MY DEAR FRIEND: How do you go on with the most useful and most necessary
of all studies, the study of the world? Do you find that you gain
knowledge? And does your daily experience at once extend and demonstrate
your improvement? You will possibly ask me how you can judge of that
yourself. I will tell you a sure way of knowing. Examine yourself, and
see whether your notions of the world are changed, by experience, from
what they were two years ago in theory; for that alone is one favorable
symptom of improvement. At that age (I remember it in myself) every
notion that one forms is erroneous; one hath seen few models, and those
none of the best, to form one’s self upon. One thinks that everything is
to be carried by spirit and vigor; that art is meanness, and that
versatility and complaisance are the refuge of pusilanimity and weakness.
This most mistaken opinion gives an indelicacy, a ‘brusquerie’, and a
roughness to the manners. Fools, who can never be undeceived, retain them
as long as they live: reflection, with a little experience, makes men of
sense shake them off soon. When they come to be a little better
acquainted with themselves, and with their own species, they discover
that plain right reason is, nine times in ten, the fettered and shackled
attendant of the triumph of the heart and the passions; and,
consequently, they address themselves nine times in ten to the conqueror,
not to the conquered: and conquerors, you know, must be applied to in the
gentlest, the most engaging, and the most insinuating manner. Have you
found out that every woman is infallibly to be gained by every sort of
flattery, and every man by one sort or other? Have you discovered what
variety of little things affect the heart, and how surely they
collectively gain it? If you have, you have made some progress. I would
try a man’s knowledge of the world, as I would a schoolboy’s knowledge of
Horace: not by making him construe ‘Maecenas atavis edite regibus’, which
he could do in the first form; but by examining him as to the delicacy
and ‘curiosa felicitas’ of that poet. A man requires very little
knowledge and experience of the world, to understand glaring,
high-colored, and decided characters; they are but few, and they strike
at first: but to distinguish the almost imperceptible shades, and the
nice gradations of virtue and vice, sense and folly, strength and
weakness (of which characters are commonly composed), demands some
experience, great observation, and minute attention. In the same cases,
most people do the same things, but with this material difference, upon
which the success commonly turns: A man who hath studied the world knows
when to time, and where to place them; he hath analyzed the characters he
applies to, and adapted his address and his arguments to them: but a man,
of what is called plain good sense, who hath only reasoned by himself,
and not acted with mankind, mistimes, misplaces, runs precipitately and
bluntly at the mark, and falls upon his nose in the way. In the common
manners of social life, every man of common sense hath the rudiments, the
A B C of civility; he means not to offend, and even wishes to please:
and, if he hath any real merit, will be received and tolerated in good
company. But that is far from being enough; for, though he may be
received, he will never be desired; though he does not offend, he will
never be loved; but, like some little, insignificant, neutral power,
surrounded by great ones, he will neither be feared nor courted by any;
but, by turns, invaded by all, whenever it is their interest. A most
contemptible situation! Whereas, a man who hath carefully attended to,
and experienced, the various workings of the heart, and the artifices of
the head; and who, by one shade, can trace the progression of the whole
color; who can, at the proper times, employ all the several means of
persuading the understanding, and engaging the heart, may and will have
enemies; but will and must have friends: he may be opposed, but he will
be supported too; his talents may excite the jealousy of some, but his
engaging arts will make him beloved by many more; he will be
considerable; he will be considered. Many different qualifications must
conspire to form such a man, and to make him at once respectable and
amiable; the least must be joined to the greatest; the latter would be
unavailing without the former; and the former would be futile and
frivolous, without the latter. Learning is acquired by reading books; but
the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to
be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of
them. Many words in every language are generally thought to be
synonymous; but those who study the language attentively will find, that
there is no such thing; they will discover some little difference, some
distinction between all those words that are vulgarly called synonymous;
one hath always more energy, extent, or delicacy, than another. It is the
same with men; all are in general, and yet no two in particular, exactly
alike. Those who have not accurately studied, perpetually mistake them;
they do not discern the shades and gradations that distinguish characters
seemingly alike. Company, various company, is the only school for this
knowledge. You ought to be, by this time, at least in the third form of
that school, from whence the rise to the uppermost is easy and quick; but
then you must have application and vivacity; and you must not only bear
with, but even seek restraint in most companies, instead of stagnating in
one or two only, where indolence and love of ease may be indulged.
In the plan which I gave you in my last,--[That letter is missing.]--for
your future motions, I forgot to tell you; that, if a king of the Romans
should be chosen this year, you shall certainly be at that election; and
as, upon those occasions, all strangers are excluded from the place of
the election, except such as belong to some ambassador, I have already
eventually secured you a place in the suite of the King’s Electoral
Ambassador, who will be sent upon that account to Frankfort, or wherever
else the election may be. This will not only secure you a sight of the
show, but a knowledge of the whole thing; which is likely to be a
contested one, from the opposition of some of the electors, and the
protests of some of the princes of the empire. That election, if there is
one, will, in my opinion, be a memorable era in the history of the
empire; pens at least, if not swords, will be drawn; and ink, if not
blood, will be plentifully shed by the contending parties in that
dispute. During the fray, you may securely plunder, and add to your
present stock of knowledge of the ‘jus publicum imperii’. The court of
France hath, I am told, appointed le President Ogier, a man of great
abilities, to go immediately to Ratisbon, ‘pour y souffler la discorde’.
It must be owned that France hath always profited skillfully of its
having guaranteed the treaty of Munster; which hath given it a constant
pretense to thrust itself into the affairs of the empire. When France got
Alsace yielded by treaty, it was very willing to have held it as a fief
of the empire; but the empire was then wiser. Every power should be very
careful not to give the least pretense to a neighboring power to meddle
with the affairs of its interior. Sweden hath already felt the effects of
the Czarina’s calling herself Guarantee of its present form of
government, in consequence of the treaty of Neustadt, confirmed afterward
by that of Abo; though, in truth, that guarantee was rather a provision
against Russia’s attempting to alter the then new established form of
government in Sweden, than any right given to Russia to hinder the Swedes
from establishing what form of government they pleased. Read them both,
if you can get them. Adieu.