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; 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. You now, study five hours every morning; I neither
suppose that you will, nor desire that you should do so for the rest of
your life. Both business and pleasure will justly and equally break in
upon those hours. But then, will you always employ the leisure they leave
you in useful studies? If you have but an hour, will you improve that
hour, instead of idling it away? While you have such a friend and monitor
with you as Mr. Harte, I am sure you will. But suppose that business and
situations should, in six or seen months, call Mr. Harte away from you;
tell me truly, what may I expect and depend upon from you, when left to
yourself? May I be sure that you will employ some part of every day, in
adding something to that stock of knowledge which he will have left you?
May I hope that you will allot one hour in the week to the care of your
own affairs, to keep them in that order and method which every prudent
man does? But, above all, may I be convinced that your pleasures,
whatever they may be, will be confined within the circle of good company,
and people of fashion? 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. The gallantry
of high life, though not strictly justifiable, carries, at least, no
external marks of infamy about it. Neither the heart nor the constitution
is corrupted by it; 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? For
I have known many a young fellow seduced by a ‘mauvaise honte’, that made
him ashamed to refuse. These are resolutions which you must form, and
steadily execute for yourself, whenever you lose the friendly care and
assistance of your Mentor. In the meantime, make a greedy use of him;
exhaust him, if you can, of all his knowledge; and get the prophet’s
mantle from him, before he is taken away himself.
You seem to like Rome. How do you go on there? Are you got into the
inside of that extraordinary government? Has your Abbate Foggini
discovered many of those mysteries to you? Have you made an acquaintance
with some eminent Jesuits? I know no people in the world more
instructive. You would do very well to take one or two such sort of
people home with you to dinner every day. It would be only a little
‘minestra’ and ‘macaroni’ the more; 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 a
classical description of Italy; from whence, I am assured, that Mr.
Addison, to save himself trouble, has taken most of his remarks and
classical references. I am told that it is an excellent book for a
traveler in Italy.
What Italian books have you read, or are you reading? Ariosto. I hope, is
one of them. Pray apply yourself diligently to Italian; 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! Invoke them, and sacrifice to them every moment; they are
always kind, where they are assiduously courted. For God’s sake, aim at
perfection in everything: ‘Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum.
Adieu. Yours most tenderly.