LONDON, July 9, O. S. 1750.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I should not deserve that appellation in return from you,
if I did not freely and explicitly inform you of every corrigible defect
which I may either hear of, suspect, or at any time discover in you.
Those who, in the common course of the world, will call themselves your
friends; or whom, according to the common notions of friendship, you may
possibly think such, will never tell you of your faults, still less of
your weaknesses. 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. We are
therefore authorized to represent, advise, and remonstrate; and your
reason must tell you that you ought to attend to and believe us.
I am credibly informed, that there is still a considerable hitch or
hobble in your enunciation; and that when you speak fast you sometimes
speak unintelligibly. I have formerly and frequently laid my thoughts
before you so fully upon this subject, that I can say nothing new upon it
now. 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 best compositions of Corelli, if ill executed and played out
of tune, instead of touching, as they do when well performed, would only
excite the indignation of the hearer’s, when murdered by an unskillful
performer. But to murder your own productions, and that ‘coram Populo’,
is a MEDEAN CRUELTY, which Horace absolutely forbids. Remember of what
importance Demosthenes, and one of the Gracchi, thought ENUNCIATION; 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: If you do not speak in that
manner, you had much better not speak at all. All the learning you have,
or ever can have, is not worth one groat without it. It may be a comfort
and an amusement to you in your closet, but can be of no use to you in
the world. Let me conjure you, therefore, to make this your only object,
till you have absolutely conquered it, for that is in your power; think
of nothing else, read and speak for nothing else. Read aloud, though
alone, and read articulately and distinctly, as if you were reading in
public, and on the most important occasion. Recite pieces of eloquence,
declaim scenes of tragedies to Mr. 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.
The next thing necessary in your destination, is writing correctly,
elegantly, and in a good hand too; in which three particulars, I am sorry
to tell you, that you hitherto fail. Your handwriting is a very bad one,
and would make a scurvy figure in an office-book of letters, or even in a
lady’s pocket-book. But that fault is easily cured by care, since every
man, who has the use of his eyes and of his right hand, can write
whatever hand he pleases. As to the correctness and elegance of your
writing, attention to grammar does the one, and to the best authors the
other. In your letter to me of the 27th June, N. S., you omitted the date
of the place, so that I only conjectured from the contents that you were
at Rome.
Thus I have, with the truth and freedom of the tenderest affection, told
you all your defects, at least all that I know or have heard of. Thank
God, they are all very curable; they must be cured, and I am sure, you
will cure them. That once done, nothing remains for you to acquire, or
for me to wish you, but the turn, the manners, the address, and the
GRACES, of the polite world; which experience, observation, and good
company; will insensibly give you. Few people at your age have read,
seen, and known, so much as you have; and consequently few are so near as
yourself to what I call perfection, by which I only, mean being very near
as well as the best. Far, therefore, from being discouraged by what you
still want, what you already have should encourage you to attempt, and
convince you that by attempting you will inevitably obtain it. 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. 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.
Frequent and observe the best companies there, and you will soon be
naturalized among them; you will soon find how particularly attentive
they are to the correctness and elegance of their language, and to the
graces of their enunciation: they would even call the understanding of a
man in question, who should neglect or not know the infinite advantages
arising from them. ‘Narrer, reciter, declamer bien’, are serious studies
among them, and well deserve to be so everywhere. The conversations, even
among the women, frequently turn upon the elegancies and minutest
delicacies of the French language. An ‘enjouement’, a gallant turn,
prevails in all their companies, to women, with whom they neither are,
nor pretend to be, in love; but should you (as may very possibly happen)
fall really in love there with some woman of fashion and sense (for I do
not suppose you capable of falling in love with a strumpet), and that
your rival, without half your parts or knowledge, should get the better
of you, merely by dint of manners, ‘enjouement, badinage’, etc., how
would you regret not having sufficiently attended to those
accomplishments which you despised as superficial and trifling, but which
you would then find of real consequence in the course of the world! 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. By way of
debtor and creditor, it stands thus:
Creditor. By French Debtor. To English
German Enunciation
Italian Manners
Latin
Greek
Logic
Ethics
History
|Naturae
Jus |Gentium
|Publicum
This, my dear friend, is a very true account; and a very encouraging one
for you. A man who owes so little can clear it off in a very little time,
and, if he is a prudent man, will; whereas a man who, by long negligence,
owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay; and therefore
never looks into his account at all.
When you go to Genoa, pray observe carefully all the environs of it, and
view them with somebody who can tell you all the situations and
operations of the Austrian army, during that famous siege, if it deserves
to be called one; for in reality the town never was besieged, nor had the
Austrians any one thing necessary for a siege. If Marquis Centurioni, who
was last winter in England, should happen to be there, go to him with my
compliments, and he will show you all imaginable civilities.
I could have sent you some letters to Florence, but that I knew Mr. Mann
would be of more use to you than all of them. Pray make him my
compliments. Cultivate your Italian, while you are at Florence, where it
is spoken in its utmost purity, but ill pronounced.
Pray save me the seed of some of the best melons you eat, and put it up
dry in paper. You need not send it me; but Mr. Harte will bring it in his
pocket when he comes over. I should likewise be glad of some cuttings of
the best figs, especially la Pica gentile and the Maltese; but as this is
not the season for them, Mr. Mann will, I dare say, undertake that
commission, and send them to me at the proper time by Leghorn. Adieu.
Endeavor to please others, and divert yourself as much as ever you can,
in ‘honnete et galant homme’.
P. S. I send you the inclosed to deliver to Lord Rochford, upon your
arrival at Turin.