LONDON, October 17, O. S. 1749.
DEAR BOY: I have at last received Mr. Harte’s letter of the 19th
September, N. 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.
You will have received in my three or four last letters my directions for
your further motions to another capital, where I propose that your stay
shall be pretty considerable. The expense, I am well aware, will be so
too; but that, as I told you before, will have no weight when your
improvement and advantage are in the other scale. I do not care a groat
what it is, if neither vice nor folly are the objects of it, and if Mr.
Harte gives his sanction.
I am very well pleased with your account of Carniola; those are the kind
of objects worthy of your inquiries and knowledge. The produce, the
taxes, the trade, the manufactures, the strength, the weakness, the
government of the several countries which a man of sense travels through,
are the material points to which he attends; and leaves the steeples, the
market-places, and the signs, to the laborious and curious researches of
Dutch and German travelers.
Mr. Harte tells me, that he intends to give you, by means of Signor
Vicentini, a general notion of civil and military architecture; with
which I am very well pleased. They are frequent subjects of conversation;
and it is very right that you should have some idea of the latter, and a
good taste of the former; and you may very soon learn as much as you need
know of either. If you read about one-third of Palladio’s book of
architecture with some skillful person, and then, with that person,
examine the best buildings by those rules, you will know the different
proportions of the different orders; the several diameters of their
columns; their intercolumniations, their several uses, etc. The
Corinthian Order is chiefly used in magnificent buildings, where ornament
and decoration are the principal objects; the Doric is calculated for
strength, and the Ionic partakes of the Doric strength, and of the
Corinthian ornaments. The Composite and the Tuscan orders are more
modern, and were unknown to the Greeks; the one is too light, the other
too clumsy. You may soon be acquainted with the considerable parts of
civil architecture; and for the minute and mechanical parts of it, leave
them to masons, bricklayers, and Lord Burlington, who has, to a certain
extent, lessened himself by knowing them too well. Observe the same
method as to military architecture; understand the terms, know the
general rules, and then see them in execution with some skillful person.
Go with some engineer or old officer, and view with care the real
fortifications of some strong place; and you will get a clearer idea of
bastions, half-moons, horn-works, ravelins, glacis, etc., than all the
masters in the world could give you upon paper. And thus much I would, by
all means, have you know of both civil and military architecture.
I would also have you acquire a liberal taste of the two liberal arts of
painting and sculpture; but without descending into those minutia, which
our modern virtuosi most affectedly dwell upon. Observe the great parts
attentively; see if nature be truly represented; if the passions are
strongly expressed; if the characters are preserved; and leave the
trifling parts, with their little jargon, to affected puppies. I would
advise you also, to read the history of the painters and sculptors, and I
know none better than Felibien’s. There are many in Italian; you will
inform yourself which are the best. It is a part of history very
entertaining, curious enough, and not quite useless. All these sort of
things I would have you know, to a certain degree; but remember, that
they must only be the amusements, and not the business of a man of parts.
Since writing to me in German would take up so much of your time, of
which I would not now have one moment wasted, I will accept of your
composition, and content myself with a moderate German letter once a
fortnight, to Lady Chesterfield or Mr. Gravenkop. My meaning was only
that you should not forget what you had already learned of the German
language and character; but, on the contrary, that by frequent use it
should grow more easy and familiar. Provided you take care of that, I do
not care by what means: but I do desire that you will every day of your
life speak German to somebody or other (for you will meet with Germans
enough), and write a line or two of it every day to keep your hand in.
Why should you not (for instance) write your little memorandums and
accounts in that language and character? by which, too, you would have
this advantage into the bargain, that, if mislaid, few but yourself could
read them.
I am extremely glad to hear that you like the assemblies at Venice well
enough to sacrifice some suppers to them; for I hear that you do not
dislike your suppers neither. It is therefore plain, that there is
somebody or something at those assemblies, which you like better than
your meat. And as I know that there is none but good company at those
assemblies, I am very glad to find that you like good company so well. I
already imagine that you are a little, smoothed by it; and that you have
either reasoned yourself, or that they have laughed you out of your
absences and DISTRACTIONS; for I cannot suppose that you go there to
insult them. I likewise imagine, that you wish to be welcome where you
wish to go; and consequently, that you both present and behave yourself
there ‘en galant homme, et pas in bourgeois’.
If you have vowed to anybody there one of those eternal passions which I
have sometimes known, by great accident, last three months, I can tell
you that without great attention, infinite politeness, and engaging air
and manners, the omens will be sinister, and the goddess unpropitious.
Pray tell me what are the amusements of those assemblies? Are they little
commercial play, are they music, are they ‘la belle conversation’, or are
they all three? ‘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.
P. S. By an uncommon diligence of the post, I have this moment received
yours of the 9th, N. S.