DEAR BOY: It is now four posts since I have received any letter, either
from you or from Mr. Harte. I impute this to the rapidity of your travels
through Switzerland; which I suppose are by this time finished.
You will have found by my late letters, both to you and Mr. Harte, that
you are to be at Leipsig by next Michaelmas; where you will be lodged in
the house of Professor Mascow, and boarded in the neighborhood of it,
with some young men of fashion. The professor will read you lectures upon
‘Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis,’ the ‘Institutes of Justinian’ and the
‘Jus Publicum Imperii;’ 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.’ There is a great deal of
good company in Leipsig, which I would have you frequent in the evenings,
when the studies of the day are over. There is likewise a kind of court
kept there, by a Duchess Dowager of Courland; at which you should get
introduced. The King of Poland and his Court go likewise to the fair at
Leipsig twice a year; and I shall write to Sir Charles Williams, the
king’s minister there, to have you presented, and introduced into good
company. But I must remind you, at the same time, that it will be to a
very little purpose for you to frequent good company, if you do not
conform to, and learn their manners; if you are not attentive to please,
and well bred, with the easiness of a man of fashion. As you must attend
to your manners, so you must not neglect your person; but take care to be
very clean, well dressed, and genteel; to have no disagreeable attitudes,
nor awkward tricks; which many people use themselves to, and then cannot
leave them off. Do you take care to keep your teeth very clean, by
washing them constantly every morning, and after every meal? This is very
necessary, both to preserve your teeth a great while, and to save you a
great deal of pain. Mine have plagued me long, and are now falling out,
merely from want of care when I was your age. Do you dress well, and not
too well? 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.
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.