put a pretty strong case. Suppose you and me alone together;

These personal graces are of very great consequence. They anticipate the sentiments, before merit can engage the understanding; they captivate the heart, and give rise, I believe, to the extravagant notions of charms and philters. Their effects were so surprising, that they were reckoned supernatural.

The most graceful and best-bred men, and the handsomest and genteelest women, give the most philters; and, as I verily believe, without the least assistance of the devil.

Pray be not only well dressed, but shining in your dress; let it have ‘du brillant’. I do not mean by a clumsy load of gold and silver, but by the taste and fashion of it. The women like and require it;

But I am unwilling to suppose you still awkward; for surely, by this time, you must have catched a good air in good company. When you went from hence you were naturally awkward; but your awkwardness was adventitious and Westmonasterial.

Leipsig, I apprehend, is not the seat of the Graces; and I presume you acquired none there.

But now, if you will be pleased to observe what people of the first fashion do with their legs and arms, heads and bodies, you will reduce yours to certain decent laws of motion.

You must be sensible that you cannot rise in the world, without forming connections, and engaging different characters to conspire in your point.

You must make them your dependents without their knowing it, and dictate to them while you seem to be directed by them.

Those necessary connections can never be formed, or preserved, but by an uninterrupted series of complaisance, attentions, politeness, and some constraint. You must engage their hearts, if you would have their support;

You must engage their hearts, if you would have their support; you must watch the ‘mollia tempora’, and captivate them by the ‘agremens’ and charms of conversation.

People will not be called out to your service, only when you want them; and, if you expect to receive strength from them, they must receive either pleasure or advantage from you.

I received in this instant a letter from Mr. Harte, of the 2d N. S., which I will answer soon; in the meantime, I return him my thanks for it, through you.

Upon my word, I do not say too much, when I say that superior good-breeding, insinuating manners, and genteel address, are half your business.

Your knowledge will have but very little influence upon the mind, if your manners prejudice the heart against you; but, on the other hand, how easily will you DUPE the understanding, where you have first engaged the heart?

and hearts are by no means to be gained by that mere common civility which everybody practices.

but, at the same time, enjoue, and always addressed to their vanity. Everything you say or do should convince them of the regard you have (whether you have it or not) for their beauty, their wit, or their merit.

Men have possibly as much vanity as women, though of another kind; and both art and good-breeding require, that, instead of mortifying, you should please and flatter it, by words and looks of approbation.

Suppose (which is by no means improbable) that, at your return to England, I should place you near the person of some one of the royal family;

in that situation, good-breeding, engaging address, adorned with all the graces that dwell at courts, would very probably make you a favorite, and, from a favorite, a minister; but all the knowledge and learning in the world, without them, never would.

The penetration of princes seldom goes deeper than the surface.

It is the exterior that always engages their hearts; and I would never advise you to give yourself much trouble about their understanding. Princes in general (I mean those ‘Porphyrogenets’ who are born and bred in purple) are about the pitch of women;

With weak people (and they undoubtedly are three parts in four of mankind) good-breeding, address, and manners are everything; they can go no deeper; but let me assure you that they are a great deal even with people of the best understandings.

Where the eyes are not pleased, and the heart is not flattered, the mind will be apt to stand out.

Be this right or wrong, I confess I am so made myself.

but it is by no means all. That knowledge must be adorned, it must have lustre as well as weight, or it will be oftener taken, for lead than for gold. Knowledge you have, and will have: I am easy upon that article.

But my business, as your friend, is not to compliment you upon what you have, but to tell you with freedom what you want; and I must tell you plainly, that I fear you want everything but knowledge.

I have written to you so often, of late, upon good-breeding, address, ‘les manieres liantes’, the Graces, etc., that I shall confine this letter to another subject, pretty near akin to them, and which, I am sure, you are full as deficient in;

DEAR Boy: Every rational being (I take it for granted) proposes to himself some object more important than mere respiration and obscure animal existence. He desires to distinguish himself among his fellow-creatures; and, ‘alicui negotio intentus, prreclari facinoris, aut artis bonae, faman quaerit’.

Caesar, when embarking in a storm, said, that it was not necessary he should live; but that it was absolutely necessary he should get to the place to which he was going.

And Pliny leaves mankind this only alternative; either of doing what deserves to be written, or of writing what deserves to be read. As for those who do neither, ‘eorum vitam mortemque juxta aestumo; quoniam de utraque siletur’.

and, ‘alicui negotio intentus, prreclari facinoris, aut artis bonae, faman quaerit’. Caesar, when embarking in a storm, said, that it was not necessary he should live; but that it was absolutely necessary he should get to the place to which he was going.

And Pliny leaves mankind this only alternative; either of doing what deserves to be written, or of writing what deserves to be read.

As for those who do neither, ‘eorum vitam mortemque juxta aestumo; quoniam de utraque siletur’. You have, I am convinced, one or both of these objects in view; but you must know and use the necessary means, or your pursuit will be vain and frivolous.

You have, I am convinced, one or both of these objects in view; but you must know and use the necessary means, or your pursuit will be vain and frivolous. In either case, ‘Sapere est princihium et fons’; but it is by no means all.

That knowledge must be adorned, it must have lustre as well as weight, or it will be oftener taken, for lead than for gold.

Knowledge you have, and will have: I am easy upon that article. But my business, as your friend, is not to compliment you upon what you have, but to tell you with freedom what you want;

I mean Style.

Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received as your person, though ever so well proportioned, would, if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.

It is not every understanding that can judge of matter; but every ear can and does judge, more or less, of style:

You will tell me, possibly, that this is a caricatura of an illiberal and inelegant style: I will admit it; but assure you, at the same time, that a dispatch with less than half these faults would blow you up forever.

It is by no means sufficient to be free from faults, in speaking and writing; but you must do both correctly and elegantly.

In faults of this kind, it is not ‘ille optimus qui minimis arguetur’; but he is unpardonable who has any at all, because it is his own fault: he need only attend to, observe, and imitate the best authors.

In faults of this kind, it is not ‘ille optimus qui minimis arguetur’; but he is unpardonable who has any at all, because it is his own fault: he need only attend to, observe, and imitate the best authors.

It is a very true saying, that a man must be born a poet, but that he may make himself an orator; and the very first principle of an orator is to speak his own language, particularly, with the utmost purity and elegance.

A man will be forgiven even great errors in a foreign language; but in his own, even the least slips are justly laid hold of and ridiculed.

It is a very true saying, that a man must be born a poet, but that he may make himself an orator; and the very first principle of an orator is to speak his own language, particularly, with the utmost purity and elegance.

A man will be forgiven even great errors in a foreign language; but in his own, even the least slips are justly laid hold of and ridiculed.

A person of the House of Commons, speaking two years ago upon naval affairs; asserted, that we had then the finest navy UPON THE FACE OF THE YEARTH. This happy mixture of blunder and vulgarism, you may easily imagine, was matter of immediate ridicule;

To our shame be it spoken, it is less attended to here than in any polite country; but that is no reason why you should not attend to it; on the contrary, it will distinguish you the more.

Cicero says, very truly, that it is glorious to excel other men in that very article, in which men excel brutes; SPEECH.

Constant experience has shown me, that great purity and elegance of style, with a graceful elocution, cover a multitude of faults, in either a speaker or a writer.

but that is no reason why you should not attend to it; on the contrary, it will distinguish you the more. Cicero says, very truly, that it is glorious to excel other men in that very article, in which men excel brutes; SPEECH.

Constant experience has shown me, that great purity and elegance of style, with a graceful elocution, cover a multitude of faults, in either a speaker or a writer.

For my own part, I confess (and I believe most people are of my mind) that if a speaker should ungracefully mutter or stammer out to me the sense of an angel, deformed by barbarism and solecisms, or larded with vulgarisms, he should never speak …

… people are of my mind) that if a speaker should ungracefully mutter or stammer out to me the sense of an angel, deformed by barbarism and solecisms, or larded with vulgarisms, he should never speak to me a second time, if I could help it.

Gain the heart, or you gain nothing; the eyes and the ears are the only roads to the heart.

Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained. Pray, have that truth ever in your mind. Engage the eyes by your address, air, and motions; soothe the ears by the elegance and harmony of your diction;

Gain the heart, or you gain nothing; the eyes and the ears are the only roads to the heart.

Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.

Pray, have that truth ever in your mind. Engage the eyes by your address, air, and motions; soothe the ears by the elegance and harmony of your diction; the heart will certainly follow; and the whole man, or woman, will as certainly follow the heart.

pray read ‘Cicero de Oratore’, the best book in the world to finish one. Translate and retranslate from and to Latin, Greek, and English; make yourself a pure and elegant English style: it requires nothing but application.

I do not find that God has made you a poet; and I am very glad that he has not: therefore, for God’s sake, make yourself an orator, which you may do.

Though I still call you boy, I consider you no longer as such; and when I reflect upon the prodigious quantity of manure that has been laid upon you, I expect that you should produce more at eighteen, than uncultivated soils do at eight-and-twenty.

make yourself a pure and elegant English style: it requires nothing but application. I do not find that God has made you a poet; and I am very glad that he has not: therefore, for God’s sake, make yourself an orator, which you may do.

Though I still call you boy, I consider you no longer as such; and when I reflect upon the prodigious quantity of manure that has been laid upon you, I expect that you should produce more at eighteen, than uncultivated soils do at eight-and-twenty.

Pray tell Mr. Harte that I have received his letter of the 13th, N. S. Mr. Smith was much in the right not to let you go, at this time of the year, by sea;

and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety, indecorum, or irregularity pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did.

I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality of an author: different in this respect, indeed, from most critics, that I shall seek for faults only to correct and not to expose them.

I have often thought, and still think, that there are few things which people in general know less, than how to love and how to hate.

I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality of an author: different in this respect, indeed, from most critics, that I shall seek for faults only to correct and not to expose them.

I have often thought, and still think, that there are few things which people in general know less, than how to love and how to hate.

They hurt those they love by a mistaken indulgence, by a blindness, nay, often by a partiality to their faults. Where they hate they hurt themselves, by ill-timed passion and rage. Fortunately for you, I never loved you in that mistaken manner.

I have often thought, and still think, that there are few things which people in general know less, than how to love and how to hate.

They hurt those they love by a mistaken indulgence, by a blindness, nay, often by a partiality to their faults. Where they hate they hurt themselves, by ill-timed passion and rage.

Fortunately for you, I never loved you in that mistaken manner. From your infancy, I made you the object of my most serious attention, and not my plaything. I consulted your real good, not your humors or fancies;

They hurt those they love by a mistaken indulgence, by a blindness, nay, often by a partiality to their faults. Where they hate they hurt themselves, by ill-timed passion and rage. Fortunately for you, I never loved you in that mistaken manner.

From your infancy, I made you the object of my most serious attention, and not my plaything.

I consulted your real good, not your humors or fancies; and I shall continue to do so while you want it, which will probably be the case during our joint lives;

for, considering the difference of our ages, in the course of nature, you will hardly have acquired experience enough of your own, while I shall be in condition of lending you any of mine.

People in general will much better bear being, told of their vices or crimes, than of their little failings and weaknesses.

They, in some degree, justify or excuse (as they think) the former, by strong passions, seductions, and artifices of others, but to be told of, or to confess, their little failings and weaknesses, implies an inferiority of parts, too mortifying to that self-love and vanity, …

… excuse (as they think) the former, by strong passions, seductions, and artifices of others, but to be told of, or to confess, their little failings and weaknesses, implies an inferiority of parts, too mortifying to that self-love and vanity, which are inseparable from our natures.

I have been intimate enough with several people to tell them that they had said or done a very criminal thing; but I never was intimate enough with any man, to tell him, very seriously, that he had said or done a very foolish one.

Nothing less than the relation between you and me can possibly authorize that freedom; but fortunately for you, my parental rights, joined to my censorial powers, give it me in its fullest extent, and my concern for you will make me exert it.

Whatever I shall tell you of this kind, you are very sure, can have no other motive than your interest; I can neither be jealous nor envious of your reputation or fortune, which I must be both desirous and proud to establish and promote;

I cannot be your rival either in love or in business; on the contrary, I want the rays of your rising to reflect new lustre upon my setting light.

In order to this, I shall analyze you minutely, and censure you freely, that you may not (if possible) have one single spot, when in your meridian.

but it ruins him with the rest; and I have known many a man undone by acquiring a ridiculous nickname: I would not, for all the riches in the world, that you should acquire one when you return to England.

Vices and crimes excite hatred and reproach; failings, weaknesses, and awkwardnesses, excite ridicule; they are laid hold of by mimics, who, though very contemptible wretches themselves, often, by their buffoonery, fix ridicule upon their betters.

The little defects in manners, elocution, address, and air (and even of figure, though very unjustly), are the objects of ridicule, and the causes of nicknames.

You see, by this extract, of what consequence other people think these things. Therefore, I hope you will no longer look upon them as trifles.

It is the character of an able man to despise little things in great business: but then he knows what things are little, and what not.

He does not suppose things are little, because they are commonly called so: but by the consequences that may or may not attend them.

… your favor, be of consequence, as it undoubtedly is, he knows very well that a happy concurrence of all those, commonly called little things, manners, air, address, graces, etc., is of the utmost consequence, and will never be at rest till he has acquired them.

The world is taken by the outside of things, and we must take the world as it is; you nor I cannot set it right.

I know, at this time, a man of great quality and station, who has not the parts of a porter; but raised himself to the station he is in, singly by having a graceful figure, polite manners, and an engaging address;

DEAR BOY:

Those who suppose that men in general act rationally, because they are called rational creatures, know very little of the world, and if they act themselves upon that supposition, will nine times in ten find themselves grossly mistaken.

That man is, ‘animal bipes, implume, risibile’, I entirely agree; but for the ‘rationale’, I can only allow it him ‘in actu primo’ (to talk logic) and seldom in ‘actu secundo’.

instead of often ascribing the greatest actions to the most trifling causes, in which they would be much seldomer mistaken. They read and write of kings, heroes, and statesmen, as never doing anything but upon the deepest principles of sound policy.

But those who see and observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that they have headaches, indigestions, humors, and passions, just like other people; everyone of which, in their turns, determine their wills, in defiance of their reason.

Had we only read in the “Life of Alexander,” that he burned Persepolis, it would doubtless have been accounted for from deep policy:

But, luckily, we are informed at the same time, that this hero, this demi-god, this son and heir of Jupiter Ammon, happened to get extremely drunk with his w—-e; and, by way of frolic, destroyed one of the finest cities in the world.

Read men, therefore, yourself, not in books but in nature.

Adopt no systems, but study them yourself. Observe their weaknesses, their passions, their humors, of all which their understandings are, nine times in ten, the dupes.

and writes as decisively and absurdly upon war, politics, manners, and characters, as that pedant talked, who was so kind as to instruct Hannibal in the art of war.

Such closet politicians never fail to assign the deepest motives for the most trifling actions; instead of often ascribing the greatest actions to the most trifling causes, in which they would be much seldomer mistaken.

They read and write of kings, heroes, and statesmen, as never doing anything but upon the deepest principles of sound policy. But those who see and observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that they have headaches, indigestions, humors, and passions, just like other people;

Mind your diction, in whatever language you either write or speak; contract a habit of correctness and elegance. Consider your style, even in the freest conversation and most familiar letters.

After, at least, if not before, you have said a thing, reflect if you could not have said it better.

Where you doubt of the propriety or elegance of a word or a phrase, consult some good dead or living authority in that language. Use yourself to translate, from various languages into English;

And be convinced of this truth, that the best sense and reason in the world will be as unwelcome in a public assembly, without these ornaments, as they will in public companies, without the assistance of manners and politeness.

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and, as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.

I repeat it again, they are only to be taken by ‘agremens’, and by what flatters their senses and their hearts. Rabelais first wrote a most excellent book, which nobody liked;

and, as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are. I repeat it again, they are only to be taken by ‘agremens’, and by what flatters their senses and their hearts.

Rabelais first wrote a most excellent book, which nobody liked; then, determined to conform to the public taste, he wrote Gargantua and Pantagruel, which everybody liked, extravagant as it was.

Adieu.

Sense and argument, though coarsely delivered, will have their weight in a private conversation, with two or three people of sense; but in a public assembly they will have none, if naked and destitute of the advantages I have mentioned.

Cardinal de Retz observes, very justly, that every numerous assembly is a mob, influenced by their passions, humors, and affections, which nothing but eloquence ever did or ever can engage.

This is so important a consideration for everybody in this country, and more particularly for you, that I earnestly recommend it to your most serious care and attention. Mind your diction, in whatever language you either write or speak;

DEAR BOY:

It is now above forty years since I have never spoken nor written one single word, without giving myself at least one moment’s time to consider whether it was a good or a bad one, and whether I could not find out a better in its place.

An unharmonious and rugged period, at this time, shocks my ears; and I, like all the rest of the world, will willingly exchange and give up some degree of rough sense, for a good degree of pleasing sound.

When you come into parliament, your reputation as a speaker will depend much more upon your words, and your periods, than upon the subject.

The same matter occurs equally to everybody of common sense, upon the same question; the dressing it well, is what excites the attention and admiration of the audience.

It is in parliament that I have set my heart upon your making a figure; it is there that I want to have you justly proud of yourself, and to make me justly proud of you.

it is there that I want to have you justly proud of yourself, and to make me justly proud of you. This means that you must be a good speaker there; I use the word MUST, because I know you may if you will.

The vulgar, who are always mistaken, look upon a speaker and a comet with the same astonishment and admiration, taking them both for preternatural phenomena.

This error discourages many young men from attempting that character; and good speakers are willing to have their talent considered as something very extraordinary, if not, a peculiar gift of God to his elect. But let you and me analyze and simplify this good speaker;

and therefore I can assure you, from my experience, that there is very little in it. The elegance of the style, and the turn of the periods, make the chief impression upon the hearers.

Give them but one or two round and harmonious periods in a speech, which they will retain and repeat; and they will go home as well satisfied as people do from an opera, humming all the way one or two favorite tunes that have struck their ears, and were easily caught.

Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as they are.

and they will go home as well satisfied as people do from an opera, humming all the way one or two favorite tunes that have struck their ears, and were easily caught.

Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as they are.

Cicero, conscious that he was at the top of his profession (for in his time eloquence was a profession), in order to set himself off, defines in his treatise ‘De Oratore’, an orator to be such a man as never was, nor never will be;

But, with submission to so great an authority, my definition of an orator is extremely different from, and I believe much truer than his.

I call that man an orator, who reasons justly, and expresses himself elegantly, upon whatever subject he treats.

Problems in geometry, equations in algebra, processes in chemistry, and experiments in anatomy, are never, that I have heard of, the object of eloquence;

As for the TONGUE TO PERSUADE, it wholly depends upon yourself; and without it the best head will contrive to very little purpose. The hand to execute depends likewise, in my opinion, in a great measure upon yourself.

Serious reflection will always give courage in a good cause; and the courage arising from reflection is of a much superior nature to the animal and constitutional courage of a foot soldier.

The former is steady and unshaken, where the ‘nodus’ is ‘dignus vindice’; the latter is oftener improperly than properly exerted, but always brutally.

If you have the least defect in your elocution, take the utmost care and pains to correct it. Do not neglect your style, whatever language you speak in, or whoever you speak to, were it your footman.

Seek always for the best words and the happiest expressions you can find.

Do not content yourself with being barely understood; but adorn your thoughts, and dress them as you would your person;

Do not neglect your style, whatever language you speak in, or whoever you speak to, were it your footman. Seek always for the best words and the happiest expressions you can find.

Do not content yourself with being barely understood; but adorn your thoughts, and dress them as you would your person; which, however well proportioned it might be, it would be very improper and indecent to exhibit naked, or even worse dressed than people of your sort are.

I have sent you in a packet which your Leipsig acquaintance, Duval, sends to his correspondent at Rome, Lord Bolingbroke’s book,—[“Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism,” on the Idea of a Patriot King which he published about a year ago.]—I desire that you will read …

But he has been a most mortifying instance of the violence of human passions and of the weakness of the most exalted human reason.

His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast.

Here the darkest, there the most splendid colors; and both rendered more shining from their proximity. Impetuosity, excess, and almost extravagance, characterized not only his passions, but even his senses.

For God’s sake, have this object always in your view and in your thoughts. Tune your tongue early to persuasion; and let no jarring, dissonant accents ever fall from it, Contract a habit of speaking well upon every occasion, and neglect yourself in no one.

Eloquence and good-breeding, alone, with an exceeding small degree of parts and knowledge, will carry a man a great way; with your parts and knowledge, then, how far will they not carry you?

Adieu.

Endeavor to outshine those who shine there the most, get the ‘Garbo’, the ‘Gentilezza’, the ‘Leggeadria’ of the Italians; make love to the most impertinent beauty of condition that you meet with, and be gallant with all the rest.

Speak Italian, right or wrong, to everybody; and if you do but laugh at yourself first for your bad Italian, nobody else will laugh at you for it.

That is the only way to speak it perfectly; which I expect you will do, because I am sure you may, before you leave Rome. View the most curious remains of antiquity with a classical spirit;

If you would know their morality, you will find it fully and admirably stated in ‘Les Lettres d’un Provincial’, by the famous Monsieur Pascal; and it is a book very well worth your reading.

Few people see what they see, or hear what they hear; that is, they see and hear so inattentively and superficially, that they are very little the better for what they do see and hear.

This, I dare say, neither is, nor will be your case. You will understand, reflect upon, and consequently retain, what you see and hear. You have still two years good, but no more, to form your character in the world decisively;

without them all your other talents are maimed and crippled. They are the wings upon which you must soar above other people; without them you will only crawl with the dull mass of mankind.

Prepossess by your air, address, and manners; persuade by your tongue; and you will easily execute what your head has contrived.

I desire that you will send me very minute accounts from Rome, not of what you see, but, of who you see; of your pleasures and entertainments. Tell me what companies you frequent most, and how you are received.

and I do believe that you will fill it up well. I hope you will employ the mornings diligently with Mr. Harte, in acquiring weight; and the evenings in the best companies at Rome, in acquiring lustre.

A formal, dull father, would recommend to you to plod out the evenings, too, at home, over a book by a dim taper; but I recommend to you the evenings for your pleasures, which are as much a part of your education, and almost as necessary a one, as your morning studies.

Go to whatever assemblies or SPECTACLES people of fashion go to, and when you are there do as they do. Endeavor to outshine those who shine there the most, get the ‘Garbo’, the ‘Gentilezza’, the ‘Leggeadria’ of the Italians;

get them in your interest too, for now and then they will have their turns. In many cases, you may not have it in your power to contribute to the gratification of the prevailing passion; then take the next best to your aid.

There are many avenues to every man; and when you cannot get at him through the great one, try the serpentine ones, and you will arrive at last.

There are two inconsistent passions, which, however, frequently accompany each other, like man and wife; and which, like man and wife too, are commonly clogs upon each other. I mean ambition and avarice:

We must not suppose that, because a man is a rational animal, he will therefore always act rationally; or, because he has such or such a predominant passion, that he will act invariably and consequentially in the pursuit of it. No.

We are complicated machines: and though we have one main-spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop that motion.

Let us exemplify. I will suppose ambition to be (as it commonly is) the predominant passion of a minister of state; and I will suppose that minister to be an able one. Will he, therefore, invariably pursue the object of that predominant passion?

then take the next best to your aid. There are many avenues to every man; and when you cannot get at him through the great one, try the serpentine ones, and you will arrive at last.

There are two inconsistent passions, which, however, frequently accompany each other, like man and wife; and which, like man and wife too, are commonly clogs upon each other.

I mean ambition and avarice: the latter is often the true cause of the former, and then is the predominant passion. It seems to have been so in Cardinal Mazarin, who did anything, submitted to anything, and forgave anything, for the sake of plunder.

and affairs stood still while he was concerting the criticism upon the Cid. Could one think this possible, if one did not know it to be true?

Though men are all of one composition, the several ingredients are so differently proportioned in each individual, that no two are exactly alike; and no one at all times like himself.

The ablest man will sometimes do weak things; the proudest man, mean things; the honestest man, ill things; and the wickedest man, good ones.

Could one think this possible, if one did not know it to be true? Though men are all of one composition, the several ingredients are so differently proportioned in each individual, that no two are exactly alike; and no one at all times like himself.

The ablest man will sometimes do weak things; the proudest man, mean things; the honestest man, ill things; and the wickedest man, good ones.

Study individuals then, and if you take (as you ought to do,) their outlines from their prevailing passion, suspend your last finishing strokes till you have attended to, and discovered the operations of their inferior passions, appetites, and humors.

three passions that often put honesty to most severe trials, in which it is too often cast; but first analyze this honest man yourself; and then only you will be able to judge how far you may, or may not, with safety trust him.

Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.

An Agrippina may sacrifice them to ambition, or a Messalina to lust; but those instances are rare; and, in general, all they say, and all they do, tends to the gratification of their vanity or their love. He who flatters them most, pleases them best;

No adulation is too strong for them; no assiduity too great; no simulation of passion too gross; as, on the other hand, the least word or action that can possibly be construed into a slight or contempt, is unpardonable, and never forgotten.

Men are in this respect tender too, and will sooner forgive an injury than an insult.

Some men are more captious than others; some are always wrongheaded; but every man living has such a share of vanity, as to be hurt by marks of slight and contempt.

but every man pretends to common sense, and to fill his place in the world with common decency; and, consequently, does not easily forgive those negligences, inattentions and slights which seem to call in question, or utterly deny him both these pretensions.

Suspect, in general, those who remarkably affect any one virtue; who raise it above all others, and who, in a manner, intimate that they possess it exclusively.

I say suspect them, for they are commonly impostors; but do not be sure that they are always so; for I have sometimes known saints really religious, blusterers really brave, reformers of manners really honest, and prudes really chaste.

Suspect, in general, those who remarkably affect any one virtue; who raise it above all others, and who, in a manner, intimate that they possess it exclusively.

I say suspect them, for they are commonly impostors; but do not be sure that they are always so; for I have sometimes known saints really religious, blusterers really brave, reformers of manners really honest, and prudes really chaste.

Pry into the recesses of their hearts yourself, as far as you are able, and never implicitly adopt a character upon common fame; which, though generally right as to the great outlines of characters, is always wrong in some particulars.

for they probably cram you with them only for their own eating; but, at the same time, do not roughly reject them upon that general supposition.

Examine further, and see whether those unexpected offers flow from a warm heart and a silly head, or from a designing head and a cold heart; for knavery and folly have often the same symptoms.

In the first case, there is no danger in accepting them, ‘valeant quantum valere possunt’. In the latter case, it may be useful to seem to accept them, and artfully to turn the battery upon him who raised it.

In the first case, there is no danger in accepting them, ‘valeant quantum valere possunt’. In the latter case, it may be useful to seem to accept them, and artfully to turn the battery upon him who raised it.

There is an incontinency of friendship among young fellows, who are associated by their mutual pleasures only, which has, very frequently, bad consequences.

A parcel of warm hearts and inexperienced heads, heated by convivial mirth, and possibly a little too much wine, vow, and really mean at the time, eternal friendships to each other, and indiscreetly pour out their whole souls in common, and without the least reserve.

and then very ill uses are made of these rash confidences. Bear your part, however, in young companies; nay, excel, if you can, in all the social and convivial joy and festivity that become youth.

Trust them with your love tales, if you please; but keep your serious views secret.

Trust those only to some tried friend, more experienced than yourself, and who, being in a different walk of life from you, is not likely to become your rival;

DEAR BOY:

Great talents and great virtues (if you should have them) will procure you the respect and the admiration of mankind; but it is the lesser talents, the ‘leniores virtutes’, which must procure you their love and affection.

The former, unassisted and unadorned by the latter, will extort praise; but will, at the same time, excite both fear and envy; two sentiments absolutely incompatible with love and affection.

By which he means those lesser, but engaging virtues of gentleness, affability, complaisance, and good humor.

The knowledge of a scholar, the courage of a hero, and the virtue of a Stoic, will be admired; but if the knowledge be accompanied with arrogance, the courage with ferocity, and the virtue with inflexible severity, the man will never be loved.

The heroism of Charles XII. of Sweden (if his brutal courage deserves that name) was universally admired, but the man nowhere beloved. Whereas Henry IV.

and the surest way to the former is through the latter, which must be engaged by the ‘leniores virtutes’ alone, and the manner of exerting them.

The insolent civility of a proud man is (for example) if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you by his manner that he thinks it mere condescension in him; and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.

He intimates his protection, instead of his friendship, by a gracious nod, instead of a usual bow; and rather signifies his consent that you may, than his invitation that you should sit, walk, eat, or drink with him.

He intimates his protection, instead of his friendship, by a gracious nod, instead of a usual bow; and rather signifies his consent that you may, than his invitation that you should sit, walk, eat, or drink with him.

The costive liberality of a purse-proud man insults the distresses it sometimes relieves; he takes care to make you feel your own misfortunes, and the difference between your situation and his; both which he insinuates to be justly merited: yours, by your folly; his, by his wisdom.

The arrogant pedant does not communicate, but promulgates his knowledge. He does not give it you, but he inflicts it upon you; and is (if possible) more desirous to show you your own ignorance than his own learning.

he takes care to make you feel your own misfortunes, and the difference between your situation and his; both which he insinuates to be justly merited: yours, by your folly; his, by his wisdom.

The arrogant pedant does not communicate, but promulgates his knowledge.

He does not give it you, but he inflicts it upon you; and is (if possible) more desirous to show you your own ignorance than his own learning.

MY DEAR FRIEND: The new year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments.

People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form; and concern, which they seldom feel.

This is not the case between you and me, where truth leaves no room for compliments.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

The new year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments.

People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form; and concern, which they seldom feel. This is not the case between you and me, where truth leaves no room for compliments.

With the variation of one word only, I will with great truth say it to you. I will make the first part conditional by changing, in the second, the ‘nam’ into ‘si’.

May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! or may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live, than after!

My true tenderness for you makes me think more of the manner than of the length of your life, and forbids me to wish it prolonged, by a single day, that should bring guilt, reproach, and shame upon you.

I have now reason to believe, that you will reward the former, and answer the latter; in that case, may you live long, for you must live happy; ‘de te nam caetera sumes’.

Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation of the word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.

To that main wish, I will add those of the good old nurse of Horace, in his epistle to Tibullus: ‘Sapere’, you have it in a good degree already. ‘Et fari ut possit quae sentiat’. Have you that?

To this method I owe the greatest part of my reading: for, from twenty to forty, I should certainly have read very little, if I had not been up while my acquaintances were in bed.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.

No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till to-morrow what you can do today. That was the rule of the famous and unfortunate Pensionary De Witt;

for, from twenty to forty, I should certainly have read very little, if I had not been up while my acquaintances were in bed. Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.

No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till to-morrow what you can do today.

That was the rule of the famous and unfortunate Pensionary De Witt;

especially at Rome, where it is not the fashion, as it is here and at Paris, to embezzle at least half of it at table. But if, by accident, two or three hours are sometimes wanting for some useful purpose, borrow them from your sleep.

Six, or at most seven hours sleep is, for a constancy, as much as you or anybody can want; more is only laziness and dozing; and is, I am persuaded, both unwholesome and stupefying.

If, by chance, your business, or your pleasures, should keep you up till four or five o’clock in the morning, I would advise you, however, to rise exactly at your usual time, that you may not lose the precious morning hours;

who, by strictly following it, found time, not only to do the whole business of the republic, but to pass his evenings at assemblies and suppers, as if he had had nothing else to do or think of.

Adieu, my dear friend, for such I shall call you, and as such I shall, for the future, live with you; for I disclaim all titles which imply an authority, that I am persuaded you will never give me occasion to exercise.

‘Multos et felices’, most sincerely, to Mr. Harte.

in spite of all the pompous and specious epithets he may assume, of ‘Esprit fort’, freethinker, or moral philosopher; and a wise atheist (if such a thing there is) would, for his own interest and character in this world, pretend to some religion.

Your moral character must be not only pure, but, like Caesar’s wife, unsuspected.

The least speck or blemish upon it is fatal. Nothing degrades and vilifies more, for it excites and unites detestation and contempt. There are, however, wretches in the world profligate enough to explode all notions of moral good and evil;

But I will recommend to you a most scrupulous tenderness for your moral character, and the utmost care not to say or do the least thing that may ever so slightly taint it.

Show yourself, upon all occasions, the advocate, the friend, but not the bully of virtue.

Colonel Chartres, whom you have certainly heard of (who was, I believe, the most notorious blasted rascal in the world, and who had, by all sorts of crimes, amassed immense wealth), was so sensible of the disadvantage of a bad character, that I heard him …

though it is inseparably attended with more infamy and loss than any other.

The prudence and necessity of often concealing the truth, insensibly seduces people to violate it.

It is the only art of mean capacities, and the only refuge of mean spirits. Whereas, concealing the truth, upon proper occasions, is as prudent and as innocent, as telling a lie, upon any occasion, is infamous and foolish.

though it is inseparably attended with more infamy and loss than any other. The prudence and necessity of often concealing the truth, insensibly seduces people to violate it. It is the only art of mean capacities, and the only refuge of mean spirits.

Whereas, concealing the truth, upon proper occasions, is as prudent and as innocent, as telling a lie, upon any occasion, is infamous and foolish.

I will state you a case in your own department. Suppose you are employed at a foreign court, and that the minister of that court is absurd or impertinent enough to ask you what your instructions are?

Whereas, in truth, all that they get is ridicule and contempt, not without a good degree of distrust; for one must naturally conclude, that he who will tell any lie from idle vanity, will not scruple telling a greater for interest.

Had I really seen anything so very extraordinary as to be almost incredible I would keep it to myself, rather than by telling it give anybody room to doubt, for one minute, of my veracity.

It is most certain, that the reputation of chastity is not so necessary for a women, as that of veracity is for a man; and with reason;

Had I really seen anything so very extraordinary as to be almost incredible I would keep it to myself, rather than by telling it give anybody room to doubt, for one minute, of my veracity.

It is most certain, that the reputation of chastity is not so necessary for a women, as that of veracity is for a man; and with reason; for it is possible for a woman to be virtuous, though not strictly chaste, but it is not possible for a man to be virtuous without strict veracity.

The slips of the poor women are sometimes mere bodily frailties; but a lie in a man is a vice of the mind and of the heart. For God’s sake be scrupulously jealous of the purity of your moral character; keep it immaculate, unblemished, unsullied;

and with reason; for it is possible for a woman to be virtuous, though not strictly chaste, but it is not possible for a man to be virtuous without strict veracity.

The slips of the poor women are sometimes mere bodily frailties; but a lie in a man is a vice of the mind and of the heart.

For God’s sake be scrupulously jealous of the purity of your moral character; keep it immaculate, unblemished, unsullied; and it will be unsuspected. Defamation and calumny never attack, where there is no weak place; they magnify, but they do not create.

but a lie in a man is a vice of the mind and of the heart. For God’s sake be scrupulously jealous of the purity of your moral character; keep it immaculate, unblemished, unsullied; and it will be unsuspected.

Defamation and calumny never attack, where there is no weak place; they magnify, but they do not create.

There is a very great difference between the purity of character, which I so earnestly recommend to you, and the stoical gravity and austerity of character, which I do by no means recommend to you.

I have known people slattern away their character, without really polluting it; the consequence of which has been, that they have become innocently contemptible; their merit has been dimmed, their pretensions unregarded, and all their views defeated.

Character must be kept bright, as well as clean.

Content yourself with mediocrity in nothing. In purity of character and in politeness of manners labor to excel all, if you wish to equal many. Adieu.

the consequence of which has been, that they have become innocently contemptible; their merit has been dimmed, their pretensions unregarded, and all their views defeated. Character must be kept bright, as well as clean.

Content yourself with mediocrity in nothing.

In purity of character and in politeness of manners labor to excel all, if you wish to equal many. Adieu.

the consequence of which has been, that they have become innocently contemptible; their merit has been dimmed, their pretensions unregarded, and all their views defeated. Character must be kept bright, as well as clean. Content yourself with mediocrity in nothing.

In purity of character and in politeness of manners labor to excel all, if you wish to equal many.

Adieu.

There is a very great difference between the purity of character, which I so earnestly recommend to you, and the stoical gravity and austerity of character, which I do by no means recommend to you.

At your age, I would no more wish you to be a Cato than a Clodius.

Be, and be reckoned, a man of pleasure as well as a man of business. Enjoy this happy and giddy time of your life; shine in the pleasures, and in the company of people of your own age.

At your age, I would no more wish you to be a Cato than a Clodius.

Be, and be reckoned, a man of pleasure as well as a man of business.

Enjoy this happy and giddy time of your life; shine in the pleasures, and in the company of people of your own age.

Be, and be reckoned, a man of pleasure as well as a man of business. Enjoy this happy and giddy time of your life; shine in the pleasures, and in the company of people of your own age.

This is all to be done, and indeed only can be done, without the least taint to the purity of your moral character; for those mistaken young fellows, who think to shine by an impious or immoral licentiousness, shine only from their stinking, like corrupted flesh, in the dark.

Without this purity, you can have no dignity of character; and without dignity of character it is impossible to rise in the world. You must be respectable, if you will be respected. I have known people slattern away their character, without really polluting it;

Without this purity, you can have no dignity of character; and without dignity of character it is impossible to rise in the world.

You must be respectable, if you will be respected.

I have known people slattern away their character, without really polluting it; the consequence of which has been, that they have become innocently contemptible; their merit has been dimmed, their pretensions unregarded, and all their views defeated.

and people, instead of laughing at you, will be glad to instruct you.

Good sense can only give you the great outlines of good-breeding; but observation and usage can alone give you the delicate touches, and the fine coloring.

You will naturally endeavor to show the utmost respect to people of certain ranks and characters, and consequently you will show it; but the proper, the delicate manner of showing that respect, nothing but observation and time can give.

You will naturally endeavor to show the utmost respect to people of certain ranks and characters, and consequently you will show it; but the proper, the delicate manner of showing that respect, nothing but observation and time can give.

I remember that when, with all the awkwardness and rust of Cambridge about me, I was first introduced into good company, I was frightened out of my wits.

I was determined to be, what I thought, civil; I made fine low bows, and placed myself below everybody; but when I was spoken to, or attempted to speak myself, ‘obstupui, steteruntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit’.

I was determined to be, what I thought, civil; I made fine low bows, and placed myself below everybody; but when I was spoken to, or attempted to speak myself, ‘obstupui, steteruntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit’.

If I saw people whisper, I was sure it was at me; and I thought myself the sole object of either the ridicule or the censure of the whole company, who, God knows, did not trouble their heads about me.

In this way I suffered, for some time, like a criminal at the bar;

But when I found afterward, that both she, and those to whom she had presented me, countenanced and protected me in company, I gradually got more assurance, and began not to be ashamed of endeavoring to be civil.

I copied the best masters, at first servilely, afterward more freely, and at last I joined habit and invention.

All this will happen to you, if you persevere in the desire of pleasing and shining as a man of the world; that part of your character is the only one about which I have at present the least doubt.

but let it be without embarrassment and with ease. Bring it by use to be habitual to you; for, if it seems unwilling and forced; it will never please. ‘Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et res’.

Acquire an easiness and versatility of manners, as well as of mind; and, like the chameleon, take the hue of the company you are with.

There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who having lived always in the ‘grande monde’, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five-and-twenty, or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given …

and they will point out to him those manners and ATTENTIONS that pleased and engaged them, when they were in the pride of their youth and beauty. Wherever you go, make some of those women your friends; which a very little matter will do.

Ask their advice, tell them your doubts or difficulties as to your behavior; but take great care not to drop one word of their experience; for experience implies age; and the suspicion of age, no woman, let her be ever so old, ever forgives.

I long for your picture, which Mr. Harte tells me is now drawing. I want to see your countenance, your air, and even your dress; the better they all three are, the better I am not wise enough to despise any one of them.

MY DEAR FRIEND: I consider the solid part of your little edifice as so near being finished and completed, that my only remaining care is about the embellishments; and that must now be your principal care too.

Adorn yourself with all those graces and accomplishments, which, without solidity, are frivolous; but without which solidity is, to a great degree, useless.

Take one man, with a very moderate degree of knowledge, but with a pleasing figure, a prepossessing address, graceful in all that he says and does, polite, ‘liant’, and, in short, adorned with all the lesser talents:

on the contrary, you will perceive that he makes people pleased with him, by making them first pleased with themselves: he shows respect, regard, esteem and attention, where they are severally proper: he sows them with care, and he reaps them in plenty.

These amiable accomplishments are all to be acquired by use and imitation; for we are, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation.

The great point is, to choose good models and to study them with care. People insensibly contract, not only the air, the manners, and the vices, of those with whom they commonly converse, but their virtues too, and even their way of thinking.

These amiable accomplishments are all to be acquired by use and imitation; for we are, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is, to choose good models and to study them with care.

People insensibly contract, not only the air, the manners, and the vices, of those with whom they commonly converse, but their virtues too, and even their way of thinking.

This is so true, that I have known very plain understandings catch a certain degree of wit, by constantly conversing with those who had a great deal. Persist, therefore, in keeping the best company, and you will insensibly become like them;

Persist, therefore, in keeping the best company, and you will insensibly become like them; but if you add attention and observation, you will very soon become one of them.

The inevitable contagion of company shows you the necessity of keeping the best, and avoiding all other; for in everyone, something will stick.

You have hitherto, I confess, had very few opportunities of keeping polite company. Westminster school is, undoubtedly, the seat of illiberal manners and brutal behavior. Leipsig, I suppose, is not the seat of refined and elegant manners. Venice, I believe, has done something;

The inevitable contagion of company shows you the necessity of keeping the best, and avoiding all other; for in everyone, something will stick. You have hitherto, I confess, had very few opportunities of keeping polite company.

Westminster school is, undoubtedly, the seat of illiberal manners and brutal behavior.

Leipsig, I suppose, is not the seat of refined and elegant manners. Venice, I believe, has done something; Rome, I hope, will do a great deal more; and Paris will, I dare say, do all that you want;

It is so long since I have heard from you, that I suppose Rome engrosses every moment of your time; and if it engrosses it in the manner I could wish, I willingly give up my share of it. I would rather ‘prodesse quam conspici’.

Put out your time, but to good interest; and I do not desire to borrow much of it.

Your studies, the respectable remains of antiquity, and your evening amusements cannot, and indeed ought not, to leave you much time to write. You will, probably, never see Rome again; and therefore you ought to see it well now;

but this I will say, eventually, that if you have one, ‘il faut bien payer d’attentions et de petits soin’, if you would have your sacrifice propitiously received.

Women are not so much taken by beauty as men are, but prefer those men who show them the most attention.

A man’s address and manner weigh much more with them than his beauty; and, without them, the Abbati and Monsignori will get the better of you. This address and manner should be exceedingly respectful, but at the same time easy and unembarrassed.

French. But, in every language, pray attend carefully to the choice of your words, and to the turn of your expression. Indeed, it is a point of very great consequence.

To be heard with success, you must be heard with pleasure: words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt, than your person should.

By the way, do you mind your person and your dress sufficiently? Do you take great care of your teeth? Pray have them put in order by the best operator at Rome.

Adieu, my dear friend!

Study hard; divert yourself heartily; distinguish carefully between the pleasures of a man of fashion, and the vices of a scoundrel; pursue the former, and abhor the latter, like a man of sense.

MY DEAR FRIEND: Very few people are good economists of their fortune, and still fewer of their time; and yet of the two, the latter is the most precious. I heartily wish you to be a good economist of both:

MY DEAR FRIEND:

Very few people are good economists of their fortune, and still fewer of their time; and yet of the two, the latter is the most precious.

I heartily wish you to be a good economist of both: and you are now of an age to begin to think seriously of those two important articles.

they loll and yawn in a great chair, tell themselves that they have not time to begin anything then, and that it will do as well another time. This is a most unfortunate disposition, and the greatest obstruction to both knowledge and business.

At your age, you have no right nor claim to laziness; I have, if I please, being emeritus.

You are but just listed in the world, and must be active, diligent, indefatigable. If ever you propose commanding with dignity, you must serve up to it with diligence. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

At your age, you have no right nor claim to laziness; I have, if I please, being emeritus. You are but just listed in the world, and must be active, diligent, indefatigable.

If ever you propose commanding with dignity, you must serve up to it with diligence.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

You are but just listed in the world, and must be active, diligent, indefatigable. If ever you propose commanding with dignity, you must serve up to it with diligence. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

Dispatch is the soul of business; and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.

Lay down a method for everything, and stick to it inviolably, as far as unexpected incidents may allow. Fix one certain hour and day in the week for your accounts, and keep them together in their proper order;

Keep a useful and short commonplace book of what you read, to help your memory only, and not for pedantic quotations.

Never read history without having maps and a chronological book, or tables, lying by you, and constantly recurred to; without which history is only a confused heap of facts.

One method more I recommend to you, by which I have found great benefit, even in the most dissipated part of my life;

The same listlessness runs through his whole conduct, and he is as insipid in his pleasures, as inefficient in everything else.

I hope you earn your pleasures, and consequently taste them; for, by the way, I know a great many men, who call themselves men of pleasure, but who, in truth, have none.

They adopt other people’s indiscriminately, but without any taste of their own. I have known them often inflict excesses upon themselves because they thought them genteel; though they sat as awkwardly upon them as other people’s clothes would have done.

They adopt other people’s indiscriminately, but without any taste of their own. I have known them often inflict excesses upon themselves because they thought them genteel; though they sat as awkwardly upon them as other people’s clothes would have done.

Have no pleasures but your own, and then you will shine in them.

What are yours? Give me a short history of them. ‘Tenez-vous votre coin a table, et dans les bonnes compagnies? y brillez-vous du cote de la politesse, de d’enjouement, du badinage? Etes-vous galant? Filex-vous le parfait amour?

You may safely trust me; for though I am a severe censor of vice and folly, I am a friend and advocate for pleasures, and will contribute all in my power to yours.

There is a certain dignity to be kept up in pleasures, as well as in business.

In love, a man may lose his heart with dignity; but if he loses his nose, he loses his character into the bargain. At table, a man may with decency have a distinguishing palate; but indiscriminate voraciousness degrades him to a glutton.

In love, a man may lose his heart with dignity; but if he loses his nose, he loses his character into the bargain. At table, a man may with decency have a distinguishing palate; but indiscriminate voraciousness degrades him to a glutton.

A man may play with decency; but if he games, he is disgraced.

Vivacity and wit make a man shine in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon. [see Mark Twain’s identical advice in his ‘Speeches’ D.W.] Every virtue, they say, has its kindred vice;

but if he loses his nose, he loses his character into the bargain. At table, a man may with decency have a distinguishing palate; but indiscriminate voraciousness degrades him to a glutton. A man may play with decency; but if he games, he is disgraced.

Vivacity and wit make a man shine in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.

[see Mark Twain’s identical advice in his ‘Speeches’ D.W.] Every virtue, they say, has its kindred vice; every pleasure, I am sure, has its neighboring disgrace.

A man may play with decency; but if he games, he is disgraced. Vivacity and wit make a man shine in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon. [see Mark Twain’s identical advice in his ‘Speeches’ D.W.]

Every virtue, they say, has its kindred vice; every pleasure, I am sure, has its neighboring disgrace.

Mark carefully, therefore, the line that separates them, and rather stop a yard short, than step an inch beyond it.

but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon. [see Mark Twain’s identical advice in his ‘Speeches’ D.W.] Every virtue, they say, has its kindred vice; every pleasure, I am sure, has its neighboring disgrace.

Mark carefully, therefore, the line that separates them, and rather stop a yard short, than step an inch beyond it.

I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it you! and you may the more easily have it, as I give you none that is inconsistent with your pleasure.

There is a certain dignity to be kept up in pleasures, as well as in business.

In love, a man may lose his heart with dignity; but if he loses his nose, he loses his character into the bargain.

At table, a man may with decency have a distinguishing palate; but indiscriminate voraciousness degrades him to a glutton. A man may play with decency; but if he games, he is disgraced. Vivacity and wit make a man shine in company;

Every virtue, they say, has its kindred vice; every pleasure, I am sure, has its neighboring disgrace. Mark carefully, therefore, the line that separates them, and rather stop a yard short, than step an inch beyond it.

I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it you!

and you may the more easily have it, as I give you none that is inconsistent with your pleasure. In all that I say to you, it is your interest alone that I consider: trust to my experience; you know you may to my affection.

which, I doubt, are not yet the genteelest in the world. But you may, and I hope you will, in the meantime, observe the air and carriage of those who are reckoned to have the best, and form your own upon them.

Ease, gracefulness, and dignity, compose the air and address of a man of fashion; which is as unlike the affected attitudes and motions of a ‘petit maitre’, as it is to the awkward, negligent, clumsy, and slouching manner of a booby.

I am extremely pleased with the account Mr. Harte has given me of the allotment of your time at Rome. Those five hours every morning, which you employ in serious studies with Mr.

Mr. Grevenkop has just received Mr. Harte’s letter of the 19th N. S.

Young as you are, I hope you are in haste to live; by living, I mean living with lustre and honor to yourself, with utility to society; doing what may deserve to be written, or writing what may deserve to be read; I should wish both.

Those who consider life in that light, will not idly lavish one moment. The present moments are the only ones we are sure of, and as such the most valuable; but yours are doubly so at your age;

doing what may deserve to be written, or writing what may deserve to be read; I should wish both. Those who consider life in that light, will not idly lavish one moment.

The present moments are the only ones we are sure of, and as such the most valuable; but yours are doubly so at your age; for the credit, the dignity, the comfort, and the pleasure of all your future moments, depend upon the use you make of your present ones.

I am extremely satisfied with your present manner of employing your time; but will you always employ it as well? I am far from meaning always in the same way; but I mean as well in proportion, in the variation of age and circumstances.

Those pleasures I recommend to you; I will promote them I will pay for them; but I will neither pay for, nor suffer, the unbecoming, disgraceful, and degrading pleasures (they should not be called pleasures), of low and profligate company.

I confess the pleasures of high life are not always strictly philosophical; and I believe a Stoic would blame, my indulgence; but I am yet no Stoic, though turned of five-and-fifty; and I am apt to think that you are rather less so, at eighteen.

The pleasures of the table, among people of the first fashion, may indeed sometimes, by accident, run into excesses: but they will never sink into a continued course of gluttony and drunkenness.

neither nose nor character lost by it; manners, possibly, improved. Play, in good company, is only play, and not gaming; not deep, and consequently not dangerous nor dishonorable. It is only the interacts of other amusements.

This, I am sure, is not talking to you like an old man, though it is talking to you like an old friend; these are not hard conditions to ask of you.

I am certain you have sense enough to know how reasonable they are on my part, how advantageous they are on yours: but have you resolution enough to perform them? Can you withstand the examples, and the invitations, of the profligate, and their infamous missionaries?

and a three or four hours’ conversation ‘de suite’ produces a thousand useful informations, which short meetings and snatches at third places do not admit of; and many of those gentlemen are by no means unwilling to dine ‘gratis’.

Whenever you meet with a man eminent in any way, feed him, and feed upon him at the same time; it will not only improve you, but give you a reputation of knowledge, and of loving it in others.

I have been lately informed of an Italian book, which I believe may be of use to you, and which, I dare say, you may get at Rome, written by one Alberti, about fourscore or a hundred years ago, a thick quarto.

it is so easy a language, that speaking it constantly, and reading it often, must, in six months more, make you perfect master of it: in which case you will never forget it; for we only forget those things of which we know but little.

But, above all things, to all that you learn, to all that you say, and to all that you do, remember to join the Graces.

All is imperfect without them; with them everything is at least tolerable. Nothing could hurt me more than to find you unattended by them. How cruelly should I be shocked, if, at our first meeting, you should present yourself to me without them!

Are you sufficiently upon your guard against awkward attitudes, and illiberal, ill-bred, and disgusting habits, such as scratching yourself, putting your fingers in your mouth, nose, and ears? Tricks always acquired at schools, often too much neglected afterward; but, however, extremely ill-bred and nauseous.

For I do not conceive that any man has a right to exhibit, in company, any one excrement more than another.

Do you dress well, and think a little of the brillant in your person? That, too, is necessary, because it is ‘prevenant’. Do you aim at easy, engaging, but, at the same time, civil or respectful manners, according to the company you are in?

Osborne’s at Gray’s Inn, to pick up scarce books. Buy good books and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads, for they may profit of the former.

But take care not to understand editions and title-pages too well. It always smells of pedantry, and not always of learning.

What curious books I have—they are indeed but few—shall be at your service. I have some of the old Collana, and the Machiavel of 1550. Beware of the ‘Bibliomanie’.

It always smells of pedantry, and not always of learning. What curious books I have—they are indeed but few—shall be at your service. I have some of the old Collana, and the Machiavel of 1550.

Beware of the ‘Bibliomanie’.

In the midst of either your studies or your pleasures, pray never lose view of the object of your destination: I mean the political affairs of Europe.

His sister, Madame Bulkeley, is now here; and had I known of your going so soon to Naples, I would have got you, ‘ex abundanti’, a letter from her to her brother.

The conversation of the moderns in the evening is full as necessary for you, as that of the ancients in the morning.

You would do well, while you are at Naples, to read some very short history of that kingdom. It has had great variety of masters, and has occasioned many wars;

and I cannot reckon Sweden and Poland to be monarchies, those two kings having little more to say than the Doge of Venice. I do not presume to say anything of the constitution of the empire to you, who are ‘jurisperitorum Germanicorum facile princeps’.

When you write to me, which, by the way, you do pretty seldom, tell me rather whom you see, than what you see.

Inform me of your evening transactions and acquaintances; where, and how you pass your evenings; what people of learning you have made acquaintance with; and, if you will trust me with so important an affair, what belle passion inflames you.

All those French young fellows are excessively ‘etourdis’; be upon your guard against scrapes and quarrels; have no corporal pleasantries with them, no ‘jeux de mains’, no ‘coups de chambriere’, which frequently bring on quarrels.

Be as lively as they, if you please, but at the same time be a little wiser than they.

As to letters, you will find most of them ignorant; do not reproach them with that ignorance, nor make them feel your superiority. It is not their faults, they are all bred up for the army;

this sort of light trifling way of declining invitations to vice and folly, is more becoming your age, and at the same time more effectual, than grave philosophical refusals.

A young fellow who seems to have no will of his own, and who does everything that is asked of him, is called a very good-natured, but at the same time, is thought a very silly young fellow.

Act wisely, upon solid principles, and from true motives, but keep them to yourself, and never talk sententiously.

A young fellow who seems to have no will of his own, and who does everything that is asked of him, is called a very good-natured, but at the same time, is thought a very silly young fellow.

Act wisely, upon solid principles, and from true motives, but keep them to yourself, and never talk sententiously.

When you are invited to drink, say that you wish you could, but that so little makes you both drunk and sick, ‘que le jeu me vaut pas la chandelle’.

From the play to the tavern again, where they get very drunk, and where they either quarrel among themselves, or sally forth, commit some riot in the streets, and are taken up by the watch.

Those who do not speak French before they go, are sure to learn none there.

Their tender vows are addressed to their Irish laundress, unless by chance some itinerant Englishwoman, eloped from her husband, or her creditors, defrauds her of them. Thus they return home, more petulant, but not more informed, than when they left it;

Thus they return home, more petulant, but not more informed, than when they left it; and show, as they think, their improvement by affectedly both speaking and dressing in broken French:—

Connect yourself, while you are in France, entirely with the French; improve yourself with the old, divert yourself with the young; conform cheerfully to their customs, even to their little follies, but not to their vices.

Do not, however, remonstrate or preach against them, for remonstrances do not suit with your age. In French companies in general you will not find much learning, therefore take care not to brandish yours in their faces.

A man who talks of, or even hints at, his ‘bonnes fortunes’, is seldom believed, or, if believed, much blamed; whereas a man who conceals with care is often supposed to have more than he has, and his reputation of discretion gets him others.

It is just so with a man of learning; if he affects to show it, it is questioned, and he is reckoned only superficial; but if afterward it appears that he really has it, he is pronounced a pedant.

Real merit of any kind, ‘ubi est non potest diu celari’; it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it but a man’s exhibiting it himself. It may not always be rewarded as it ought, but it will always be known.

It is just so with a man of learning; if he affects to show it, it is questioned, and he is reckoned only superficial; but if afterward it appears that he really has it, he is pronounced a pedant.

Real merit of any kind, ‘ubi est non potest diu celari’; it will be discovered, and nothing can depreciate it but a man’s exhibiting it himself.

It may not always be rewarded as it ought, but it will always be known.

Do not, however, remonstrate or preach against them, for remonstrances do not suit with your age. In French companies in general you will not find much learning, therefore take care not to brandish yours in their faces.

People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.

Conceal all your learning carefully, and reserve it for the company of les Gens d’Eglise, or les Gens de Robe; and even then let them rather extort it from you, than find you over-willing to draw it.

Your are then thought, from that seeming unwillingness, to have still more knowledge than it may be you really have, and with the additional merit of modesty into the bargain.

A man who talks of, or even hints at, his ‘bonnes fortunes’, is seldom believed, or, if believed, much blamed; whereas a man who conceals with care is often supposed to have more than he has, and his reputation of discretion gets him others.

It is just so with a man of learning; if he affects to show it, it is questioned, and he is reckoned only superficial; but if afterward it appears that he really has it, he is pronounced a pedant.

but then that sort of education, which makes them ignorant of books, gives them a great knowledge of the world, an easy address, and polite manners.

Fashion is more tyrannical at Paris than in any other place in the world; it governs even more absolutely than their king, which is saying a great deal.

The least revolt against it is punished by proscription. You must observe, and conform to all the ‘minutiae’ of it, if you will be in fashion there yourself; and if you are not in fashion, you are nobody.

Get, therefore, at all events, into the company of those men and women ‘qui donnent le ton’; and though at first you should be admitted upon that shining theatre only as a ‘persona muta’, persist, persevere, and you will soon have a part given you.

Take great care never to tell in one company what you see or hear in another, much less to divert the present company at the expense of the last; but let discretion and secrecy be known parts of your character.

They will carry you much further, and much safer than more shining talents. Be upon your guard against quarrels at Paris; honor is extremely nice there, though the asserting of it is exceedingly penal.

I am not stoically advising, nor parsonically preaching to you to be a Stoic at your age; far from it: I am pointing out to you the paths to pleasures, and am endeavoring only to quicken and heighten them for you.

Enjoy pleasures, but let them be your own, and then you will taste them; but adopt none; trust to nature for genuine ones.

The pleasures that you would feel you must earn; the man who gives himself up to all, feels none sensibly. Sardanapalus, I am convinced, never felt any in his life. Those only who join serious occupations with pleasures, feel either as they should do.

I am pointing out to you the paths to pleasures, and am endeavoring only to quicken and heighten them for you. Enjoy pleasures, but let them be your own, and then you will taste them; but adopt none; trust to nature for genuine ones.

The pleasures that you would feel you must earn; the man who gives himself up to all, feels none sensibly.

Sardanapalus, I am convinced, never felt any in his life. Those only who join serious occupations with pleasures, feel either as they should do. Alcibiades, though addicted to the most shameful excesses, gave some time to philosophy, and some to business.

Sardanapalus, I am convinced, never felt any in his life. Those only who join serious occupations with pleasures, feel either as they should do. Alcibiades, though addicted to the most shameful excesses, gave some time to philosophy, and some to business.

Julius Caesar joined business with pleasure so properly, that they mutually assisted each other; and though he was the husband of all the wives at Rome, he found time to be one of the best scholars, almost the best orator, and absolutely the best general there.

An uninterrupted life of pleasures is as insipid as contemptible. Some hours given every day to serious business must whet both the mind and the senses, to enjoy those of pleasure.

MY DEAR FRIEND: At your age the love of pleasures is extremely natural, and the enjoyment of them not unbecoming: but the danger, at your age, is mistaking the object, and setting out wrong in the pursuit.

The character of a man of pleasure dazzles young eyes; they do not see their way to it distinctly, and fall into vice and profligacy.

I remember a strong instance of this a great many years ago. A young fellow, determined to shine as a man of pleasure, was at the play called the “Libertine Destroyed,” a translation of ‘Le Festin de Pierre’ of Molieire’s.

and though he was the husband of all the wives at Rome, he found time to be one of the best scholars, almost the best orator, and absolutely the best general there.

An uninterrupted life of pleasures is as insipid as contemptible.

Some hours given every day to serious business must whet both the mind and the senses, to enjoy those of pleasure. A surfeited glutton, an emaciated sot, and an enervated rotten whoremaster, never enjoy the pleasures to which they devote themselves;

An uninterrupted life of pleasures is as insipid as contemptible. Some hours given every day to serious business must whet both the mind and the senses, to enjoy those of pleasure.

A surfeited glutton, an emaciated sot, and an enervated rotten whoremaster, never enjoy the pleasures to which they devote themselves; but they are only so many human sacrifices to false gods.

The pleasures of low life are all of this mistaken, merely sensual, and disgraceful nature; whereas, those of high life, and in good company (though possibly in themselves not more moral) are more delicate, more refined, less dangerous, and less disgraceful;

whereas, those of high life, and in good company (though possibly in themselves not more moral) are more delicate, more refined, less dangerous, and less disgraceful; and, in the common course of things, not reckoned disgraceful at all.

In short, pleasure must not, nay, cannot, be the business of a man of sense and character; but it may be, and is, his relief, his reward.

It is particularly so with regard to the women; who have the utmost contempt for those men, that, having no character nor consideration with their own sex, frivolously pass their whole time in ‘ruelles’ and at ‘toilettes’.

who have the utmost contempt for those men, that, having no character nor consideration with their own sex, frivolously pass their whole time in ‘ruelles’ and at ‘toilettes’. They look upon them as their lumber, and remove them whenever they can get better furniture.

Women choose their favorites more by the ear than by any other of their senses or even their understandings.

The man whom they hear the most commended by the men, will always be the best received by them. Such a conquest flatters their vanity, and vanity is their universal, if not their strongest passion. A distinguished shining character is irresistible with them;

Such a conquest flatters their vanity, and vanity is their universal, if not their strongest passion. A distinguished shining character is irresistible with them; they crowd to, nay, they even quarrel for the danger in hopes of the triumph.

Though, by the way (to use a vulgar expression), she who conquers only catches a Tartar, and becomes the slave of her captive.

‘Mais c’est la leur affaire’. Divide your time between useful occupations and elegant pleasures. The morning seems to belong to study, business, or serious conversations with men of learning and figure; not that I exclude an occasional hour at a toilette.

This is the life of a man of real sense and pleasure; and by this distribution of your time, and choice of your pleasures, you will be equally qualified for the busy, or the ‘beau monde’.

You see I am not rigid, and do not require that you and I should be of the same age.

What I say to you, therefore, should have the more weight, as coming from a friend, not a father. But low company, and their low vices, their indecent riots and profligacy, I never will bear nor forgive.

Can you speak it with the same fluency that you can speak German? You cannot conceive what an advantage it will give you in negotiations to possess Italian, German, and French perfectly, so as to understand all the force and finesse of those three languages.

If two men of equal talents negotiate together, he who best understands the language in which the negotiation is carried on, will infallibly get the better of the other.

The signification and force of one single word is often of great consequence in a treaty, and even in a letter.

… solidly establish, and really deserve, a character of truth, probity, good manners, and good morals, at his first setting out in the world, may impose, and shine like a meteor for a very short time, but will very soon vanish, and be extinguished with contempt.

People easily pardon, in young men, the common irregularities of the senses: but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

People easily pardon, in young men, the common irregularities of the senses: but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder.

A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

People easily pardon, in young men, the common irregularities of the senses: but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart. The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder.

A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

But should a bad young heart, accompanied with a good head (which, by the way, very seldom is the case), really reform in a more advanced age, from a consciousness of its folly, as well as of its guilt;

MY DEAR FRIEND:

Your apprenticeship is near out, and you are soon to set up for yourself; that approaching moment is a critical one for you, and an anxious one for me.

A tradesman who would succeed in his way, must begin by establishing a character of integrity and good manners; without the former, nobody will go to his shop at all; without the latter, nobody will go there twice.

MY DEAR FRIEND: Your apprenticeship is near out, and you are soon to set up for yourself; that approaching moment is a critical one for you, and an anxious one for me.

A tradesman who would succeed in his way, must begin by establishing a character of integrity and good manners; without the former, nobody will go to his shop at all; without the latter, nobody will go there twice.

This rule does not exclude the fair arts of trade. He may sell his goods at the best price he can, within certain bounds. He may avail himself of the humor, the whims, and the fantastical tastes of his customers;

but show upon all occasions, and take all occasions to show, a detestation and abhorrence of it. There, though young, you ought to be strict; and there only, while young, it becomes you to be strict and severe.

But there, too, spare the persons while you lash the crimes.

All this relates, as you easily judge, to the vices of the heart, such as lying, fraud, envy, malice, detraction, etc., and I do not extend it to the little frailties of youth, flowing from high spirits and warm blood.

but what he warrants to be good must be really so, what he seriously asserts must be true, or his first fraudulent profits will soon end in a bankruptcy. It is the same in higher life, and in the great business of the world.

A man who does not solidly establish, and really deserve, a character of truth, probity, good manners, and good morals, at his first setting out in the world, may impose, and shine like a meteor for a very short time, but will very soon vanish, and be extinguished with contempt.

People easily pardon, in young men, the common irregularities of the senses: but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart. The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one;

On the contrary, their taking up adventitious, proves their want of intrinsic merit; a rich man never borrows. Take this rule for granted, as a never-failing one: That you must never seem to affect the character in which you have a mind to shine.

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

The affectation of courage will make even a brave man pass only for a bully; as the affectation of wit will make a man of parts pass for a coxcomb. By this modesty I do not mean timidity and awkward bashfulness.

a rich man never borrows. Take this rule for granted, as a never-failing one: That you must never seem to affect the character in which you have a mind to shine. Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.

The affectation of courage will make even a brave man pass only for a bully; as the affectation of wit will make a man of parts pass for a coxcomb.

By this modesty I do not mean timidity and awkward bashfulness. On the contrary, be inwardly firm and steady, know your own value whatever it may be, and act upon that principle;

On the contrary, be inwardly firm and steady, know your own value whatever it may be, and act upon that principle; but take great care to let nobody discover that you do know your own value.

Whatever real merit you have, other people will discover, and people always magnify their own discoveries, as they lessen those of others.

For God’s sake, revolve all these things seriously in your thoughts, before you launch out alone into the ocean of Paris.

Be extremely upon your guard against vanity, the common failing of inexperienced youth; but particularly against that kind of vanity that dubs a man a coxcomb; a character which, once acquired, is more indelible than that of the priesthood.

It is not to be imagined by how many different ways vanity defeats its own purposes.

One man decides peremptorily upon every subject, betrays his ignorance upon many, and shows a disgusting presumption upon the rest. Another desires to appear successful among the women;

To come now to a point of much less, but yet of very great consequence at your first setting out.

Be extremely upon your guard against vanity, the common failing of inexperienced youth; but particularly against that kind of vanity that dubs a man a coxcomb; a character which, once acquired, is more indelible than that of the priesthood.

It is not to be imagined by how many different ways vanity defeats its own purposes. One man decides peremptorily upon every subject, betrays his ignorance upon many, and shows a disgusting presumption upon the rest. Another desires to appear successful among the women;

MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yesterday your letter of the 7th, N. S., from Naples, to which place I find you have traveled, classically, critically, and ‘da virtuoso’.

You did right, for whatever is worth seeing at, all, is worth seeing well, and better than most people see it.

It is a poor and frivolous excuse, when anything curious is talked of that one has seen, to say, I SAW IT, BUT REALLY I DID NOT MUCH MIND IT. Why did they go to see it, if they would not mind it?

But then, on the other hand, it is impossible not to acquire them, if one has a mind to them; for they are acquired insensibly, by keeping good company, if one has but the least attention to their characters and manners.

Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.

He catches their air, their manners, and even their way of thinking. If he observes with attention, he will catch them soon, but if he does not, he will at long run contract them insensibly.

He catches their air, their manners, and even their way of thinking. If he observes with attention, he will catch them soon, but if he does not, he will at long run contract them insensibly.

I know nothing in the world but poetry that is not to be acquired by application and care.

The sum total of this is a very comfortable one for you, as it plainly amounts to this in your favor, that you now want nothing but what even your pleasures, if they are liberal ones, will teach you.

It is a great pleasure, as well as a great advantage, to be able to speak to people of all nations, and well, in their own language.

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer it, than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

‘Magnis tamen excidit ausis’ is a degree of praise which will always attend a noble and shining temerity, and a much better sign in a young fellow, than ‘serpere humi, tutus nimium timidusque procellae’. For men as well as women:

‘Magnis tamen excidit ausis’ is a degree of praise which will always attend a noble and shining temerity, and a much better sign in a young fellow, than ‘serpere humi, tutus nimium timidusque procellae’. For men as well as women:

A man who sets out in the world with real timidity and diffidence has not an equal chance for it; he will be discouraged, put by, or trampled upon.

But to succeed, a man, especially a young one, should have inward firmness, steadiness, and intrepidity, with exterior modesty and SEEMING diffidence. He must modestly, but resolutely, assert his own rights and privileges. ‘Suaviter in modo’, but ‘fortiter in re’.

A young fellow must therefore be a very awkward one, to be reduced to, or of a very singular taste, to prefer drabs and danger to a commerce (in the course of the world not disgraceful) with a woman of health, education, and rank.

Nothing sinks a young man into low company, both of women and men, so surely as timidity and diffidence of himself.

If he thinks that he shall not, he may depend upon it he will not please. But with proper endeavors to please, and a degree of persuasion that he shall, it is almost certain that he will.

You have a fund to be sanguine upon, and good forces to rally. In business (talents supposed) nothing is more effectual or successful, than a good, though concealed opinion of one’s self, a firm resolution, and an unwearied perseverance.

None but madmen attempt impossibilities; and whatever is possible, is one way or another to be brought about.

If one method fails, try another, and suit your methods to the characters you have to do with.

The Cardinal for some time refused even to treat upon it. Don Louis, with the same ‘sang froid’, as constantly persisted, till he at last prevailed: contrary to the intentions and the interest both of the Cardinal and of his Court.

Sense must distinguish between what is impossible, and what is only difficult; and spirit and perseverance will get the better of the latter.

Every man is to be had one way or another, and every woman almost any way. I must not omit one thing, which is previously necessary to this, and, indeed, to everything else; which is attention, a flexibility of attention;

contrary to the intentions and the interest both of the Cardinal and of his Court. Sense must distinguish between what is impossible, and what is only difficult; and spirit and perseverance will get the better of the latter.

Every man is to be had one way or another, and every woman almost any way.

I must not omit one thing, which is previously necessary to this, and, indeed, to everything else; which is attention, a flexibility of attention;

“Politeness, in monarchies, is naturalized at court.

One man excessively great renders everybody else little.

Hence that regard which is paid to our fellow-subjects; hence that politeness, equally pleasing to those by whom, as to those toward whom, it is practiced;

Though our government differs considerably from the French, inasmuch as we have fixed laws and constitutional barriers for the security of our liberties and properties, yet the President’s observations hold pretty near as true in England as in France.

Though monarchies may differ a good deal, kings differ very little.

Those who are absolute desire to continue so, and those who are not, endeavor to become so; hence the same maxims and manners almost in all courts: voluptuousness and profusion encouraged, the one to sink the people into indolence, the other into poverty—consequently into dependence.

The court is called the world here as well as at Paris; and nothing more is meant by saying that a man knows the world, than that he knows courts.

In all courts you must expect to meet with connections without friendship, enmities without hatred, honor without virtue, appearances saved, and realities sacrificed; good manners with bad morals; and all vice and virtues so disguised, that whoever has only reasoned upon both would know neither when he first met them at court.

It is well that you should know the map of that country, that when you come to travel in it, you may do it with greater safety.

But, on the contrary, more desirous to make you their friend, than to prove themselves yours, they will flatter both, and, in truth, not be sorry for either.

Interiorly, most people enjoy the inferiority of their best friends.

The useful and essential part of friendship, to you, is reserved singly for Mr. Harte and myself: our relations to you stand pure and unsuspected of all private views. In whatever we say to you, we can have no interest but yours.

and read what stress Cicero and Quintilian lay upon it; even the herb-women at Athens were correct judges of it. Oratory, with all its graces, that of enunciation in particular, is full as necessary in our government as it ever was in Greece or Rome.

No man can make a fortune or a figure in this country, without speaking, and speaking well in public.

If you will persuade, you must first please; and if you will please, you must tune your voice to harmony, you must articulate every syllable distinctly, your emphasis and cadences must be strongly and properly marked; and the whole together must be graceful and engaging:

Harte, as if he were a numerous audience. If there is any particular consonant which you have a difficulty in articulating, as I think you had with the R, utter it millions and millions of times, till you have uttered it right.

Never speak quick, till you have first learned to speak well.

In short, lay aside every book, and every thought, that does not directly tend to this great object, absolutely decisive of your future fortune and figure.

I must therefore only repeat, that your whole depends upon it. Your trade is to speak well, both in public and in private.

The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled, than understandings to judge.

Be your productions ever so good, they will be of no use, if you stifle and strangle them in their birth.

the few that now remain are mixed with roses. Pleasure is now the principal remaining part of your education. It will soften and polish your manners; it will make you pursue and at last overtake the GRACES.

Pleasure is necessarily reciprocal; no one feels, who does not at the same time give it.

To be pleased one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you. Paris is indisputably the seat of the GRACES; they will even court you, if you are not too coy.

Pleasure is now the principal remaining part of your education. It will soften and polish your manners; it will make you pursue and at last overtake the GRACES. Pleasure is necessarily reciprocal; no one feels, who does not at the same time give it.

To be pleased one must please.

What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you. Paris is indisputably the seat of the GRACES; they will even court you, if you are not too coy.

And men, as well as women, are taken by those external graces.

Shut up your books, then, now as a business, and open them only as a pleasure; but let the great book of the world be your serious study; read it over and over, get it by heart, adopt its style, and make it your own.

When I cast up your account as it now stands, I rejoice to see the balance so much in your favor; and that the items per contra are so few, and of such a nature, that they may be very easily cancelled.

The difficulties which you have surmounted were much greater than any you have now to encounter.

Till very lately, your way has been only through thorns and briars; the few that now remain are mixed with roses.

Pleasure is now the principal remaining part of your education. It will soften and polish your manners; it will make you pursue and at last overtake the GRACES. Pleasure is necessarily reciprocal; no one feels, who does not at the same time give it.

‘Les manieres les agremens, les graces’ cannot be learned by theory; they are only to be got by use among those who have them; and they are now the main object of your life, as they are the necessary steps to your fortune.

A man of the best parts, and the greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd; and consequently very unwelcome in company.

He may say very good things; but they will probably be so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. Full of his own matter, and uninformed of;

and to labor more to put them in conceit with themselves, than to make them admire you.

Those whom you can make like themselves better, will, I promise you, like you very well.

A system-monger, who, without knowing anything of the world by experience, has formed a system, of it in his dusty cell, lays it down, for example, that (from the general nature of mankind) flattery is pleasing. He will therefore flatter. But how? Why, indiscriminately.

Here, the advantage is all on one side; but that advantage must be ably and artfully concealed. Complaisance, an engaging manner, and a patient toleration of certain airs of superiority, must cement them.

The weaker party must be taken by the heart, his head giving no hold; and he must be governed by being made to believe that he governs.

These people, skillfully led, give great weight to their leader. I have formerly pointed out to you a couple that I take to be proper objects for your skill; and you will meet with twenty more, for they are very rife.

She has been bred all her life at courts; of which she has acquired all the easy good-breeding and politeness, without the frivolousness.

She has all the reading that a woman should have; and more than any woman need have; for she understands Latin perfectly well, though she wisely conceals it.

As she will look upon you as her son, I desire that you will look upon her as my delegate: trust, consult, and apply to her without reserve.

… also extremely well worth your reading, as it will give you a clearer, and truer notion of one of the most interesting periods of the French history, than you can yet have formed from all the other books you may have read upon the subject.

That prince, I mean Henry the Fourth, had all the accomplishments and virtues of a hero, and of a king, and almost of a man. The last are the most rarely seen.

May you possess them all! Adieu.

not only books, but persons being ever at hand to solve doubts and clear up difficulties. I do by no means advise you to throw away your time in ransacking, like a dull antiquarian, the minute and unimportant parts of remote and fabulous times.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

And a general notion of the history of France, from the conquest of that country by the Franks, to the reign of Louis the Eleventh, is sufficient for use, consequently sufficient for you.

You must trifle only with triflers; and be serious only with the serious, but dance to those who pipe. ‘Cur in theatrum Cato severs venisti?’ was justly said to an old man: how much more so would it be to one of your age?

From the moment that you are dressed and go out, pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired: the producing of the one unasked, implies that you are weary of the company; and the producing of the other unrequired, will make the company weary of you.

Company is a republic too jealous of its liberties, to suffer a dictator even for a quarter of an hour; and yet in that, as in republics, there are some few who really govern;

There are many companies which you will, and ought to keep, where such conversations would be misplaced and ill-timed; your own good sense must distinguish the company and the time.

You must trifle only with triflers; and be serious only with the serious, but dance to those who pipe.

‘Cur in theatrum Cato severs venisti?’ was justly said to an old man: how much more so would it be to one of your age?

Whatever is done under concern and embarrassment, must be ill done, and, till a man is absolutely easy and unconcerned in every company, he will never be thought to have kept good company, nor be very welcome in it.

A steady assurance, with seeming modesty, is possibly the most useful qualification that a man can have in every part of life.

A man would certainly make a very considerable fortune and figure in the world, whose modesty and timidity should often, as bashfulness always does (put him in the deplorable and lamentable situation of the pious AEneas, when ‘obstupuit, steteruntque comae; et vox faucibus haesit!).

et vox faucibus haesit!). Fortune (as well as women)—

Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way for merit, that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties in its journey; whereas barefaced impudence is the noisy and blustering harbinger of a worthless and senseless usurper.

You will think that I shall never have done recommending to you these exterior worldly accomplishments, and you will think right, for I never shall; they are of too great consequence to you for me to be indifferent or negligent about them:

MY DEAR FRIEND: Before you get to Paris, where you will soon be left to your own discretion, if you have any, it is necessary that we should understand one another thoroughly; which is the most probable way of preventing disputes.

Money, the cause of much mischief in the world, is the cause of most quarrels between fathers and sons; the former commonly thinking that they cannot give too little, and the latter, that they cannot have enough; both equally in the wrong.

You must do me the justice to acknowledge, that I have hitherto neither stinted nor grudged any expense that could be of use or real pleasure to you;

should you ever urge to me that your honor is pawned, I should most immovably answer you, that it was your honor, not mine, that was pawned; and that your creditor might e’en take the pawn for the debt.

Low company, and low pleasures, are always much more costly than liberal and elegant ones.

The disgraceful riots of a tavern are much more expensive, as well as dishonorable, than the sometimes pardonable excesses in good company. I must absolutely hear of no tavern scrapes and squabbles.

A rake is a composition of all the lowest, most ignoble, degrading, and shameful vices; they all conspire to disgrace his character, and to ruin his fortune; while wine and the p———-s contend which shall soonest and most effectually destroy his constitution.

A dissolute, flagitious footman, or porter, makes full as good a rake as a man of the first quality.

By the bye, let me tell you, that in the wildest part of my youth, I never was a rake, but, on the contrary, always detested and despised that character.

By the bye, let me tell you, that in the wildest part of my youth, I never was a rake, but, on the contrary, always detested and despised that character.

A man of pleasure, though not always so scrupulous as he should be, and as one day he will wish he had been, refines at least his pleasures by taste, accompanies them with decency, and enjoys them with dignity.

Few men can be men of pleasure, every man may be a rake.

A man of pleasure, though not always so scrupulous as he should be, and as one day he will wish he had been, refines at least his pleasures by taste, accompanies them with decency, and enjoys them with dignity.

Few men can be men of pleasure, every man may be a rake.

Remember that I shall know everything you say or do at Paris, as exactly as if, by the force of magic, I could follow you everywhere, like a sylph or a gnome, invisible myself.

Remember that I shall know everything you say or do at Paris, as exactly as if, by the force of magic, I could follow you everywhere, like a sylph or a gnome, invisible myself.

Seneca says, very prettily, that one should ask nothing of God, but what one should be willing that men should know; nor of men, but what one should be willing that God should know.

I advise you to say and do nothing at Paris, but what you would be willing that I should know. I hope, nay, I believe, that will be the case. Sense, I dare say, you do not want;

I do not in the least mean a grave turn; on the contrary, a gay, a sprightly, but, at the same time, an elegant and liberal one.

Keep carefully out of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France; where a man is dishonored by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it.

The young Frenchmen are hasty, giddy, and petulant; extremely national, and ‘avantageux’. Forbear from any national jokes or reflections, which are always improper, and commonly unjust. The colder northern nations generally look upon France as a whistling, singing, dancing, frivolous nation;

They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France; where a man is dishonored by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it. The young Frenchmen are hasty, giddy, and petulant; extremely national, and ‘avantageux’.

Forbear from any national jokes or reflections, which are always improper, and commonly unjust.

The colder northern nations generally look upon France as a whistling, singing, dancing, frivolous nation; this notion is very far from being a true one, though many ‘Petits maitres’ by their behavior seem to justify it;

The number of great generals and statesmen, as well as excellent authors, that France has produced, is an undeniable proof, that it is not that frivolous, unthinking, empty nation that northern prejudices suppose it.

Seem to like and approve of everything at first, and I promise you that you will like and approve of many things afterward.

I expect that you will write to me constantly, once every week, which I desire may be every Thursday; and that your letters may inform me of your personal transactions: not of what you see, but of whom you see, and what you do.

Be your own monitor, now that you will have no other. As to enunciation, I must repeat it to you again and again, that there is no one thing so necessary: all other talents, without that, are absolutely useless, except in your own closet.

It sounds ridiculously to bid you study with your dancing-master; and yet I do.

The bodily-carriage and graces are of infinite consequence to everybody, and more particularly to you.

so that by doing and saying most things in a manner opposite to that of the vulgar, you have a great chance of doing and saying them right.

There are gradations in awkwardness and vulgarism, as there are in everything else.

‘Les manieres de robe’, though not quite right, are still better than ‘les manieres bourgeoises’; and these, though bad, are still better than ‘les manieres de campagne’.

If you write epistles as well as Cicero, but in a very bad hand, and very ill-spelled, whoever receives will laugh at them; and if you had the figure of Adonis, with an awkward air and motions, it will disgust instead of pleasing.

Study manner, therefore, in everything, if you would be anything.

My principal inquiries of my friends at Paris, concerning you, will be relative to your manner of doing whatever you do. I shall not inquire whether you understand Demosthenes, Tacitus, or the ‘Jus Publicum Imperii’;

If you have, undeceive yourself, and be convinced that, in everything, the manner is full as important as the matter.

If you speak the sense of an angel, in bad words and with a disagreeable utterance, nobody will hear you twice, who can help it.

If you write epistles as well as Cicero, but in a very bad hand, and very ill-spelled, whoever receives will laugh at them; and if you had the figure of Adonis, with an awkward air and motions, it will disgust instead of pleasing.

I am assured that you speak it well, but in that well there are gradations.

He, who in the provinces might be reckoned to speak correctly, would at Paris be looked upon as an ancient Gaul.

In that country of mode, even language is subservient to fashion, which varies almost as often as their clothes.

The AFFECTED, the REFINED, the NEOLOGICAL, OR NEW FASHIONABLE STYLE are at present too much in vogue at Paris. Know, observe, and occasionally converse (if you please) according to those different styles; but do not let your taste be infected by them.

Wit, too, is there subservient to fashion; and actually, at Paris, one must have wit, even in despite of Minerva.

Everybody runs after it; although if it does not come naturally and of itself; it never can be overtaken. But, unfortunately for those who pursue, they seize upon what they take for wit, and endeavor to pass it for such upon others.

On the other hand, do not laugh at those who give into such errors; you are as yet too young to act the critic, or to stand forth a severe avenger of the violated rights of good sense.

Content yourself with not being perverted, but do not think of converting others; let them quietly enjoy their errors in taste, as well as in religion.

Within the course of the last century and a half, taste in France has (as well as that kingdom itself) undergone many vicissitudes. Under the reign of I do not say Lewis XIII.

Those madmen then endeavored to obtain an asylum in libraries; this they could not accomplish, but were under a necessity of taking shelter in the chambers of some few ladies.

I would have you read one volume of “Cleopatra,” and one of “Clelia”; it will otherwise be impossible for you to form any idea of the extravagances they contain; but God keep you from ever persevering to the twelfth.

During almost the whole reign of Lewis XIV., true taste remained in its purity, until it received some hurt, although undesignedly, from a very fine genius, I mean Monsieur de Fontenelle;

and, in short, a numerous and very fashionable party of writers, who, in a metaphysical jumble, introduce their false and subtle reasonings upon the movements and the sentiments of THE SOUL, THE HEART, and THE MIND.

Do not let yourself be overpowered by fashion, nor by particular sets of people with whom you may be connected; but try all the different coins before you receive any in payment.

Let your own good sense and reason judge of the value of each; and be persuaded, that NOTHING CAN BE BEAUTIFUL UNLESS TRUE: whatever brilliancy is not the result of the solidity and justness of a thought, it is but a false glare.

false sentiments, with frivolous women; and a mixture of all these together, with professed beaux esprits. I would have you do so; for at your age you ought not to aim at changing the tone of the company, but conform to it.

Examine well, however; weigh all maturely within yourself; and do not mistake the tinsel of Tasso for the gold of Virgil.

You will find at Paris good authors, and circles distinguished by the solidity of their reasoning. You will never hear TRIFLING, AFFECTED, and far-sought conversations, at Madame de Monconseil’s, nor at the hotels of Matignon and Coigni, where she will introduce you.

As I shall let you remain at Paris without any person to direct your conduct, I flatter myself that you will not make a bad use of the confidence I repose in you.

I do not require that you should lead the life of a Capuchin friar; quite the contrary: I recommend pleasures to you; but I expect that they shall be the pleasures of a gentleman.

Those add brilliancy to a young man’s character; but debauchery vilifies and degrades it. I shall have very true and exact accounts of your conduct; and, according to the informations I receive, shall be more, or less, or not at all, yours. Adieu.

quite the contrary: I recommend pleasures to you; but I expect that they shall be the pleasures of a gentleman. Those add brilliancy to a young man’s character; but debauchery vilifies and degrades it.

I shall have very true and exact accounts of your conduct; and, according to the informations I receive, shall be more, or less, or not at all, yours.

Adieu.

Connect yourself as much as possible with the foreign ministers; which is properly traveling into different countries, without going from one place. Speak Italian to all the Italians, and German to all the Germans you meet, in order not to forget those two languages.

I wish you, my dear friend, as many happy new years as you deserve, and not one more.

May you deserve a great number!

In that view, keeping a great deal of good company, is the principal point to which you are now to attend.

It seems ridiculous to tell you, but it is most certainly true, that your dancing-master is at this time the man in all Europe of the greatest importance to you.

You must dance well, in order to sit, stand, and walk well; and you must do all these well in order to please. What with your exercises, some reading, and a great deal of company, your day is, I confess, extremely taken up;

Harte has told me of you, two in particular gave me great pleasure. The first, that you are exceedingly careful and jealous of the dignity of your character; that is the sure and solid foundation upon which you must both stand and rise.

A man’s moral character is a more delicate thing than a woman’s reputation of chastity.

A slip or two may possibly be forgiven her, and her character may be clarified by subsequent and continued good conduct: but a man’s moral character once tainted is irreparably destroyed.

to know the proper time and place for whatever you say or do, and to do it with an air of condition all this is not so soon nor so easily learned as people imagine, but requires observation and time.

The world is an immense folio, which demands a great deal of time and attention to be read and understood as it ought to be; you have not yet read above four or five pages of it; and you will have but barely time to dip now and then in other less important books.

Lord Albemarle has, I know, wrote {It is a pleasure for an ordinary mortal to find Lord Chesterfield in gramatical error—and he did it again in the last sentence of this paragraph—but this was 1751?

He is a good deal in fashion here, and his PUFFING you (to use an awkward expression) before you return here, will be of great use to you afterward.

People in general take characters, as they do most things, upon trust, rather than be at the trouble of examining them themselves; and the decisions of four or five fashionable people, in every place, are final, more particularly with regard to characters, which all can hear, and but few judge of.

Do not mention the least of this to any mortal; and take care that Lord Albemarle do not suspect that you know anything of the matter.

that is what the French themselves are not apt to do; wherever they go, they retain their own manners, as thinking them the best; but, granting them to be so, they are still in the wrong not to conform to those of the place.

One would desire to please, wherever one is; and nothing is more innocently flattering than an approbation, and an imitation of the people one converses with.

I hope your colleges with Marcel go on prosperously. In these ridiculous, though, at the same time, really important lectures, pray attend, and desire your professor also to attend, more particularly to the chapter of the arms.

It is they that decide of a man’s being genteel or otherwise, more than any other part of the body.

A twist or stiffness in the wrist, will make any man in Europe look awkward.

The next thing to be attended to is, your coming into a room, and presenting yourself to a company. This gives the first impression; and the first impression is often a lasting one.

and the first impression is often a lasting one. Therefore, pray desire Professor Marcel to make you come in and go out of his room frequently, and in the supposition of different companies being there; such as ministers, women, mixed companies, etc.

Those who present themselves well, have a certain dignity in their air, which, without the least seeming mixture of pride, at once engages, and is respected.

I should not so often repeat, nor so long dwell upon such trifles, with anybody that had less solid and valuable knowledge than you have. Frivolous people attend to those things, ‘par preference’; they know nothing else;

they know nothing else; my fear with you is, that, from knowing better things, you should despise these too much, and think them of much less consequence than they really are; for they are of a great deal, and more especially to you.

Pleasing and governing women may, in time, be of great service to you. They often please and govern others.

‘A propos’, are you in love with Madame de Berkenrode still, or has some other taken her place in your affections? I take it for granted, that ‘qua to cumque domat Venus, non erubescendis adurit ignibus. Un arrangement honnete sied bien a un galant homme’.

How happy am I, my dear child, that I can apply to you for knowledge, and with a certainty of being rightly informed!

It is knowledge, more than quick, flashy parts, that makes a man of business.

A man who is master of his matter, twill, with inferior parts, be too hard in parliament, and indeed anywhere else, for a man of-better parts, who knows his subject but superficially:

je m’en charge; avouez, que je m’en acquitte a merveille.’ This sort of ‘badinage’ has something engaging and ‘liant’ in it, and begets that decent familiarity, which it is both agreeable and useful to establish in good houses and with people of fashion.

Mere formal visits, dinners, and suppers, upon formal invitations, are not the thing; they add to no connection nor information; but it is the easy, careless ingress and egress at all hours, that forms the pleasing and profitable commerce of life.

The post is so negligent, that I lose some letters from Paris entirely, and receive others much later than I should. To this I ascribe my having received no letter from you for above a fortnight, which to my impatience seems a long time.

The Greek books come from Mr. Harte, and the English ones from your humble servant. Read Lord Bolingbroke’s with great attention, as well to the style as to the matter. I wish you could form yourself such a style in every language.

Style is the dress of thoughts; and a well-dressed thought, like a well-dressed man, appears to great advantage.

Yours. Adieu.

You will say, it may be, that when you write so very ill, it is because you are in a hurry, to which I answer, Why are you ever in a hurry?

A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry, because he knows that whatever he does in a hurry, he must necessarily do very ill.

He may be in haste to dispatch an affair, but he will care not to let that haste hinder his doing it well. Little minds are in a hurry, when the object proves (as it commonly does) too big for them;

He may be in haste to dispatch an affair, but he will care not to let that haste hinder his doing it well.

Little minds are in a hurry, when the object proves (as it commonly does) too big for them; they run, they hare, they puzzle, confound, and perplex themselves: they want to do everything at once, and never do it at all.

But a man of sense takes the time necessary for doing the thing he is about, well; and his haste to dispatch a business only appears by the continuity of his application to it:

and insinuate that you would rather stay with them. In short, take care to make as many personal friends, and as few personal enemies, as possible.

I do not mean, by personal friends, intimate and confidential friends, of which no man can hope to have half a dozen in the whole course of his life; but I mean friends, in the common acceptation of the word; that is, people who speak well of you, and who would rather do you good than harm, consistently with their own interest, and no further.

Upon the whole, I recommend to you, again and again, ‘les Graces’. Adorned by them, you may, in a manner, do what you please; it will be approved of; without them, your best qualities will lose half their efficacy.

I think you are much above being a vain coxcomb, overrating your own merit, and insulting others with the superabundance of it. On the contrary, I am convinced that the consciousness of merit makes a man of sense more modest, though more firm.

A man who displays his own merit is a coxcomb, and a man who does not know it is a fool.

A man of sense knows it, exerts it, avails himself of it, but never boasts of it; and always SEEMS rather to under than over value it, though in truth, he sets the right value upon it.

his despondency throws him into inaction; and the forward, the bustling, and the petulant, will always get the better of him. The manner makes the whole difference.

What would be impudence in one manner, is only a proper and decent assurance in another.

A man of sense, and of knowledge in the world, will assert his own rights, and pursue his own objects, as steadily and intrepidly as the most impudent man living, and commonly more so;

I repeat my maxim, ‘Suaviter in modo, sed fortiter in re’. Would you know the characters, modes and manners of the latter end of the last age, which are very like those of the present, read La Bruyere.

But would you know man, independently of modes, read La Rochefoucault, who, I am afraid, paints him very exactly.

Give the inclosed to Abbe Guasco, of whom you make good use, to go about with you, and see things. Between you and me, he has more knowledge than parts. ‘Mais un habile homme sait tirer parti de tout’, and everybody is good for something.

Many who are reckoned good scholars, though they know pretty accurately the governments of Athens and Rome, are totally ignorant of the constitution of any one country now in Europe, even of their own.

Read just Latin and Greek enough to keep up your classical learning, which will be an ornament to you while young, and a comfort to you when old.

But the true useful knowledge, and especially for you, is the modern knowledge above mentioned. It is that must qualify you both for domestic and foreign business, and it is to that, therefore, that you should principally direct your attention;

they will find (though they will possibly wonder why) that their rough, unpolished matter, and their unadorned, coarse, but strong arguments, will neither please nor persuade; but, on the contrary, will tire out attention, and excite disgust.

We are so made, we love to be pleased better than to be informed; information is, in a certain degree, mortifying, as it implies our previous ignorance; it must be sweetened to be palatable.

To bring this directly to you: know that no man can make a figure in this country, but by parliament. Your fate depends upon your success there as a speaker; and, take my word for it, that success turns much more upon manner than matter.

choose the most elegant, and place them in the best order. Consult your own ear, to avoid cacophony, and, what is very near as bad, monotony. Think also of your gesture and looks, when you are speaking even upon the most trifling subjects.

The same things, differently expressed, looked, and delivered, cease to be the same things.

The most passionate lover in the world cannot make a stronger declaration of love than the ‘Bourgeois gentilhomme’ does in this happy form of words, ‘Mourir d’amour me font belle Marquise vos beaux yeux’. I defy anybody to say more;

but yet, I believe, you choose to wear the former, and you are in the right, for the sake of pleasing more.

The worst-bred man in Europe, if a lady let fall her fan, would certainly take it up and give it her; the best-bred man in Europe could do no more. The difference, however, would be considerable; the latter would please by doing it gracefully; the former would be laughed at for doing it awkwardly.

I repeat it, and repeat it again, and shall never cease repeating it to you: air, manners, graces, style, elegance, and all those ornaments, must now be the only objects of your attention; it is now, or never, that you must acquire them.

it is now, or never, that you must acquire them. Postpone, therefore, all other considerations; make them now your serious study; you have not one moment to lose.

The solid and the ornamental united, are undoubtedly best; but were I reduced to make an option, I should without hesitation choose the latter.

I hope you assiduously frequent Marcell—[At that time the most celebrated dancing-master at Paris.]—and carry graces from him; nobody had more to spare than he had formerly. Have you learned to carve? for it is ridiculous not to carve well.

I hope you assiduously frequent Marcell—[At that time the most celebrated dancing-master at Paris.]—and carry graces from him; nobody had more to spare than he had formerly. Have you learned to carve? for it is ridiculous not to carve well.

A man who tells you gravely that he cannot carve, may as well tell you that he cannot blow his nose: it is both as necessary, and as easy.

Make my compliments to Lord Huntingdon, whom I love and honor extremely, as I dare say you do; I will write to him soon, though I believe he has hardly time to read a letter;

absolutely ignorant of the several gradations of familiarity or respect, he is exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurd to two of the three. Is it possible to love such a man? No.

The utmost I can do for him, is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.

—[This ‘mot’ was aimed at Dr. Johnson in retaliation for his famous letter.]

but whom it is so impossible for me to love, that I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company. His figure (without being deformed) seems made to disgrace or ridicule the common structure of the human body.

His legs and arms are never in the position which, according to the situation of his body, they ought to be in, but constantly employed in committing acts of hostility upon the Graces.

He throws anywhere, but down his throat, whatever he means to drink, and only mangles what he means to carve. Inattentive to all the regards of social life, he mistimes or misplaces everything.

His legs and arms are never in the position which, according to the situation of his body, they ought to be in, but constantly employed in committing acts of hostility upon the Graces.

He throws anywhere, but down his throat, whatever he means to drink, and only mangles what he means to carve.

Inattentive to all the regards of social life, he mistimes or misplaces everything. He disputes with heat, and indiscriminately, mindless of the rank, character, and situation of those with whom he disputes;

I hope you are ‘dubois don’t on en fait’; and if so, she is so good a sculptor, that I am sure she can give you whatever form she pleases.

A versatility of manners is as necessary in social, as a versatility of parts is in political life.

One must often yield, in order to prevail; one must humble one’s self, to be exalted; one must, like St. Paul, become all things to all men, to gain some;

But I had been but a very little while in the world, before I found that this would by no means do; and I immediately adopted the opposite character;

I concealed what learning I had; I applauded often, without approving; and I yielded commonly without conviction.

‘Suaviter in modo’ was my law and my prophets; and if I pleased (between you and me) it was much more owing to that, than to any superior knowledge or merit of my own.

In the course of the world, the qualifications of the chameleon are often necessary; nay, they must be carried a little further, and exerted a little sooner; for you should, to a certain degree, take the hue of either the man or the woman that you want, and wish to be upon terms with.

‘A propos’, have you yet found out at Paris, any friendly and hospitable Madame de Lursay, ‘qui veut bien se charger du soin de vous eduquer’? And have you had any occasion of representing to her, ‘qu’elle faisoit donc des noeuds’?

I wished that I had known a little more of it myself; and so much I would have you know.

But the great and necessary knowledge of all is, to know, yourself and others: this knowledge requires great attention and long experience; exert the former, and may you have the latter!

Adieu!

at least prevent the pretense of offense but take care to show enough of the ‘fortiter in re’ to extort from their love of ease, or their fear, what you might in vain hope for from their justice or good-nature.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind, as surgeons are to their bodily pains; they see and hear of them all day long, and even of so many simulated ones, that they do not know which are real, and which not.

Other sentiments are therefore to be applied to, than those of mere justice and humanity; their favor must be captivated by the ‘suaviter in modo’;

If you are in authority, and have a right to command, your commands delivered ‘suaviter in modo’ will be willingly, cheerfully, and consequently well obeyed; whereas, if given only ‘fortiter’, that is brutally, they will rather, as Tacitus says, be interrupted than executed.

For my own part, if I bid my footman bring me a glass of wine, in a rough insulting manner, I should expect that, in obeying me, he would contrive to spill some of it upon me: and I am sure I should deserve it.

A cool, steady resolution should show that where you have a right to command you will be obeyed;

but, on the other hand, you must, by a steady perseverance and decent tenaciousness, show the ‘fortiter in re’.

The right motives are seldom the true ones of men’s actions, especially of kings, ministers, and people in high stations; who often give to importunity and fear, what they would refuse to justice or to merit.

By the ‘suaviter in modo’ engage their hearts, if you can;

Now to apply what has been said, and so conclude.

If you find that you have a hastiness in your temper, which unguardedly breaks out into indiscreet sallies, or rough expressions, to either your superiors, your equals, or your inferiors, watch it narrowly, check it carefully, and call the ‘suaviter in modo’ to your assistance: at the first impulse of passion, be silent till you can be soft.

Labor even to get the command of your countenance so well, that those emotions may not be read in it; a most unspeakable advantage in business!

In such situations I would be more particularly and ‘noblement’, civil, easy, and frank with the man whose designs I traversed: this is commonly called generosity and magnanimity, but is, in truth, good sense and policy.

The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so; a favor may make an enemy, and an injury may make a friend, according to the different manner in which they are severally done.

The countenance, the address, the words, the enunciation, the Graces, add great efficacy to the ‘suaviter in modo’, and great dignity to the ‘fortiter in re’, and consequently they deserve the utmost attention.

but return to the charge, persist, persevere, and you will find most things attainable that are possible.

A yielding, timid meekness is always abused and insulted by the unjust and the unfeeling; but when sustained by the ‘fortiter in re’, is always respected, commonly successful.

In your friendships and connections, as well as in your enmities, this rule is particularly useful; let your firmness and vigor preserve and invite attachments to you;

Having thus mentioned to you the probable time of our meeting, I will prepare you a little for it.

Hatred; jealousy, or envy, make, most people attentive to discover the least defects of those they do not love; they rejoice at every new discovery they make of that kind, and take care to publish it.

I thank God, I do not know what those three ungenerous passions are, having never felt them in my own breast;

Are you got a little into the interior, into the constitution of things at Paris? Have you seen what you have seen thoroughly?

For, by the way, few people see what they see, or hear what they hear.

For example, if you go to les Invalides, do you content yourself with seeing the building, the hall where three or four hundred cripples dine, and the galleries where they lie?

but as his words, his periods, and his utterance, were not near so good as mine, the preference was most unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me.

This will ever be the case; every numerous assembly is MOB, let the individuals who compose it be what they will.

Mere reason and good sense is never to be talked to a mob; their passions, their sentiments, their senses, and their seeming interests, are alone to be applied to.

This will ever be the case; every numerous assembly is MOB, let the individuals who compose it be what they will.

Mere reason and good sense is never to be talked to a mob; their passions, their sentiments, their senses, and their seeming interests, are alone to be applied to.

Understanding they have collectively none, but they have ears and eyes, which must be flattered and seduced; and this can only be done by eloquence, tuneful periods, graceful action, and all the various parts of oratory.

every numerous assembly is MOB, let the individuals who compose it be what they will. Mere reason and good sense is never to be talked to a mob; their passions, their sentiments, their senses, and their seeming interests, are alone to be applied to.

Understanding they have collectively none, but they have ears and eyes, which must be flattered and seduced; and this can only be done by eloquence, tuneful periods, graceful action, and all the various parts of oratory.

When you come into the House of Commons, if you imagine that speaking plain and unadorned sense and reason will do your business, you will find yourself most grossly mistaken.

you had better, return a dropped fan genteelly, than give a thousand pounds awkwardly; and you had better refuse a favor gracefully, than to grant it clumsily.

Manner is all, in everything: it is by manner only that you can please, and consequently rise.

All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your manner, your air, if good, very probably may. Marcel can be of much more use to you than Aristotle.

Manner is all, in everything: it is by manner only that you can please, and consequently rise. All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your manner, your air, if good, very probably may.

Marcel can be of much more use to you than Aristotle.

I would, upon my word, much rather that you had Lord Bolingbroke’s style and eloquence in speaking and writing, than all the learning of the Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, and the two Universities united.

When you come into the House of Commons, if you imagine that speaking plain and unadorned sense and reason will do your business, you will find yourself most grossly mistaken.

As a speaker, you will be ranked only according to your eloquence, and by no means according to your matter; everybody knows the matter almost alike, but few can adorn it.

I was early convinced of the importance and powers of eloquence; and from that moment I applied myself to it.

I want to inculcate this known truth into you, which, you seem by no means to be convinced of yet, that ornaments are at present your only objects.

Your sole business now is to shine, not to weigh. Weight without lustre is lead.

You had better talk trifles elegantly to the most trifling woman, than coarse in elegant sense to the most solid man; you had better, return a dropped fan genteelly, than give a thousand pounds awkwardly;

I want to inculcate this known truth into you, which, you seem by no means to be convinced of yet, that ornaments are at present your only objects. Your sole business now is to shine, not to weigh. Weight without lustre is lead.

You had better talk trifles elegantly to the most trifling woman, than coarse in elegant sense to the most solid man; you had better, return a dropped fan genteelly, than give a thousand pounds awkwardly; and you had better refuse a favor gracefully, than to grant it clumsily.

Manner is all, in everything: it is by manner only that you can please, and consequently rise. All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your manner, your air, if good, very probably may.

From hand to arms the transition is natural; is the carriage and motion of your arms so too? The motion of the arms is the most material part of a man’s air, especially in dancing; the feet are not near so material.

If a man dances well from the waist upward, wears his hat well, and moves his head properly, he dances well.

Do the women say that you dress well? for that is necessary too for a young fellow. Have you ‘un gout vif’, or a passion for anybody? I do not ask for whom:

MY DEAR FRIEND: What a happy period of your life is this?

Pleasure is now, and ought to be, your business.

While you were younger, dry rules, and unconnected words, were the unpleasant objects of your labors. When you grow older, the anxiety, the vexations, the disappointments inseparable from public business, will require the greatest share of your time and attention;

that necessary book can only be read in company, in public places, at meals, and in ‘ruelles’. You must be in the pleasures, in order to learn the manners of good company.

In premeditated, or in formal business, people conceal, or at least endeavor to conceal, their characters: whereas pleasures discover them, and the heart breaks out through the guard of the understanding.

Those are often propitious moments for skillful negotiators to improve. In your destination particularly, the able conduct of pleasures is of infinite use;

how easy and idle they can seem in the multiplicity of their business; and how they can lay hold of the proper moments to carry it on, in the midst of their pleasures.

Courts, alone, teach versatility and politeness; for there is no living there without them.

Lord Albermarle has, I hear, and am very glad of it, put you into the hands of Messieurs de Bissy. Profit of that, and beg of them to let you attend them in all the companies of Versailles and Paris.

The Cardinal d’Ossat was looked upon at Rome as an Italian, and not as a French cardinal; and Monsieur d’Avaux, wherever he went, was never considered as a foreign minister, but as a native, and a personal friend.

Mere plain truth, sense, and knowledge, will by no means do alone in courts; art and ornaments must come to their assistance.

Humors must be flattered; the ‘mollia tempora’ must be studied and known: confidence acquired by seeming frankness, and profited of by silent skill. And, above all; you must gain and engage the heart, to betray the understanding to you. ‘Ha tibi erunt artes’.

Mere plain truth, sense, and knowledge, will by no means do alone in courts; art and ornaments must come to their assistance. Humors must be flattered; the ‘mollia tempora’ must be studied and known: confidence acquired by seeming frankness, and profited of by silent skill.

And, above all; you must gain and engage the heart, to betray the understanding to you.

‘Ha tibi erunt artes’.

where, if you have all the address, the suppleness and versatility of a good courtier, you will have a great chance of thriving and flourishing.

Young favor is easily acquired if the proper means are employed; and, when acquired, it is warm, if not durable; and the warm moments must be snatched and improved.

‘Quitte pour ce qui en pent arriver apres’. Do not mention this view of mine for you to any one mortal; but learn to keep your own secrets, which, by the way, very few people can do.

Show it him first, and, when he commends it, as probably he will, tell him that it is at his service, ‘et que comme il est toujours par vole et par chemins, il est absolument necessaire qu’il ale une boussole’.

All those little gallantries depend entirely upon the manner of doing them; as, in truth, what does not?

The greatest favors may be done so awkwardly and bunglingly as to offend; and disagreeable things may be done so agreeably as almost to oblige. Endeavor to acquire this great secret;

All those little gallantries depend entirely upon the manner of doing them; as, in truth, what does not?

The greatest favors may be done so awkwardly and bunglingly as to offend; and disagreeable things may be done so agreeably as almost to oblige.

Endeavor to acquire this great secret; it exists, it is to be found, and is worth a great deal more than the grand secret of the alchemists would be if it were, as it is not, to be found.

Go among women with the good qualities of your sex, and you will acquire from them the softness and the graces of theirs. Men will then add affection to the esteem which they before had for you.

Women are the only refiners of the merit of men; it is true, they cannot add weight, but they polish and give lustre to it.

‘A propos’, I am assured, that Madame de Blot, although she has no great regularity of features, is, notwithstanding, excessively pretty; and that, for all that, she has as yet been scrupulously constant to her husband, though she has now been married above a year.

Do you take them, do you make a progress in them? The great secret is the art of pleasing; and that art is to be attained by every man who has a good fund of common sense.

If you are pleased with any person, examine why; do as he does; and you will charm others by the same things which please you in him.

To be liked by women, you must be esteemed by men; and to please men, you must be agreeable to women. Vanity is unquestionably the ruling passion in women;

and that art is to be attained by every man who has a good fund of common sense. If you are pleased with any person, examine why; do as he does; and you will charm others by the same things which please you in him.

To be liked by women, you must be esteemed by men; and to please men, you must be agreeable to women.

Vanity is unquestionably the ruling passion in women; and it is much flattered by the attentions of a man who is generally esteemed by men;

On the other hand, if a man has not received the last polish from women, he may be estimable among men, but will never be amiable.

The concurrence of the two sexes is as necessary to the perfection of our being, as to the formation of it.

Go among women with the good qualities of your sex, and you will acquire from them the softness and the graces of theirs. Men will then add affection to the esteem which they before had for you.

nor carry into other companies the ‘ton’ of those meetings of ‘beaux esprits’. Talk literature, taste, philosophy, etc., with them, ‘a la bonne heure’; but then, with the same ease, and more ‘enjouement’, talk ‘pom-pons, moires’, etc., with Madame de Blot, if she requires it.

Almost every subject in the world has its proper time and place; in which no one is above or below discussion.

The point is, to talk well upon the subject you talk upon; and the most trifling, frivolous subjects will still give a man of parts an opportunity of showing them. ‘L’usage du grand monde’ can alone teach that.

but then, with the same ease, and more ‘enjouement’, talk ‘pom-pons, moires’, etc., with Madame de Blot, if she requires it. Almost every subject in the world has its proper time and place; in which no one is above or below discussion.

The point is, to talk well upon the subject you talk upon; and the most trifling, frivolous subjects will still give a man of parts an opportunity of showing them.

‘L’usage du grand monde’ can alone teach that.

That was the distinguishing characteristic of Alcibiades, and a happy one it was, that he could occasionally, and with so much ease, adopt the most different, and even the most opposite habits and manners, that each seemed natural to him.

Prepare yourself for the great world, as the ‘athletae’ used to do for their exercises: oil (if I may use that expression) your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do, as young people are too apt to think.

How do your exercises go on? Can you manage a pretty vigorous ‘sauteur’ between the pillars? Are you got into stirrups yet? ‘Faites-vous assaut aux armes? But, above all, what does Marcel say of you? Is he satisfied?

I could wish you to converse only with those who, either from their rank, their merit, or their beauty, require constant attention; for a young man can never improve in company where he thinks he may neglect himself.

A new bow must be constantly kept bent; when it grows older, and has taken the right turn, it may now and then be relaxed.

I have this moment paid your draft of L89 75s.; it was signed in a very good hand; which proves that a good hand may be written without the assistance of magic.

I have this moment paid your draft of L89 75s.; it was signed in a very good hand; which proves that a good hand may be written without the assistance of magic.

Nothing provokes me much more, than to hear people indolently say that they cannot do, what is in everybody’s power to do, if it be but in their will.

Adieu.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

The best authors are always the severest critics of their own works; they revise, correct, file, and polish them, till they think they have brought them to perfection.

Considering you as my work, I do not look upon myself as a bad author, and am therefore a severe critic.

MY DEAR FRIEND: The best authors are always the severest critics of their own works; they revise, correct, file, and polish them, till they think they have brought them to perfection.

Considering you as my work, I do not look upon myself as a bad author, and am therefore a severe critic.

I examine narrowly into the least inaccuracy or inelegance, in order to correct, not to expose them, and that the work may be perfect at last. You are, I know, exceedingly improved in your air, address, and manners, since you have been at Paris;

as in this case you are free from the guilt, be free from the suspicion, too.

Mankind, as I have often told you, are more governed by appearances than by realities; and with regard to opinion, one had better be really rough and hard, with the appearance of gentleness and softness, than just the reverse.

Few people have penetration enough to discover, attention enough to observe, or even concern enough to examine beyond the exterior; they take their notions from the surface, and go no deeper:

Mankind, as I have often told you, are more governed by appearances than by realities; and with regard to opinion, one had better be really rough and hard, with the appearance of gentleness and softness, than just the reverse.

Few people have penetration enough to discover, attention enough to observe, or even concern enough to examine beyond the exterior; they take their notions from the surface, and go no deeper: they commend, as the gentlest and best-natured man in the world, that man who has the most engaging exterior manner, though possibly they have been but once in his company.

An air, a tone of voice, a composure of countenance to mildness and softness, which are all easily acquired, do the business: and without further examination, and possibly with the contrary qualities, that man is reckoned the gentlest, the modestest, and the best-natured man alive.

An air, a tone of voice, a composure of countenance to mildness and softness, which are all easily acquired, do the business: and without further examination, and possibly with the contrary qualities, that man is reckoned the gentlest, the modestest, and the best-natured man alive.

Happy the man, who, with a certain fund of parts and knowledge, gets acquainted with the world early enough to make it his bubble, at an age when most people are the bubbles of the world!

for that is the common case of youth. They grow wiser when it is too late; and, ashamed and vexed at having been bubbles so long, too often turn knaves at last.

for that is the common case of youth. They grow wiser when it is too late; and, ashamed and vexed at having been bubbles so long, too often turn knaves at last.

Do not therefore trust to appearances and outside yourself, but pay other people with them; because you may be sure that nine in ten of mankind do, and ever will trust to them.

This is by no means a criminal or blamable simulation, if not used with an ill intention. I am by no means blamable in desiring to have other people’s good word, good-will, and affection, if I do not mean to abuse them.

Use palliatives when you contradict; such as I MAY BE MISTAKEN, I AM NOT SURE, BUT I BELIEVE, I SHOULD RATHER THINK, etc.

Finish any argument or dispute with some little good-humored pleasantry, to show that you are neither hurt yourself, nor meant to hurt your antagonist; for an argument, kept up a good while, often occasions a temporary alienation on each side.

Pray observe particularly, in those French people who are distinguished by that character, ‘cette douceur de moeurs et de manieres’, which they talk of so much, and value so justly; see in what it consists;

and, in this state of affairs, the woman being worth little or nothing, I will not go above fourscore Louis for the two together. As for the Rembrandt you mention, though it is very cheap, if good, I do not care for it.

I love ‘la belle nature’; Rembrandt paints caricatures.

Now for your own commissions, which you seem to have forgotten.

and I do not see how you can avoid it, frequenting so many good French houses as you do, where, to be sure, many of them come.

Be cautious how you contract friendships, but be desirous, and even industrious, to obtain a universal acquaintance.

Be easy, and even forward, in making new acquaintances; that is the only way of knowing manners and characters in general, which is, at present, your great object. You are ‘enfant de famille’ in three ministers’ houses;

you must keep pace with them, know them, and adopt them, wherever you find them. The great usage of the world, the knowledge of characters, the brillant dun ‘galant homme,’ is all that you now want.

Study Marcel and the ‘beau monde’ with great application, but read Homer and Horace only when you have nothing else to do.

Pray who is ‘la belle Madame de Case’, whom I know you frequent? I like the epithet given her very well: if she deserves it, she deserves your attention too.

When you have got your emaciated Philomath, I desire that his triangles, rhomboids, etc., may not keep you one moment out of the good company you would otherwise be in.

Swallow all your learning in the morning, but digest it in company in the evenings.

The reading of ten new characters is more your business now, than the reading of twenty old books; showish and shining people always get the better of all others, though ever so solid.

When you have got your emaciated Philomath, I desire that his triangles, rhomboids, etc., may not keep you one moment out of the good company you would otherwise be in. Swallow all your learning in the morning, but digest it in company in the evenings.

The reading of ten new characters is more your business now, than the reading of twenty old books; showish and shining people always get the better of all others, though ever so solid.

If you would be a great man in the world when you are old, shine and be showish in it while you are young, know everybody, and endeavor to please everybody, I mean exteriorly; for fundamentally it is impossible.

The reading of ten new characters is more your business now, than the reading of twenty old books; showish and shining people always get the better of all others, though ever so solid.

If you would be a great man in the world when you are old, shine and be showish in it while you are young, know everybody, and endeavor to please everybody, I mean exteriorly; for fundamentally it is impossible.

Try to engage the heart of every woman, and the affections of almost every man you meet with. Madame Monconseil assures me that you are most surprisingly improved in your air, manners, and address:

MY DEAR FRIEND: In about three months from this day, we shall probably meet. I look upon that moment as a young woman does upon her bridal night; I expect the greatest pleasure, and yet cannot help fearing some little mixture of pain.

My reason bids me doubt a little, of what my imagination makes me expect.

In some articles I am very sure that my most sanguine wishes will not be disappointed; and those are the most material ones. In others, I fear something or other, which I can better feel than describe. However, I will attempt it.

… in French and German, (both which languages I know you possess perfectly and speak eternally) it can be only from an unpardonable inattention to what you most erroneously think a little object, though, in truth, it is one of the most important of your life.

Solidity and delicacy of thought must be given us: it cannot be acquired, though it may be improved; but elegance and delicacy of expression may be acquired by whoever will take the necessary care and pains.

I am sure you love me so well; that you would be very sorry when we meet, that I should be either disappointed or mortified;

I hope you do not neglect your exercises of riding, fencing, and dancing, but particularly the latter: for they all concur to ‘degourdir’, and to give a certain air.

To ride well, is not only a proper and graceful accomplishment for a gentleman, but may also save you many a fall hereafter; to fence well, may possibly save your life; and to dance well, is absolutely necessary in order to sit, stand, and walk well.

To tell you the truth, my friend, I have some little suspicion that you now and then neglect or omit your exercises, for more serious studies. But now ‘non est his locus’, everything has its time; and this is yours for your exercises;

If I durst! what should hinder you from daring? One always dares if there are hopes of success; and even if there are none, one is no loser by daring.

A man of fashion knows how, and when, to dare.

He begins his approaches by distant attacks, by assiduities, and by attentions. If he is not immediately and totally repulsed, he continues to advance. After certain steps success is infallible; and none but very silly fellows can then either doubt, or not attempt it.

If I durst! what should hinder you from daring?

One always dares if there are hopes of success; and even if there are none, one is no loser by daring.

A man of fashion knows how, and when, to dare. He begins his approaches by distant attacks, by assiduities, and by attentions. If he is not immediately and totally repulsed, he continues to advance. After certain steps success is infallible;

Is it the respectable character of Madame de la Valiere which prevents your daring, or are you intimidated at the fierce virtue of Madame du Pin? Does the invincible modesty of the handsome Madame Case discourage, more than her beauty invites you? Fie, for shame!

Be convinced that the most virtuous woman, far from being offended at a declaration of love, is flattered by it, if it is made in a polite and agreeable manner.

It is possible that she may not be propitious to your vows; that is to say, if she has a liking or a passion for another person. But, at all events, she will not be displeased with you for it;

In such a case, the lover’s best friend is self-love. Do not then be afraid; behave gallantly. Speak well, and you will be heard. If you are not listened to the first time, try a second, a third, and a fourth.

If the place is not already taken, depend upon it, it may be conquered.

I am very glad you are going to Orli, and from thence to St. Cloud; go to both, and to Versailles also, often. It is that interior domestic familiarity with people of fashion, that alone can give you ‘l’usage du monde, et les manieres aisees’.

I am very glad you are going to Orli, and from thence to St. Cloud; go to both, and to Versailles also, often. It is that interior domestic familiarity with people of fashion, that alone can give you ‘l’usage du monde, et les manieres aisees’.

It is only with women one loves, or men one respects, that the desire of pleasing exerts itself; and without the desire of pleasing no man living can please.

Let that desire be the spring of all your words and actions. That happy talent, the art of pleasing, which so few do, though almost all might possess, is worth all your learning and knowledge put together.

It is only with women one loves, or men one respects, that the desire of pleasing exerts itself; and without the desire of pleasing no man living can please. Let that desire be the spring of all your words and actions.

That happy talent, the art of pleasing, which so few do, though almost all might possess, is worth all your learning and knowledge put together.

The latter can never raise you high without the former; but the former may carry you, as it has carried thousands, a great way without the latter.

consider them, examine them well, and compare them with the real characters you meet with in the evening. Read La Bruyere in the morning, and see in the evening whether his pictures are like.

Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own.

Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge: but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it. Books, it is true, point out the operations of the mind, the sentiments of the heart, the influence of the passions;

A happy expression! It was for this reason that I have so often advised you to establish and domesticate yourself, wherever you can, in good houses of people above you, that you may see their EVERY-DAY character, manners, habits, etc.

One must see people undressed to judge truly of their shape; when they are dressed to go abroad, their clothes are contrived to conceal, or at least palliate the defects of it: as full-bottomed wigs were contrived for the Duke of Burgundy, to conceal his hump back.

Happy those who have no faults to disguise, nor weaknesses to conceal! there are few, if any such; but unhappy those who know little enough of the world to judge by outward appearances. Courts are the best keys to characters;

I would wish you to be able to talk upon all these things better, and with more knowledge than other people; insomuch that upon those occasions, you should be applied to, and that people should say, I DARE SAY MR. STANHOPE CAN TELL US.

Second-rate knowledge and middling talents carry a man further at courts, and in the busy part of the world, than superior knowledge and shining parts.

Tacitus very justly accounts for a man’s having always kept in favor and enjoyed the best employments under the tyrannical reigns of three or four of the very worst emperors, by saying that it was not ‘propter aliquam eximiam artem, sed quia par negotiis neque …

Dress is one of various ingredients that contribute to the art of pleasing; it pleases the eyes at least, and more especially of women.

Address yourself to the senses, if you would please; dazzle the eyes, soothe and flatter the ears of mankind; engage their hearts, and let their reason do its worst against you.

‘Suaviter in modo’ is the great secret. Whenever you find yourself engaged insensibly, in favor of anybody of no superior merit nor distinguished talents, examine, and see what it is that has made those impressions upon you:

They grew troublesome to the kings and to their ministers, and were but seldom called after the power of the Crown grew strong; and they have never been heard of since the year 1615.

Richelieu came and shackled the nation, and Mazarin and Lewis the Fourteenth riveted the shackles.

There still subsist in some provinces in France, which are called ‘pais d etats’, an humble local imitation, or rather mimicry, of the great ‘etats’, as in Languedoc, Bretagne, etc. They meet, they speak, they grumble, and finally submit to whatever the King orders.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

Laziness of mind, or inattention, are as great enemies to knowledge as incapacity; for, in truth, what difference is there between a man who will not, and a man who cannot be informed?

This difference only, that the former is justly to be blamed, the latter to be pitied.

they become all things to all men in order to gain, not a few, but many. In Asia, Africa, and America they become more than half pagans, in order to convert the pagans to be less than half Christians.

In private families they begin by insinuating themselves as friends, they grow to be favorites, and they end DIRECTORS.

Their manners are not like those of any other regulars in the world, but gentle, polite, and engaging. They are all carefully bred up to that particular destination, to which they seem to have a natural turn;

Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a degree of self-deception; we must lend ourselves a little to the delusion; and I am very willing to carry that complaisance a little farther than the French do.

Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us.

In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak, and speak with dignity too. Hence the necessity of their being written in verse, and unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their language, in rhymes.

Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us.

In nature the most violent passions are silent; in tragedy they must speak, and speak with dignity too.

Hence the necessity of their being written in verse, and unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their language, in rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato the Stoic, expiring at Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine at Paris;

and I consider singing, rhyming, and chiming heroes, and princesses, and philosophers, as I do the hills, the trees, the birds, and the beasts, who amicably joined in one common country dance, to the irresistible turn of Orpheus’s lyre.

Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears.

Thus I have made you my poetical confession;

A young man may, with a becoming modesty, dissent, in private companies, from public opinions and prejudices: but he must not attack them with warmth, nor magisterially set up his own sentiments against them.

Endeavor to hear, and know all opinions; receive them with complaisance; form your own with coolness, and give it with modesty.

I have received a letter from Sir John Lambert, in which he requests me to use my interest to procure him the remittance of Mr.

If there is but a great deal of wit and character in your new comedy, I will readily compound for its having little or no plot. I chiefly mind dialogue and character in comedies.

Let dull critics feed upon the carcasses of plays; give me the taste and the dressing.

I am very glad you went to Versailles to see the ceremony of creating the Prince de Conde ‘Chevalier de l’ Ordre’; and I do not doubt but that upon this occasion you informed yourself thoroughly of the institution and rules of that order.

I wish them joy, they will do them a great deal of good. See from hence what weaknesses human nature is capable of, and make allowances for such in all your plans and reasonings.

Study the characters of the people you have to do with, and know what they are, instead of thinking them what they should be; address yourself generally to the senses, to the heart, and to the weaknesses of mankind, but very rarely to their reason.

Good-night or good-morrow to you, according to the time you shall receive this letter from, Yours.

For accidental quarters of hours, read works of invention, wit and humor, of the best, and not of trivial authors, either ancient or modern.

Whatever business you have, do it the first moment you can; never by halves, but finish it without interruption, if possible.

Business must not be sauntered and trifled with; and you must not say to it, as Felix did to Paul, “At a more convenient season I will speak to thee.” The most convenient season for business is the first;

never by halves, but finish it without interruption, if possible. Business must not be sauntered and trifled with; and you must not say to it, as Felix did to Paul, “At a more convenient season I will speak to thee.”

The most convenient season for business is the first; but study and business in some measure point out their own times to a man of sense; time is much oftener squandered away in the wrong choice and improper methods of amusement and pleasures.

Many people think that they are in pleasures, provided they are neither in study nor in business. Nothing like it; they are doing nothing, and might just as well be asleep.

the least must be joined to the greatest; the latter would be unavailing without the former; and the former would be futile and frivolous, without the latter.

Learning is acquired by reading books; but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.

Many words in every language are generally thought to be synonymous; but those who study the language attentively will find, that there is no such thing; they will discover some little difference, some distinction between all those words that are vulgarly called synonymous;

He views man as he does colors in Sir Isaac Newton’s prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures.

Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded, and blended; and vary as much, from different situations, as changeable silks do form different lights.

The man ‘qui a du monde’ knows all this from his own experience and observation: the conceited, cloistered philosopher knows nothing of it from his own theory;

and then not with arms poisoned by perfidy. Truth, but not the whole truth, must be the invariable principle of every man, who hath either religion, honor, or prudence. Those who violate it may be cunning, but they are not able.

Lies and perfidy are the refuge of fools and cowards.

Adieu!

and which, I can assure you, are all that he has; for, strip him of them, and he will be one of the poorest men in Europe.

Man or woman cannot resist an engaging exterior; it will please, it will make its way.

You want, it seems, but ‘quelques couches’; for God’s sake, lose no time in getting them; and now you have gone so far, complete the work. Think of nothing else till that work is finished; unwearied application will bring about anything:

and 3d, That those which you do read, may all tend to a certain object, and be relative to, and consequential of each other. In this method, half an hour’s reading every day will carry you a great way.

People seldom know how to employ their time to the best advantage till they have too little left to employ; but if, at your age, in the beginning of life, people would but consider the value of it, and put every moment to interest, it is incredible what an additional fund of knowledge and pleasure such an economy would bring in.

I look back with regret upon that large sum of time, which, in my youth, I lavished away idly, without either improvement or pleasure. Take warning betimes, and enjoy every moment;

that is, to insinuate himself by his manners, not only into the houses, but into the confidence of the most considerable people of that place; to contribute to their pleasures, and insensibly not to be looked upon as a stranger himself.

A skillful minister may very possibly be doing his master’s business full as well, in doing the honors gracefully and genteelly of a ball or a supper, as if he were laboriously writing a protocol in his closet.

The Marechal d’Harcourt, by his magnificence, his manners, and his politeness, blunted the edge of the long aversion which the Spaniards had to the French. The court and the grandees were personally fond, of him, and frequented his house;

who, by the way, I am assured, is now the prettiest young fellow in Holland.

Where one would gain people, remember that nothing is little.

Adieu.

and if detected, and pressed to drink more do not cry out sobriety; but say that you have lately been out of order, that you are subject to inflammatory complaints, and that you must beg to be excused for the present.

A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really’ be so or not.

During your stay at Hanover I would have you make two or three excursions to parts of that Electorate: the Hartz, where the silver mines are; Gottingen, for the University; Stade, for what commerce there is. You should also go to Zell.

I honor and respect such superior geniuses; but I desire to converse with people of this world, who bring into company their share, at least, of cheerfulness, good-breeding, and knowledge of mankind.

In common life, one much oftener wants small money, and silver, than gold.

Give me a man who has ready cash about him for present expenses; sixpences, shillings, half-crowns, and crowns, which circulate easily:

sixpences, shillings, half-crowns, and crowns, which circulate easily: but a man who has only an ingot of gold about him, is much above common purposes, and his riches are not handy nor convenient.

Have as much gold as you please in one pocket, but take care always to keep change in the other; for you will much oftener have occasion for a shilling than for a guinea.

In this the French must be allowed to excel all people in the world: they have ‘un certain entregent, un enjouement, un aimable legerete dans la conversation, une politesse aisee et naturelle, qui paroit ne leur rien couter’, which give society all its charms.

Can there be anything in the world less relative to any other man’s health, than my drinking a glass of wine? Common sense certainly never pointed it out; but yet common sense tells me I must conform to it.

Good sense bids one be civil and endeavor to please; though nothing but experience and observation can teach one the means, properly adapted to time, place, and persons.

This knowledge is the true object of a gentleman’s traveling, if he travels as he ought to do. By frequenting good company in every country, he himself becomes of every country; he is no longer an Englishman, a Frenchman, or an Italian;

you will by degrees get the command of your countenance, so as not to change it upon any the most sudden accident; and you will, above all things, labor to acquire the great art of pleasing, without which nothing is to be done.

Company is, in truth, a constant state of negotiation; and, if you attend to it in that view, will qualify you for any.

By the same means that you make a friend, guard against an enemy, or gain a mistress; you will make an advantageous treaty, baffle those who counteract you, and gain the court you are sent to.

Make this use of all the company you keep, and your very pleasures will make you a successful negotiator. Please all who are worth pleasing; offend none.

Keep your own secret, and get out other people’s.

Keep your own temper and artfully warm other people’s. Counterwork your rivals, with diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them; and be firm without heat. Messieurs d’Avaux and Servien did no more than this.

Make this use of all the company you keep, and your very pleasures will make you a successful negotiator. Please all who are worth pleasing; offend none. Keep your own secret, and get out other people’s.

Keep your own temper and artfully warm other people’s.

Counterwork your rivals, with diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them; and be firm without heat. Messieurs d’Avaux and Servien did no more than this. I must make one observation, in confirmation of this assertion;

to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger; and no friendship dangerous, in case it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and unreserved confidence.

Few, (especially young) people know how to love, or how to hate; their love is an unbounded weakness, fatal to the person they love; their hate is a hot, rash, and imprudent violence, always fatal to themselves.

Nineteen fathers in twenty, and every mother, who had loved you half as well as I do, would have ruined you; whereas I always made you feel the weight of my authority, that you might one day know the force of my love.

Few, (especially young) people know how to love, or how to hate; their love is an unbounded weakness, fatal to the person they love; their hate is a hot, rash, and imprudent violence, always fatal to themselves.

Nineteen fathers in twenty, and every mother, who had loved you half as well as I do, would have ruined you; whereas I always made you feel the weight of my authority, that you might one day know the force of my love.

Now, I both hope and believe, my advice will have the same weight with you from choice that my authority had from necessity. My advice is just eight-and-twenty years older than your own, and consequently, I believe you think, rather better.

… having the honor to be acquainted with any of the parties in this 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;

In this disposition of mind, judge whether I can read all Homer through ‘tout de suite’.

I admire its 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.

Young people do not enough attend to this; and falsely imagine that the imperative mood, and a rough tone of authority and decision, are indications of spirit and courage.

Inattention is always looked upon, though sometimes unjustly, as the effect of pride and contempt; and where it is thought so, is never forgiven.

In this article, young people are generally exceedingly to blame, and offend extremely. Their whole attention is engrossed by their particular set of acquaintance; and by some few glaring and exalted objects of rank, beauty, or parts;

By this folly I made myself a thousand enemies of both sexes; who, though I thought them very insignificant, found means to hurt me essentially where I wanted to recommend myself the most.

I was thought proud, though I was only imprudent.

A general easy civility and attention to the common run of ugly women, and of middling men, both which I sillily thought, called, and treated, as odd people, would have made me as many friends, as by the contrary conduct I made myself enemies.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

Vanity, or to call it by a gentler name, the desire of admiration and applause, is, perhaps, the most universal principle of human actions; I do not say that it is the best; and I will own that it is sometimes the cause of both foolish and criminal effects.

But it is so much oftener the principle of right things, that though they ought to have a better, yet, considering human nature, that principle is to be encouraged and cherished, in consideration of its effects.

This desire elicited whatever powers I had to gratify it; and where I could not perhaps shine in the first, enabled me, at least, to shine in a second or third sphere.

By these means I soon grew in fashion; and when a man is once in fashion, all he does is right.

It was infinite pleasure to me to find my own fashion and popularity. I was sent for to all parties of pleasure, both of men or women; where, in some measure, I gave the ‘ton’.

and, what is more, I confess it without repentance: nay, I am glad I had it; since, if I have had the good fortune to please in the world, it is to that powerful and active principle that I owe it.

I began the world, not with a bare desire, but with an insatiable thirst, a rage of popularity, applause, and admiration.

If this made me do some silly things on one hand, it made me, on the other hand, do almost all the right things that I did;

‘Ce n’est pas pour leurs beaux yeux au moins’. No, but for their own sakes, for commendations and applause. Let me then recommend this principle of vanity to you; act upon it ‘meo periculo’; I promise you it will turn to your account.

Practice all the arts that ever coquette did, to please.

Be alert and indefatigable in making every man admire, and every woman in love with you. I can tell you too, that nothing will carry you higher in the world.

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 wants.

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 every-day senses, every-day wit and entertainment; a man who is only good on holydays is good for very little. Adieu.

but yet, not half enough for common wants. 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 every-day senses, every-day wit and entertainment; a man who is only good on holydays is good for very little.

Adieu.

Why? only for want of those thousand little means to please, which those women, conscious of their beauty, and those men of their sense, have been grossly enough mistaken to neglect.

I never was so much in love in my life, as I was with a woman who was very far from being handsome; but then she was made up of graces, and had all the arts of pleasing.

The following verses, which I have read in some congratulatory poem prefixed to some work, I have forgot which, express what I mean in favor of what pleases preferably to what is generally called mare solid and instructive:

But his history of the ‘Croisades’ shows, in a very short and strong light, the most immoral and wicked scheme that was ever contrived by knaves, and executed by madmen and fools, against humanity.

There is a strange but never-failing relation between honest madmen and skillful knaves; and whenever one meets with collected numbers of the former, one may be very sure that they are secretly directed by the latter.

The popes, who have generally been both the ablest and the greatest knaves in Europe, wanted all the power and money of the East; for they had all that was in Europe already.

but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm. I wish you would consider them seriously, and separately, and recur to them again ‘pro re nata’ in similar cases.

Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough.

They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit, without experience, is dangerous, experience, without spirit, is languid and defective. Their union, which is very rare, is perfection;

for otherwise you avow the injury which you cannot revenge. A prudent cuckold (and there are many such at Paris) pockets his horns when he cannot gore with them; and will not add to the triumph of his maker by only butting with them ineffectually.

A seeming ignorance is very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge.

It is, for instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to tell you; and when they say, Have you not heard of such a thing? to answer No, and to let them go on; though you know it already.

and at other times seem to know more than you do, in order to know all that you want; but avoid direct questioning as much as you can. All these necessary arts of the world require constant attention, presence of mind, and coolness.

Achilles, though invulnerable, never went to battle but completely armed.

Courts are to be the theatres of your wars, where you should be always as completely armed, and even with the addition of a heel-piece. The least inattention, the least DISTRACTION, may prove fatal.

for he has considered everything deliberately, and is very sure that he is in the right. Impropriety is a characteristic, and a never-failing one, of these people. Regardless, because ignorant, of customs and manners, they violate them every moment.

They often shock, though they never mean to offend: never attending either to the general character, or the particular distinguishing circumstances of the people to whom, or before whom they talk; whereas the knowledge of the world teaches one, that the very same things which are exceedingly right and proper in one company, time and place, are exceedingly absurd in others.

In short, a man who has great knowledge, from experience and observation, of the characters, customs, and manners of mankind, is a being as different from, and as superior to, a man of mere book and systematical knowledge, as a well-managed horse is to an …

This will necessarily give you a versatility of mind, and a facility to adopt various manners and customs; for everybody desires to please those in whose house they are; and people are only to be pleased in their own way.

Nothing is more engaging than a cheerful and easy conformity to people’s particular manners, habits, and even weaknesses; nothing (to use a vulgar expression) should come amiss to a young fellow.

He should be, for good purposes, what Alcibiades was commonly for bad ones, a Proteus, assuming with ease, and wearing with cheerfulness, any shape.

His theories are good, but, unfortunately, are all impracticable. Why? because he has only read and not conversed.

He is acquainted with books, and an absolute stranger to men.

Laboring with his matter, he is delivered of it with pangs; he hesitates, stops in his utterance, and always expresses himself inelegantly. His actions are all ungraceful;

You are not much given to praise, I know; but it is because you do not yet know how extremely people are engaged by a seeming sanction to their own opinions, prejudices, and weaknesses, even in the merest trifles.

Our self-love is mortified when we think our opinions, and even our tastes, customs, and dresses, either arraigned or condemned; as on the contrary, it is tickled and flattered by approbation.

I will give you a remarkable instance of this kind. The famous Earl of Shaftesbury, in the flagitious reign of Charles the Second, while he was Chancellor, had a mind to be a favorite, as well as a minister of the King;

It is the same in everything; we think a difference of opinion, of conduct, of manners, a tacit reproach, at least, upon our own; we must therefore use ourselves to a ready conformity to whatever is neither criminal nor dishonorable.

Whoever differs from any general custom, is supposed both to think, and proclaim himself wiser than the rest of the world: which the rest of the world cannot bear, especially in a young man.

A young fellow is always forgiven and often applauded, when he carries a fashion to an excess; but never if he stops short of it. The first is ascribed to youth and fire; but the latter is imputed to an affectation of singularity or superiority.

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 simply 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.

In the House of Commons it is almost everything; and, indeed, in every assembly, whether public or private.

Words, which are the dress of thoughts, deserve surely more care than clothes, which are only the dress of the person, and which, however, ought to have their share of attention.

If you attend to your style in any one language, it will give you a habit of attending to it in every other; and if once you speak either French or German very elegantly, you will afterward speak much the better English for it.

it is a sign that you had better manners and address than they; for take it for granted, the best-bred people will always be the best received wherever they go.

Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial life; returns are equally expected for both; and people will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.

I really both hope and believe, that the German courts will do you a great deal of good; their ceremony and restraint being the proper correctives and antidotes for your negligence and inattention.

In some parts of it, flowers are scattered, with profusion, the road is smooth, and the prospect pleasant: but in others (and I fear the greater number) the road is rugged, beset with thorns and briars, and cut by torrents.

Gather the flowers in your way; but, at the same time, guard against the briars that are either mixed with them, or that most certainly succeed them.

I thank you for your wild boar; who, now he is dead, I assure him, ‘se laissera bien manger malgre qu’il en ait’;

and, I fear, I indulge it too much at the expense of my eyes. But what can I do? I must do something; I cannot bear absolute idleness; my ears grow every day more useless to me, my eyes consequently more necessary;

I will not hoard them like a miser, but will rather risk the loss, than not enjoy the use of them.

Pray let me know all the particulars, not only of your reception at Munich, but also at Berlin; at the latter, I believe, it will be a good one;

Since you are not only domesticated, but ‘niche’ at Munich, you are much in the right to stay there.

It is not by seeing places that one knows them, but by familiar and daily conversations with the people of fashion.

I would not care to be in the place of that prodigy of beauty, whom you are to drive ‘dans la course de Traineaux’;

if Latin or French, into English; if English, into French. This, which I practiced 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;

I succeeded to a certain degree; and, I assure you, with great ease, and without superior talents. Young people are very apt to overrate both men and things, from not being enough acquainted with them.

In proportion as you come to know them better, you will value them less.

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule in its stead.

and, I assure you, with great ease, and without superior talents. Young people are very apt to overrate both men and things, from not being enough acquainted with them. In proportion as you come to know them better, you will value them less.

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule in its stead.

You will find that the ablest have their weak sides too, and are only comparatively able, with regard to the still weaker herd: having fewer weaknesses themselves, they are able to avail themselves of the innumerable ones of the generality of mankind:

Now, to bring all this home to my first point. All these considerations should not only invite you to attempt to make a figure in parliament, but encourage you to hope that you shall succeed.

To govern mankind, one must not overrate them: and to please an audience, as a speaker, one must not overvalue it.

When I first came into the House of Commons, I respected that assembly as a venerable one; and felt a certain awe upon me, but, upon better acquaintance, that awe soon vanished;

I give it up to you: apply yourself to it, as I have done, for forty years, and then I consent to your leaving it for a philosophical retirement among your friends and your books.

Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay; and, too often sanguinely hoping to shine on in their meridian, often set with contempt and ridicule.

I retired in time, ‘uti conviva satur’; or, as Pope says still better, ERE TITTERING YOUTH SHALL SHOVE YOU FROM THE STAGE. My only remaining ambition is to be the counsellor and minister of your rising ambition.

but now that I have lost my hearing, and that I find my constitution declining daily, they are become my necessary and only refuge.

I know myself (no common piece of knowledge, let me tell you), I know what I can, what I cannot, and consequently what I ought to do.

I ought not, and therefore will not, return to business when I am much less fit for it than I was when I quitted it.

It will hinder you from doing anything that will deserve to be written, or from writing anything that may deserve to be read; and yet one or other of those two objects should be at least aimed at by every rational being.

I look upon indolence as a sort of SUICIDE; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.

Business by no means forbids pleasures; on the contrary, they reciprocally season each other; and I will venture to affirm, that no man enjoys either in perfection, that does not join both. They whet the desire for each other.

never procrastinate, never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day; and never do two things at a time; pursue your object, be it what it will, steadily and indefatigably; and let any difficulties (if surmountable) rather animate than slacken your endeavors.

Perseverance has surprising effects.

I wish you would use yourself to translate, every day, only three or four lines, from any book, in any language, into the correctest and most elegant English that you can think of;

He meant 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.

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 analyze 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.

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, ‘Nihil dictum quod non prins dictum’.

It is only the manner of saying or writing it that makes it appear new.

Convince yourself that manner is almost everything, in everything; and study it accordingly.

There is nothing truer than that old saying, ‘Nihil dictum quod non prins dictum’. It is only the manner of saying or writing it that makes it appear new.

Convince yourself that manner is almost everything, in everything; and study it accordingly.

I am this moment informed, and I believe truly, that Mr. Fox—[Henry Fox, created Lord Holland, Baron of Foxley, in the year 1763]—is to succeed Mr. Pelham as First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; and your friend, Mr.

But I see all these things at too great a distance to be able to judge soundly of them.

The true springs and motives of political measures are confined within a very narrow circle, and known to a very few; the good reasons alleged are seldom the true ones: The public commonly judges, or rather guesses, wrong, and I am now one of that public.

I therefore recommend to you a prudent Pyrrhonism in all matters of state, until you become one of the wheels of them yourself, and consequently acquainted with the general motion, at least, of the others;

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;

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.

MY DEAR FRIEND: What can I say to you from this place, where EVERY DAY IS STILL BUT AS THE FIRST, though by no means so agreeably passed, as Anthony describes his to have been?

The same nothings succeed one another every day with me, as, regularly and uniformly as the hours of the day.

You will think this tiresome, and so it is; but how can I help it? Cut off from society by my deafness, and dispirited by my ill health, where could I be better? You will say, perhaps, where could you be worse?

but still I own myself in the dark. In those matters, as in most others, half knowledge (and mine is at most that) is more apt to lead one into error, than to carry one to truth; and our own vanity contributes to the seduction.

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the bare suspicion of ignorance!

It has been reported here that the Empress of Russia is dying; this would be a fortunate event indeed for the King of Prussia, and necessarily produce the neutrality and inaction, at least, of that great power;

I hope you frequent all the courts: a man should make his face familiar there. Long habit produces favor insensibly; and acquaintance often does more than friendship, in that climate where ‘les beaux sentimens’ are not the natural growth.

Adieu! I am going to the ball, to save my eyes from reading, and my mind from thinking.

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.

He must submit; but he may say with truth, ‘Si Pergama dextra defendi potuissent’. The late action between the Prussians and Russians has only thinned the human species, without giving either party a victory; which is plain by each party’s claiming it.

Upon my word, our species will pay very dear for the quarrels and ambition of a few, and those by no means the most valuable part of it.

If the many were wiser than they are, the few must be quieter, and would perhaps be juster and better than they are.

which is plain by each party’s claiming it. Upon my word, our species will pay very dear for the quarrels and ambition of a few, and those by no means the most valuable part of it.

If the many were wiser than they are, the few must be quieter, and would perhaps be juster and better than they are.

Hamburg, I find, swarms with Grafs, Graffins, Fursts, and Furstins, Hocheits, and Durchlaugticheits. I am glad of it, for you must necessarily be in the midst of them;

the others cannot be better employed than in LIBERAL pleasures. In short, give me a full account of yourself, in your un-ministerial character, your incognito, without your ‘fiocchi’.

I love to see those, in whom I interest myself, in their undress, rather than in gala; I know them better so.

I recommend to you, ‘etiam atque etiam’, method and order in everything you undertake. Do you observe it in your accounts?

Do not stare at the seeming paradox; for it is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all; whereas those who have a great deal of business, must (to use a vulgar expression) buckle to it; and then they always find time enough to do it in.

I hope your own experience has by this time convinced you of this truth.

If, three weeks hence, you write him a short compliment of congratulation upon the occasion, he, his mother, and ‘tutti quanti’, would be extremely pleased with it. Those attentions are always kindly taken, and cost one nothing but pen, ink, and paper.

I consider them as draughts upon good-breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer.

‘A propos’ of exchange; I hope you have, with the help of your secretary, made yourself correctly master of all that sort of knowledge—Course of Exchange, ‘Agie, Banco, Reiche-Thalers’, down to ‘Marien Groschen’. It is very little trouble to learn it;

Go on so, with diligence, and you will be, what I began to despair of your ever being, SOMEBODY. I am persuaded, if you would own the truth, that you feel yourself now much better satisfied with yourself than you were while you did nothing.

Application to business, attended with approbation and success, flatters and animates the mind: which, in idleness and inaction, stagnates and putrefies.

I could wish that every rational man would, every night when he goes to bed, ask himself this question, What have I done to-day? Have I done anything that can be of use to myself or others?

The day after we had taken the island of Aix, your friend, Colonel Wolf, publicly offered to do the business with five hundred men and three ships only.

In all these complicated political machines there are so many wheels, that it is always difficult, and sometimes im possible, to guess which of them gives direction to the whole.

Mr. Pitt is convinced that the principal wheels, or, if you will, the spoke in his wheel, came from Stade. This is certain, at least that M——t was the man of confidence with that person.

Here I am, as usual, seeing few people, and hearing fewer; drinking the waters regularly to a minute, and am something the better for them.

I read a great deal, and vary occasionally my dead company.

I converse with grave folios in the morning, while my head is clearest and my attention strongest: I take up less severe quartos after dinner; and at night I choose the mixed company and amusing chit-chat of octavos and duodecimos.

Here I am, as usual, seeing few people, and hearing fewer; drinking the waters regularly to a minute, and am something the better for them. I read a great deal, and vary occasionally my dead company.

I converse with grave folios in the morning, while my head is clearest and my attention strongest: I take up less severe quartos after dinner; and at night I choose the mixed company and amusing chit-chat of octavos and duodecimos.

‘Ye tire parti de tout ce gue je puis’; that is my philosophy; and I mitigate, as much as I can, my physical ills by diverting my attention to other objects.

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 consequences.

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.

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 honor; 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 …

but we met every day, or dined at third places, where we embraced as personal friends, and trifled, at the same time, upon our being political enemies; and by this sort of badinage I discovered some things which I wanted to know.

There is not a more prudent maxim than to live with one’s enemies as if they may one day become one’s friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.

To your question, which is a rational and prudent one, Whether I was authorized to give you the hints concerning Russia by any people in power here, I will tell you that I was not:

When you come to the egotism, which I have long desired you to come to with me, you need make no excuses for it. The egotism is as proper and as satisfactory to one’s friends, as it is impertinent and misplaced with strangers.

I desire to see you in your every-day clothes, by your fireside, in your pleasures; in short, in your private life; but I have not yet been able to obtain this.

Whenever you condescend to do it, as you promise, stick to truth; for I am not so uninformed of Hamburg as perhaps you may think.

Whatever your amusements, or pleasures, may be at Hamburg, I dare say you taste them more sensibly than ever you did in your life, now that you have business enough to whet your appetite to them.

Business, one-half of the day, is the best preparation for the pleasures of the other half.

I hope, and believe, that it will be with you as it was with an apothecary whom I knew at Twickenham. A considerable estate fell to him by an unexpected accident; upon which he thought it decent to leave off his business;

But, besides that my head has been very much out of order of late, writing is by no means that easy thing that it was to me formerly.

I find by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when the one suffers, the other sympathizes.

‘Non sum qualis eram’: neither my memory nor my invention are now what they formerly were. It is in a great measure my own fault; I cannot accuse Nature, for I abused her; and it is reasonable I should suffer for it.

I do not like the return of the impression upon your lungs; but the rigor of the cold may probably have brought it upon you, and your lungs not in fault. Take care to live very cool, and let your diet be rather low.

We have had a second winter here, more severe than the first, at least it seemed so, from a premature summer that we had, for a fortnight, in March; which brought everything forward, only to be destroyed.

I have experienced it at Blackheath, where the promise of fruit was a most flattering one, and all nipped in the bud by frost and snow, in April. I shall not have a single peach or apricot.

This only is extraordinary: that last week, in the House of Commons, above ten millions were granted, and the whole Hanover army taken into British pay, with but one single negative, which was Mr. Viner’s.

Mr. Pitt gains ground in the closet, and yet does not lose it in the public.

That is new.

But this has, at one time or another, been the case of most great men; who have not always had equal opportunities of exerting their talents.

The greatest must submit to the capriciousness of fortune; though they can, better than others, improve the favorable moments.

For instance, who could have thought, two years ago, that you would have been the Atlas of the Northern Pole; but the Good Genius of the North ordered it so;

fifteen thousand good troops, eighty battering cannons, besides mortars, and every other thing in abundance, fit for either battle or siege. Lord Anson desired, and is appointed, to command the fleet employed upon this expedition; a proof that it is not a trifling one.

Conjectures concerning its destination are infinite; and the most ignorant are, as usual, the boldest conjecturers.

If I form any conjectures, I keep them to myself, not to be disproved by the event; but, in truth, I form none: I might have known, but would not.

he sees all places and all people, and is ubiquity itself. Mitchel, who was much threatened, stays at last at Berlin, at the earnest request of the King of Prussia. Lady 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 Hamburg, 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.

and I think they will give a good account of it. France is out of luck, and out of courage; and will, I hope, be enough out of spirits to submit to a reasonable peace.

By reasonable, I mean what all people call reasonable in their own case; an advantageous one for us.

I have set all right with Munchausen; who would not own that he was at all offended, and said, as you do, that his daughter did not stay long enough, nor appear enough at Hamburg, for you possibly to know that she was there.

I have set all right with Munchausen; who would not own that he was at all offended, and said, as you do, that his daughter did not stay long enough, nor appear enough at Hamburg, for you possibly to know that she was there.

But people are always ashamed to own the little weaknesses of self-love, which, however, all people feel more or less.

The excuse, I saw, pleased.

Miss———marries Mr.———-next week. WHO PROFFERS LOVE, PROFFERS DEATH, says Weller to a dwarf: in my opinion, the conclusion must instantly choak the little lady. Admiral marries Lady; there the danger, if danger is, will be on the other side.

The lady has wanted a man so long, that she now compounds for half a one.

Half a loaf—

I have a thousand times regretted not having done so; it is at present too late for me to begin; this is the right time for you, and your life is likely to be a busy one.

Would young men avail themselves of the advice and experience of their old friends, they would find the utility in their youth, and the comfort of it in their more advanced age; but they seldom consider that, and you, less than anybody I ever knew.

May you soon grow wiser! Adieu.

I presume you will go to see it, and, if you do, I would advise you to go when the Danish Monarch comes to review it himself; ‘pour prendre langue de ce Seigneur’.

The rulers of the earth are all worth knowing; they suggest moral reflections: and the respect that one naturally has for God’s vicegerents here on earth, is greatly increased by acquaintance with them.

Your card-tables are gone, and they inclose some suits of clothes, and some of these clothes inclose a letter.

for the oldest lion in the Tower, much about the King’s age, died a fortnight ago. This extravagancy, I can assure you, was believed by many above peuple. So wild and capricious is the human mind!

Take care of your health as much as you can; for, To BE, or NOT To BE, is a question of much less importance, in my mind, than to be or not to be well.

Adieu.

I learned Spanish when I was older than you; convinced by experience that, in everything possible, it was better to trust to one’s self than to any other body whatsoever.

Interpreters, as well as relaters, are often unfaithful, and still oftener incorrect, puzzling, and blundering.

In short, let it be your maxim through life to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others. This rule has been of infinite service to me in the course of my life.

I learned Spanish when I was older than you; convinced by experience that, in everything possible, it was better to trust to one’s self than to any other body whatsoever. Interpreters, as well as relaters, are often unfaithful, and still oftener incorrect, puzzling, and blundering.

In short, let it be your maxim through life to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others.

This rule has been of infinite service to me in the course of my life.

I hope you drink the Pyrmont waters every morning.

The health of the mind depends so much upon 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.

No, it is the rational philosophy taught me by experience and knowledge of the world, and which I have practiced 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.

MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter, which gave me a very clear account of the debate in your House.

It is impossible for a human creature to speak well for three hours and a half; I question even if Belial, who, according to Milton, was the orator of the fallen angels, ever spoke so long at a time.

There must have been, a trick in Charles Townshend’s speaking for the Preliminaries; for he is infinitely above having an opinion. Lord Egremont must be ill, or have thoughts of going into some other place; perhaps into Lord Granville’s, who they say is dying:

… my brother had had some of those self-conversations, which I recommend, he would not, I believe, at past sixty, with a crazy, battered constitution, and deaf into the bargain, have married a young girl, just turned of twenty, full of health, and consequently of desires.

But who takes warning by the fate of others?

This, perhaps, proceeds from a negligence of selfconversation. God bless you.

I am very sorry for it, for the reasons you hint at; but, however, you did very prudently, in doing, ‘de bonne grace’, what you could not help doing; and let that be your rule in every thing for the rest of your life.

Avoid disagreeable things as much as by dexterity you can; but when they are unavoidable, do them with seeming willingness and alacrity.

Though this journey is ill-timed for you in many respects, yet, in point of FINANCES, you will be a gainer by it upon the whole; for, depend upon it, they will keep you here till the very last day of the session:

Mr. Wilkes is universally given up; and if the ministers themselves do not wantonly raise difficulties, I think they will meet with none.

A majority of two hundred is a great anodyne.

Adieu! God bless you!

If the use of those waters does me no good, the shifting the scene for some time will at least amuse me a little; and at my age, and with my infirmities, ‘il faut faire de tout bois feche’.

Some variety is as necessary for the mind as some medicines are for the body.

Here is a total stagnation of politics, which, I suppose, will continue till the parliament sits to do business, and that will not be till about the middle of January;

that is, supposing that you have consulted some skillful physician, if such a one there be, either at Dresden or at Leipsic, 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.

the Opposition are for taking vigorous, as they call them, but I call them violent measures; not less than ‘les dragonnades’; 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 stepmother.

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;

One hears of nothing now in town, but the separation of men and their wives. Will Finch, the Ex-vice Chamberlain, Lord Warwick, and 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;

he has had a stroke of the palsy, which has deprived him of the use of his right leg, affected his speech a good deal, and perhaps his head a little.

Such are the intermediate tributes that we are forced to pay, in some shape or other, to our wretched nature, till we pay the last great one of all.

May you pay this very late, and as few intermediate tributes as possible; and so ‘jubeo te bene valere’. God bless you!

My kinsman, Lord Strathmore, is to be married in a fortnight, to Miss Bowes, the greatest heiress perhaps in Europe. In short, the matrimonial frenzy seems to rage at present, and is epidemical.

The men marry for money, and I believe you guess what the women marry for.

God bless you, and send you health!