Part 12

THE FOLLY OF CONTEMPT.--Wrongs are often given, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weaknesses, which we are much more careful to conceal than crimes. Many a man will confess his crimes to a common friend, but I never knew a man who would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one. As many a friend will tell us our faults without reserve, who will not so much as hint at our follies; that discovery is too mortifying to our self-love, either to tell another, or to be told of, one’s self. You must, therefore, never expect to hear of your weaknesses, or your follies, from anybody but me; those I will take pains to discover, and whenever I do, I shall tell you of them. [Same date.]

GOOD NATURE.--Your school-fellow, Lord Pulteney, set out last week for Holland, and will, I believe, be at Leipsic soon after this letter. You will take care to be extremely civil to him, and to do him any service that you can, while you stay there; let him know that I wrote you to do so. As being older, he should know more than you; in that case, take pains to get up to him; but if he does not, take care not to let him feel his inferiority. He will find it out of himself, without your endeavors; and that cannot be helped; but nothing is more insulting, more mortifying, and less forgiven, than avowedly to take pains to make a man feel a mortifying inferiority in knowledge, rank, fortune, etc. In the two last articles it is unjust, they not being in his power; and in the first it is both ill-bred and ill-natured. Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and, in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies. [July 6, 1748.]

LES ATTENTIONS.--The constant practice of what the French call les attentions is a most necessary ingredient in the art of pleasing; they flatter the self-love of those to whom they are shown; they engage, they captivate, more than things of much greater importance. The duties of social life every man is obliged to discharge; but these attentions are voluntary acts, the free-will offerings of good breeding and good nature; they are received, remembered, and returned as such. Women, particularly, have a right to them; and any omission in that respect is downright ill breeding. [Same date.]

AN EDUCATIONAL TEST.--Tell me what Greek and Latin books you can now read with ease. Can you open Demosthenes at a venture, and understand him? Can you get through an oration of Cicero, or a satire of Horace, without difficulty? What German book do you read to make yourself master of that language? And what French books do you read for your amusement? Pray give me a particular and true account of all this; for I am not indifferent as to any one thing that relates to you. [Same date.]

LAZY MINDS.--There are two sorts of understandings; one of which hinders a man from ever being considerable, and the other commonly makes him ridiculous; I mean the lazy mind, and the trifling, frivolous mind. Yours, I hope, is neither. The lazy mind will not take the trouble of going to the bottom of anything; but, discouraged by the difficulties (and everything worth knowing or having is attended with some), stops short, contents itself with easy and, consequently, superficial knowledge, and prefers a great degree of ignorance to a small degree of trouble. These people either think or represent most things as impossible; whereas few things are so to industry and activity. [July 26, 1748.]

RESOLUTION.--But difficulties seem to them (lazy people) impossibilities, or at least they pretend to think them so, by way of excuse for their laziness. An hour’s attention to the same object is too laborious for them; they take everything in the light in which it first presents itself, never considering it in all its different views; and, in short, never think it thorough. The consequence of this is, that when they come to speak upon these subjects before people who have considered them with attention, they only discover their own ignorance and laziness, and lay themselves open to answers that put them in confusion. Do not then be discouraged by the first difficulties, but contra audentior ito; and resolve to go to the bottom of all those things which every gentleman ought to know well. [Same date.]

CONVERSATION.--When you are in company, bring the conversation to some useful subject, but à portée of that company. Points of history, matters of literature, the customs of particular countries, the several orders of knighthood, as Teutonic, Maltese, etc., are surely better subjects of conversation than the weather, dress, or fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with them. The characters of kings and great men are only to be learned in conversation; for they are never fairly written during their lives. [Same date.]

ALWAYS ASK.--Never be ashamed nor afraid of asking questions; for if they lead to information, and if you accompany them with some excuse, you will never be reckoned an impertinent or rude questioner. All those things, in the common course of life, depend entirely upon the manner; and in that respect the vulgar saying is true, “That one man may better steal a horse, than another look over the hedge.” [Same date.]

TWO HEADS.--I am very glad that Mr. Lyttelton approves of my new house, and particularly of my Canonical pillars. My bust of Cicero is a very fine one, and well preserved; it will have the best place in my library, unless, at your return, you bring me over as good a modern head of your own, which I should like still better. I can tell you that I shall examine it as attentively as ever antiquary did an old one. [Same date.]

A PICTURE.--Duval, the jeweler, is arrived, and was with me three or four days ago. You will easily imagine that I asked him a few questions concerning you; and I will give you the satisfaction of knowing that, upon the whole, I was very well pleased with the account he gave me. But, though he seemed to be much in your interest, yet he fairly owned to me that your utterance was rapid, thick, and ungraceful. I can add nothing to what I have already said upon this subject; but I can and do repeat the absolute necessity of speaking distinctly and gracefully. [Aug. 2, 1748.]

DIET.--He tells me that you are pretty fat for one of your age; this you should attend to in a proper way; for if, while very young, you should grow fat, it would be troublesome, unwholesome, and ungraceful; you should therefore, when you have time, take very strong exercise, and in your diet avoid fattening things. All malt liquors fatten, or at least bloat; and I hope you do not deal much in them. [Same date.]

BE NATURAL.--I have this moment received your letter of the 4th, N. S., and have only time to tell you, that I can by no means agree to your cutting off your hair. I am very sure that your headaches cannot proceed from thence. And as for the pimples upon your head, they are only owing to the heat of the season; and consequently will not last long. But your own hair is, at your age, such an ornament, and a wig, however well made, such a disguise, that I will upon no account whatsoever have you cut off your hair. Nature did not give it you for nothing, still less to cause you the headache. Mr. Eliot’s hair grew so ill and bushy, that he was in the right to cut it off; but you have not the same reason. [Same date.]

BUYING BOOKS.--Mr. Harte wrote me word some time ago, and Mr. Eliot confirms it now, that you employ your pin-money in a very different manner from that in which pin-money is commonly lavished. Not in gewgaws and baubles, but in buying good and useful books. This is an excellent symptom, and gives me very good hopes. Go on thus, my dear boy, but for these two next years, and I ask no more. You must then make such a figure, and such a fortune in the world, as I wish you, and as I have taken all these pains to enable you to do. After that time, I allow you to be as idle as ever you please; because I am sure that you will not then please to be so at all. The ignorant and the weak only are idle; but those, who have once acquired a good stock of knowledge, always desire to increase it. Knowledge is like power, in this respect, that those who have the most, are most desirous of having more. It does not clog, by possession, but increases desires; which is the case of very few pleasures. [Aug. 23, 1748.]

GRATITUDE TO A TUTOR.--Upon receiving this congratulatory letter, and reading your own praises, I am sure that it must naturally occur to you, how great a share of them you owe to Mr. Harte’s care and attention; and, consequently, that your regard and affection for him must increase, if there be room for it, in proportion as you reap, which you do daily, the fruits of his labors. [Same date.]

HISTORICAL FAITH.--Take nothing for granted, upon the bare authority of the author; but weigh and consider, in your own mind, the probability of the facts, and the justness of the reflections. Consult different authors upon the same facts, and form your opinion upon the greater or lesser degree of probability arising from the whole, which, in my mind, is the utmost stretch of historical faith, certainty (I fear) not being to be found. [Aug. 30, 1748.]

GOOD AND BAD MIXED.--The best have something bad, and something little; the worst have something good, and sometimes something great; for I do not believe what Valleius Paterculus (for the sake of saying a pretty thing) says of Scipio, “Qui nihil non laudandum aut fecit, aut dixit, aut sensit.” [Same date.]

THE RULING PASSION.--Seek for their particular merit, their predominant passion, or their prevailing weakness, and you will then know what to bait your hook with, to catch them. Man is a composition of so many and such various ingredients, that it requires both time and care to analyze him: for though we have, all, the same ingredients in our general composition, as reason, will, passions, and appetites, yet the different proportions and combinations of them, in each individual, produce that infinite variety of characters, which, in some particular or other, distinguishes every individual from another. Reason ought to direct the whole, but seldom does. [Sept. 5, 1748.]

BRUYÈRE AND ROCHEFOUCAULT.--I will recommend to your attentive perusal, now you are going into the world, two books, which will let you as much into the characters of men as books can do. I mean “Les Réflexions Morales de Monsieur de la Rochefoucault,” and “Les Caractères de la Bruyère”: but remember, at the same time, that I only recommend them to you as the best general maps, to assist you in your journey, and not as marking out every particular turning and winding that you will meet with. There, your own sagacity and observation must come to their aid. La Rochefoucault is, I know, blamed, but I think without reason, for deriving all our actions from the source of self-love. For my own part, I see a great deal of truth, and no harm at all, in that opinion.

The reflection which is the most censured in Monsieur de la Rochefoucault’s book, as a very ill-natured one, is this: “On trouve dans le malheur de son meilleur ami, quelque chose qui ne déplaît pas.” And why not? Why may I not feel a very tender and real concern for the misfortune of my friend, and yet at the same time feel a pleasing consciousness at having discharged my duty to him, by comforting and assisting him to the utmost of my power in that misfortune? Give me but virtuous actions, and I will not quibble and chicane about the motives. And I will give anybody their choice of these two truths, which amount to the same thing: He who loves himself best is the honestest man; or, The honestest man loves himself best. [Same date.]

WOMAN.--As women are a considerable, or at least a pretty numerous part of company, and as their suffrages go a great way toward establishing a man’s character, in the fashionable part of the world (which is of great importance to the fortune and figure he proposes to make in it), it is necessary to please them. I will, therefore, upon this subject, let you into certain arcana that will be very useful for you to know, but which you must, with the utmost care, conceal; and never seem to know. Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never in my life knew one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together. Some little passion or humor always breaks in upon their best resolutions. Their beauty neglected or controverted, their age increased, or their supposed understandings depreciated, instantly kindles their little passions, and overturns any system of consequential conduct, that in their most reasonable moments they might have been capable of forming. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters; though he often makes them believe that he does both, which is the thing in the world that they are proud of, for they love mightily to be dabbling in business (which, by the way, they always spoil); and being justly distrustful, that men in general look upon them in a trifling light, they almost adore that man who talks more seriously to them, and who seems to consult and trust them--I say, who seems--for weak men really do, but wise ones only seem to do it. No flattery is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the highest, and gracefully accept of the lowest; and you may safely flatter any woman, from her understanding down to the exquisite taste of her fan. Women, who are either indisputably beautiful or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces, for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome, but not hearing often that she is so, is the more grateful and the more obliged to the few who tell her so; whereas a decided and conscious beauty looks upon every tribute paid to her beauty only as her due, but wants to shine, and to be considered on the side of her understanding; and a woman, who is ugly enough to know that she is so, knows that she has nothing left for it but her understanding, which is consequently, (and probably in more senses than one) her weak side. But these are secrets which you must keep inviolably, if you would not, like Orpheus, be torn to pieces by the whole sex. On the contrary, a man who thinks of living in the great world must be gallant, polite, and attentive to please the women. They have from the weakness of men, more or less influence in all courts; they absolutely stamp every man’s character in the beau monde, and make it either current, or cry it down, and stop it in payments. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to manage, please, and flatter them; and never to discover the least marks of contempt, which is what they never forgive; but in this they are not singular, for it is the same with men; who will much sooner forgive an injustice than an insult. [Same date.]

CONTEMPT.--Every man is not ambitious, or covetous, or passionate; but every man has pride enough in his composition to feel and resent the least slight and contempt. Remember, therefore, most carefully to conceal your contempt, however just, wherever you would not make an implacable enemy. Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known, than their crimes; and, if you hint to a man that you think him silly, ignorant or even ill-bred or awkward, he will hate you more and longer than if you tell him, plainly, that you think him a rogue. Never yield to that temptation, which, to most young men, is very strong, of exposing other people’s weaknesses and infirmities, for the sake either of diverting the company, or of showing your own superiority. You may get the laugh on your side by it, for the present; but you will make enemies by it for ever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, upon reflection, fear, and consequently hate you; besides that, it is ill-natured; and a good heart desires rather to conceal, than expose, other people’s weaknesses or misfortunes. If you have wit, use it to please, and not to hurt; you may shine, like the sun in the temperate zones, without scorching. Here it is wished for; under the line it is dreaded. [Same date.]

CALIGULA.--Another very just observation of the Cardinal’s is, that the things which happen in our own times, and which we see ourselves, do not surprise us near so much as the things which we read of in times past, though not in the least more extraordinary; and adds that he is persuaded that, when Caligula made his horse a consul, the people of Rome at that time were not greatly surprised at it, having necessarily been in some degree prepared for it, by an insensible gradation of extravagancies from the same quarter. [Sept. 13, 1748.]

ANTIQUITY IS STRANGE.--We read every day, with astonishment, things which we see every day without surprise. We wonder at the intrepidity of a Leonidas, a Codrus, and a Curtius; and are not the least surprised to hear of a sea captain who has blown up his ship, his crew, and himself, that they might not fall into the hands of the enemies of his country. I cannot help reading of Porsenna and Regulus with surprise and reverence; and yet I remember that I saw, without either, the execution of Shepherd, a boy of eighteen years old, who intended to shoot the late king, and who would have been pardoned if he would have expressed the least sorrow for his intended crime; but, on the contrary, he declared, that, if he was pardoned, he would attempt it again; that he thought it a duty which he owed his country; and that he died with pleasure for having endeavored to perform it. Reason equals Shepherd to Regulus; but prejudice, and the recency of the fact, make Shepherd a common malefactor, and Regulus a hero. [Same date.]

SECRETS.--The last observation that I shall now mention of the Cardinal’s is, “That a secret is more easily kept by a good many people than one commonly imagines.” By this he means a secret of importance among people interested in the keeping of it. And it is certain that people of business know the importance of secrecy, and will observe it where they are concerned in the event. To go and tell any friend, wife, or mistress, any secret with which they have nothing to do, is discovering to them such an unretentive weakness as must convince them that you will tell it to twenty others, and consequently that they may reveal it without the risk of being discovered. But a secret properly communicated only to those who are to be concerned in the thing in question, will probably be kept by them, though they should be a good many. Little secrets are commonly told again, but great ones generally kept. Adieu. [Same date.]

TRIFLES.--How trifling soever these things may seem, or really be, in themselves, they are no longer so, when above half the world thinks them otherwise. And, as I would have you omnibus ornatum--excellere rebus, I think nothing above or below my pointing out to you, or your excelling in. You have the means of doing it, and time before you to make use of them. Take my word for it, I ask nothing now but what you will, twenty years hence, most heartily wish that you had done. [Sept. 20, 1748.]

THE PEDANT AND THE SCHOLAR.--A gentleman has, probably, read no other Latin than that of the Augustan age; and therefore can write no other; whereas the pedant has read much more bad Latin than good; and consequently writes so too. He looks upon the best classical books as books for schoolboys, and consequently below him, but pores over fragments of obscure authors, treasures up the obsolete words which he meets with there, and uses them upon all occasions, to show his reading at the expense of his judgment. Plautus is his favorite author, not for the sake of the wit and the vis comica of his comedies; but upon account of the many obsolete words and the cant of low characters, which are to be met with nowhere else. He will rather use olli than illi, optumè than optimè, and any bad word, rather than any good one, provided he can but prove that, strictly speaking, it is Latin; that is, that it was written by a Roman. [Sept. 27, 1748.]

A DETESTABLE DOCTRINE.--I must now say something as to the matter of the lecture; in which I confess there is one doctrine laid down that surprises me; it is this: “Quum vero hostis sit lenta citave morte omnia dira nobis minitans quocunque bellantibus negotium est, parum sane interfuerit quo modo eum obruere et interficere satagamus si ferociam exuere cunctetur. Ergo veneno quoque uti fas est,” etc., whereas I cannot conceive that the use of poison can, upon any account, come within the lawful means of self-defence. Force may, without doubt, be justly repelled by force; but not by treachery and fraud; for I do not call the stratagems of war, such as ambuscades, masked batteries, false attacks, etc., frauds or treachery; they are mutually to be expected and guarded against; but poisoned arrows, poisoned waters, or poison administered to your enemy (which can only be done by treachery), I have always heard, read, and thought to be unlawful and infamous means of defence, be your danger ever so great; but, si ferociam exuere cunctetur; must I rather die than poison this enemy? Yes, certainly, much rather die than do a base or criminal action; nor can I be sure, beforehand, that this enemy may not in the last moment ferociam exuere. But the public lawyers now seem to me rather to warp the law, in order to authorize than to check those unlawful proceedings of princes and states; which, by being become common, appear less criminal; though custom can never alter the nature of good and ill.

Pray let no quibbles of lawyers, no refinements of casuists break into the plain notions of right and wrong which every man’s right reason and plain common sense suggest to him. To do as you would be done by is the plain, sure, and undisputed rule of morality and justice. Stick to that; and be convinced that whatever breaks into it, in any degree, however speciously it may be turned, and however puzzling it may be to answer it, is, notwithstanding, false in itself, unjust, and criminal. I do not know a crime in the world which is not, by the casuists among the Jesuits (especially the twenty-four collected, I think, by Escobar) allowed in some, or many cases, not to be criminal. The principles first laid down by them are often specious, the reasonings plausible; but the conclusion always a lie; for it is contrary to that evident and undeniable rule of justice which I have mentioned above, of not doing to any one what you would not have him do to you. But, however, these refined pieces of casuistry and sophistry being very convenient and welcome to people’s passions and appetites, they gladly accept the indulgence without desiring to detect the fallacy of the reasoning; and indeed many, I might say most people, are not able to do it; which makes the publication of such quibblings and refinements the more pernicious. I am no skilful casuist nor subtle disputant; and yet I would undertake to justify and qualify the profession of a highwayman step by step, and so plausibly as to make many ignorant people embrace the profession as an innocent, if not even a laudable one; and to puzzle people of some degree of knowledge to answer me point by point. I have seen a book entitled “Quidlibet ex Quolibet,” or the art of making any thing out of any thing; which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits certain plain truths, obvious in growth to every understanding, in order to run after the ingenious refinements of warm imaginations and speculative reasonings. Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, a very worthy, ingenious, and learned man, has written a book to prove that there is no such thing as matter, and that nothing exists but in idea; that you and I only fancy ourselves eating, drinking, and sleeping; you at Leipsic, and I at London; that we think we have flesh and blood, legs, arms, etc., but that we are only spirit. His arguments are, strictly speaking, unanswerable; but yet I am so far from being convinced by them that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that matter, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible. Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of; abide by it; it will counsel you best. Read and hear for your amusement, ingenious systems, nice questions, subtlely agitated, with all the refinements that warm imaginations suggest; but consider them only as exercitations for the mind, and return always to settle with common sense. [Same date.]