MY DEAR FRIEND: When you go to the play, which I hope you do often, for
it is a very instructive amusement, you must certainly have observed the
very different effects which the several parts have upon you, according
as they are well or ill acted. The very best tragedy of, Corneille’s, if
well spoken and acted, interests, engages, agitates, and affects your
passions. Love, terror, and pity alternately possess you. But, if ill
spoken and acted, it would only excite your indignation or your laughter.
Why? It is still Corneille’s; it is the same sense, the same matter,
whether well or ill acted. It is, then, merely the manner of speaking and
acting that makes this great difference in the effects. Apply this to
yourself, and conclude from it, that if you would either please in a
private company, or persuade in a public assembly, air, looks, gestures,
graces, enunciation, proper accents, just emphasis, and tuneful cadences,
are full as necessary as the matter itself. Let awkward, ungraceful,
inelegant, and dull fellows say what they will in behalf of their solid
matter and strong reasonings; and let them despise all those graces and
ornaments which engage the senses and captivate the heart; they will find
(though they will possibly wonder why) that their rough, unpolished
matter, and their unadorned, coarse, but strong arguments, will neither
please nor persuade; but, on the contrary, will tire out attention, and
excite disgust. We are so made, we love to be pleased better than to be
informed; information is, in a certain degree, mortifying, as it implies
our previous ignorance; it must be sweetened to be palatable.
To bring this directly to you: know that no man can make a figure in this
country, but by parliament. Your fate depends upon your success there as
a speaker; and, take my word for it, that success turns much more upon
manner than matter. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Murray the solicitor-general, uncle
to Lord Stormount, are, beyond comparison, the best speakers; why? only
because they are the best orators. They alone can inflame or quiet the
House; they alone are so attended to, in that numerous and noisy
assembly, that you might hear a pin fall while either of them is
speaking. Is it that their matter is better, or their arguments stronger,
than other people’s? Does the House expect extraordinary informations
from them? Not, in the least: but the House expects pleasure from them,
and therefore attends; finds it, and therefore approves. Mr. Pitt,
particularly, has very little parliamentary knowledge; his matter is
generally flimsy, and his arguments often weak; but his eloquence is
superior, his action graceful, his enunciation just and harmonious; his
periods are well turned, and every word he makes use of is the very best,
and the most expressive, that can be used in that place. This, and not
his matter, made him Paymaster, in spite of both king and ministers. From
this draw the obvious conclusion. The same thing holds full as true in
conversation; where even trifles, elegantly expressed, well looked, and
accompanied with graceful action, will ever please, beyond all the
homespun, unadorned sense in the world. Reflect, on one side, how you
feel within yourself, while you are forced to suffer the tedious, muddy,
and ill-turned narration of some awkward fellow, even though the fact may
be interesting; and, on the other hand, with what pleasure you attend to
the relation of a much less interesting matter, when elegantly expressed,
genteelly turned, and gracefully delivered. By attending carefully to all
these agremens in your daily conversation, they will become habitual to
you, before you come into parliament; and you will have nothing then, to
do, but to raise them a little when you come there. I would wish you to
be so attentive to this object, that I, would not have you speak to your
footman, but in the very best words that the subject admits of, be the
language what it will. Think of your words, and of their arrangement,
before you speak; choose the most elegant, and place them in the best
order. Consult your own ear, to avoid cacophony, and, what is very near
as bad, monotony. Think also of your gesture and looks, when you are
speaking even upon the most trifling subjects. The same things,
differently expressed, looked, and delivered, cease to be the same
things. The most passionate lover in the world cannot make a stronger
declaration of love than the ‘Bourgeois gentilhomme’ does in this happy
form of words, ‘Mourir d’amour me font belle Marquise vos beaux yeux’. I
defy anybody to say more; and yet I would advise nobody to say that, and
I would recommend to you rather to smother and conceal your passion
entirely than to reveal it in these words. Seriously, this holds in
everything, as well as in that ludicrous instance. The French, to do them
justice, attend very minutely to the purity, the correctness, and the
elegance of their style in conversation and in their letters. ‘Bien
narrer’ is an object of their study; and though they sometimes carry it
to affectation, they never sink into inelegance, which is much the worst
extreme of the two. Observe them, and form your French style upon theirs:
for elegance in one language will reproduce itself in all. I knew a young
man, who, being just elected a member of parliament, was laughed at for
being discovered, through the keyhole of his chamber-door, speaking to
himself in the glass, and forming his looks and gestures. I could not
join in that laugh; but, on the contrary, thought him much wiser than
those who laughed at him; for he knew the importance of those little
graces in a public assembly, and they did not. Your little person (which
I am told, by the way, is not ill turned), whether in a laced coat or a
blanket, is specifically the same; but yet, I believe, you choose to wear
the former, and you are in the right, for the sake of pleasing more. The
worst-bred man in Europe, if a lady let fall her fan, would certainly
take it up and give it her; the best-bred man in Europe could do no more.
The difference, however, would be considerable; the latter would please
by doing it gracefully; the former would be laughed at for doing it
awkwardly. I repeat it, and repeat it again, and shall never cease
repeating it to you: air, manners, graces, style, elegance, and all those
ornaments, must now be the only objects of your attention; it is now, or
never, that you must acquire them. Postpone, therefore, all other
considerations; make them now your serious study; you have not one moment
to lose. The solid and the ornamental united, are undoubtedly best; but
were I reduced to make an option, I should without hesitation choose the
latter.
I hope you assiduously frequent Marcell--[At that time the most
celebrated dancing-master at Paris.]--and carry graces from him; nobody
had more to spare than he had formerly. Have you learned to carve? for it
is ridiculous not to carve well. A man who tells you gravely that he
cannot carve, may as well tell you that he cannot blow his nose: it is
both as necessary, and as easy.
Make my compliments to Lord Huntingdon, whom I love and honor extremely,
as I dare say you do; I will write to him soon, though I believe he has
hardly time to read a letter; and my letters to those I love are, as you
know by experience, not very short ones: this is one proof of it, and
this would have been longer, if the paper had been so. Good night then,
my dear child.