MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter of the 15th from
Manheim, where I find you have been received in the usual gracious
manner; which I hope you return in a GRACEFUL one. As this is a season of
great devotion and solemnity in all Catholic countries, pray inform
yourself of, and constantly attend to, all their silly and pompous church
ceremonies; one ought to know them. I am very glad that you wrote the
letter to Lord------, which, in every different case that can possibly be
supposed, was, I am sure, both a decent and a prudent step. You will find
it very difficult, whenever we meet, to convince me that you could have
any good reasons for not doing it; for I will, for argument’s sake,
suppose, what I cannot in reality believe, that he has both said and done
the worst he could, of and by you; What then? How will you help yourself?
Are you in a situation to hurt him? Certainly not; but he certainly is in
a situation to hurt you. Would you show a sullen, pouting, impotent
resentment? I hope not; leave that silly, unavailing sort of resentment
to women, and men like them, who are always guided by humor, never by
reason and prudence. That pettish, pouting conduct is a great deal too
young, and implies too little knowledge of the world, for one who has
seen so much of it as you have. Let this be one invariable rule of your
conduct,--Never to show the least symptom of resentment which you cannot
to a certain degree gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot
strike. There would be no living in courts, nor indeed in the world if
one could not conceal, and even dissemble, the just causes of resentment,
which one meets with every day in active and busy life. Whoever cannot
master his humor enough, ‘pour faire bonne mine a mauvais jeu’, should
leave the world, and retire to some hermitage, in an unfrequented desert.
By showing an unavailing and sullen resentment, you authorize the
resentment of those who can hurt you and whom you cannot hurt; and give
them that very pretense, which perhaps they wished for, of breaking with,
and injuring you; whereas the contrary behavior would lay them under, the
restraints of decency at least; and either shackle or expose their
malice. Besides, captiousness, sullenness, and pouting are most
exceedingly illiberal and vulgar. ‘Un honnete homme ne les connoit
point’.
I am extremely glad to hear that you are soon to have Voltaire at
Manheim: immediately upon his arrival, pray make him a thousand
compliments from me. I admire him most exceedingly; and, whether as an
epic, dramatic, or lyric poet, or prose-writer, I think I justly apply to
him the ‘Nil molitur inepte’. I long to read his own correct edition of
‘Les Annales de l’Empire’, of which the ‘Abrege Chronologique de
l’Histoire Universelle’, which I have read, is, I suppose, a stolen and
imperfect part; however, imperfect as it is, it has explained to me that
chaos of history, of seven hundred years more clearly than any other book
had done before. You judge very rightly that I love ‘le style le r et
fleuri’. I do, and so does everybody who has any parts and taste. It
should, I confess, be more or less ‘fleuri’, according to the subject;
but at the same time I assert that there is no subject that may not
properly, and which ought not to be adorned, by a certain elegance and
beauty of style. What can be more adorned than Cicero’s Philosophical
Works? What more than Plato’s? It is their eloquence only that has
preserved and transmitted them down to us through so many centuries; for
the philosophy of them is wretched, and the reasoning part miserable. But
eloquence will always please, and has always pleased. Study it therefore;
make it the object of your thoughts and attention. Use yourself to relate
elegantly; that is a good step toward speaking well in parliament. Take
some political subject, turn it in your thoughts, consider what may be
said both for and against it, then put those arguments into writing, in
the most correct and elegant English you can. For instance, a standing
army, a place bill, etc.; as to the former, consider, on one side, the
dangers arising to a free country from a great standing military force;
on the other side, consider the necessity of a force to repel force with.
Examine whether a standing army, though in itself an evil, may not, from
circumstances, become a necessary evil, and preventive of greater
dangers. As to the latter, consider, how far places may bias and warp the
conduct of men, from the service of their country, into an unwarrantable
complaisance to the court; and, on the other hand, consider whether they
can be supposed to have that effect upon the conduct of people of probity
and property, who are more solidly interested in the permanent good of
their country, than they can be in an uncertain and precarious
employment. Seek for, and answer in your own mind, all the arguments that
can be urged on either side, and write them down in an elegant style.
This will prepare you for debating, and give you an habitual eloquence;
for I would not give a farthing for a mere holiday eloquence, displayed
once or twice in a session, in a set declamation, but I want an
every-day, ready, and habitual eloquence, to adorn extempore and debating
speeches; to make business not only clear but agreeable, and to please
even those whom you cannot inform, and who do not desire to be informed.
All this you may acquire, and make habitual to you, with as little
trouble as it cost you to dance a minuet as well as you do. You now dance
it mechanically and well without thinking of it.
I am surprised that you found but one letter for me at Manheim, for you
ought to have found four or five; there are as many lying for you at your
banker’s at Berlin, which I wish you had, because I always endeavored to
put something into them, which, I hope, may be of use to you.
When we meet at Spa, next July, we must have a great many serious
conversations; in which I will pour out all my experience of the world,
and which, I hope, you will trust to, more than to your own young notions
of men and things. You will, in time, discover most of them to have been
erroneous; and, if you follow them long, you will perceive your error too
late; but if you will be led by a guide, who, you are sure, does not mean
to mislead you, you will unite two things, seldom united, in the same
person; the vivacity and spirit of youth, with the caution and experience
of age.
Last Saturday, Sir Thomas Robinson, who had been the King’s Minister at
Vienna, was declared Secretary of State for the southern department, Lord
Holderness having taken the northern. Sir Thomas accepted it unwillingly,
and, as I hear, with a promise that he shall not keep it long. Both his
health and spirits are bad, two very disqualifying circumstances for that
employment; yours, I hope, will enable you, some time or other, to go
through with it. In all events, aim at it, and if you fail or fall, let
it at least be said of you, ‘Magnis tamen excidit ausis’. Adieu.