LONDON, November 24, O. S. 1749.
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’. 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; 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; 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: and were I either to speak or write to the
public, I should prefer moderate matter, adorned with all the beauties
and elegancies of style, to the strongest matter in the world, ill-worded
and ill-delivered. Your business is negotiation abroad, and oratory in
the House of Commons at home. What figure can you make, in either case,
if your style be inelegant, I do not say bad? Imagine yourself writing an
office-letter to a secretary of state, which letter is to be read by the
whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterward laid before
parliament; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it, would, in a
very few days, circulate through the whole kingdom, to your disgrace and
ridicule. For instance, I will suppose you had written the following
letter from The Hague to the Secretary of State at London; and leave you
to suppose the consequences of it:
MY LORD: I HAD, last night, the honor of your Lordship’s letter of the
24th; and will SET ABOUT DOING the orders contained THEREIN; and IF so BE
that I can get that affair done by the next post, I will not fail FOR TO
give your Lordship an account of it by NEXT POST. I have told the French
Minister, AS HOW THAT IF that affair be not soon concluded, your Lordship
would think it ALL LONG OF HIM; and that he must have neglected FOR TO
have wrote to his court about it. I must beg leave to put your Lordship
in mind AS HOW, that I am now full three quarter in arrear; and if SO BE
that I do not very soon receive at least one half year, I shall CUT A
VERY BAD FIGURE; FOR THIS HERE place is very dear. I shall be VASTLY
BEHOLDEN to your Lordship for THAT THERE mark of your favor; and so I
REST or REMAIN, Your, etc.
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.
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; but I can assure you that it
continues so still, and will be remembered as long as he lives and
speaks. Another, speaking in defense of a gentleman, upon whom a censure
was moved, happily said that he thought that gentleman was more LIABLE to
be thanked and rewarded, than censured. You know, I presume, that LIABLE
can never be used in a good sense.
You have with you three or four of the best English authors, Dryden,
Atterbury, and Swift; read them with the utmost care, and with a
particular view to their language, and they may possibly correct that
CURIOUS INFELICITY OF DICTION, which you acquired at Westminster. Mr.
Harte excepted, I will admit that you have met with very few English
abroad, who could improve your style; and with many, I dare say, who
speak as ill as yourself, and, it may be, worse; you must, therefore,
take the more pains, and consult your authors and Mr. Harte the more. I
need not tell you how attentive the Romans and Greeks, particularly the
Athenians, were to this object. It is also a study among the Italians and
the French; witness their respective academies and dictionaries for
improving and fixing their languages. 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. 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 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;
the heart will certainly follow; and the whole man, or woman, will as
certainly follow the heart. I must repeat it to you, over and over again,
that with all the knowledge which you may have at present, or hereafter
acquire, and with all merit that ever man had, if you have not a graceful
address, liberal and engaging manners, a prepossessing air, and a good
degree of eloquence in speaking and writing; you will be nobody; but will
have the daily mortification of seeing people, with not one-tenth part of
your merit or knowledge, get the start of you, and disgrace you, both in
company and in business.
You have read “Quintilian,” the best book in the world to form an orator;
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.
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; in the summer you may navigate as much as you please; as,
for example, from Leghorn to Genoa, etc. Adieu.