tion and application as to know books, and, it may be, more fagacity and difeernment. I am, at this time, acquainted with many elderly people, who have all paffed their whole lives in the great world, but with fuch levity and inattention, that they know no more of it now than they did at fifteen. Do not flatter yourfelf, therefore, with the thoughts that you can acquire this knowledge in the frivolous chit-chat of idle companics: no, you must go much deeper than that. You muft look into people as well as at them. Almost all people are born with all the paffions, to a certain degree; but almost every man has a prevailing one, to which the others are fubordinate. Search every one for that ruling paffion; pry into the receffes of his heart, and obferve the different workings of the fame paffion in different people. And when you have found out the prevailing paffion of any man, remember never to truft him, where that paflion is concerned. I would defire you to read this letter twice over, but that I much doubt whether you will read once to the end of it. I will trouble you no longer now; but we will have more upon this fubject hereafter.-Adieu! LETTER XLII Negligence...Abfence of Mind in Company. DEAR BOY, Bath, October the gɩh. YOUR diftreffes in your journey from Heidelberg to Schaffhaufen, your lying upon ftraw, your black bread, and your broken berline*, are proper feasonings for the greater fatigues and diftreffes which you muft expect in the courfe of your travels; and if one had a mind to moralife, one might call them the famples of the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which every man meets with in his journey through life. In this journey, the understanding is the voituret that muft carry you through; and in proportion as that is ftronger or +Conveyance. * A carriage. weaker, more or lefs in repair, your journey will be better or worfe; though, at beft, you will now and then find fome bad roads, and fome bad inns. Take care, therefore, to keep that neceffary voiture in perfect good,repair; examine, improve, and ftrengthen it every day it is in the power, and ought to be the care of every man to do it; he that neglects it, deferves to feel, and certainly will feel, the fatal effects of that negligence. Apropos of negligence; I muft fay fomething to you upon that fubject. You know I have often told you, that my affection for you was not a weak, womanifh one; and, far from blinding me, it makes me but more quick-fighted, as to your faults: thofe it is not only my right, but my duty, to tell you of; and it is your duty and your intereft to correct them. In the trict ferutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank God) hitherto not difcovered any grofs vice of the heart, or any particular weakness of the head; but I have difcovered lazinefs, inattention, and indifference -faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life, when health and fpirits fail, have a kind of claim to that fort of tranquility. But a young man should be ambitious to fhine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Cæfar, Nil actum reputans, fi quid fupereffet agendum. You feem to want that vivida vis animit, which fpurs and excites moft young men to please, to thine, to excel. Without the defire and the pains neceffary to be confidered, depend upon it, you never can be fo; as, with out the defire and attention neceffary to please, you never can please. Nullum numen abeft, fi fit prudentiat is unquestionably true, with regard to every thing except poetry; and I am very fure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labour, make himfelf whatever he pleafes, except a good poet. Your deftination is the great and bufy * Thought he had done nothing while any thing remained to be done. The ftrong force of the mind. No protecting power is wanting, if prudence be employed. world; your immediate object is the affairs, the interefts, and the hiftory, the conftitutions, the customs, and the manners, of the feveral parts of Europe. In this, any man of common fenfe may, by common application, be fure to excel. Ancient and modern hiftory are, by attention, eafily attainable. Geography and chronology the fame; none of them requiring any uncommon fhare of genius or invention. Speaking and writing, clearly, correctly, and with ease and grace, are certainly to be acquired, by reading the best authors with care, and by attention to the best living models. Thefe are the qualifications more particularly neceffary for you, which you may be poffeffed of if you please; and which, I tell you fairly, I fhall be very angry at you, if you are not; becaufe, as you have the means in your hands, it will be your own fault only. If care and application are neceffary to the acquir ing of thofe qualifications, without which you can never be confiderable, nor make a figure in the world, they are not lefs neceffary with regard to the leffer accomplishments, which are requifite to make you agreeable and pleafing in fociety. In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: What is commonly called an abfent man, is generally either a very weak, or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am fure, a very difagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices of civility; he feems not to know thofe people to-day with whom yesterday he appeared to live in intimacy. He takes no part in the general converfation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with fome ffart of his own, as if he awaked from a dream. This (as I faid before) is a fure indication, either of a mind fo weak that it is not able to bear above one object at a time, or fo affected, that it would be fuppofed to be wholly engroffed by, and directed to fome very great and important objects. Sir Ifaac Newton, Mr. Locke, and (it may be) five or fix more fince the creation of the world, may have had a right to abfence, from that intense thought which the things they were inveftiga ting required. But if a young man, and a man of the world, who has no fuch avocations to plead, will claim and exercife that right of abfence in company, his pretended right should, in my mind, be turned into an involuntary abfence, by his perpetual exclufion out of company. However frivolous a company may be, ftill, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them fo; but rather take their tone, and conform in fome degree to their weakness, inftead of manifefting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive lefs, than contempt; and an injury is much fooner forgotten than an infult. If therefore you would rather please than off nd, rather be well than ill fpoken of, rather be loved than hated; remember to have that conftant attention about you, which flatters every man's little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his pride, never fails to excite his refentment, or at leaft his ill-will. For instance, most people (I may fay all people) have their weakneffes; they have their averfions and their likings to fuch and fuch things; fo that, if you wereto laugh at a man forhis averfion to a cat or cheese (which are common antipathies) or, by inattention and negligence, to let them come in his way, where you could prevent it, he would, in the first cafe, think himself infulted, and, in the fecond, flighted-and would remember both: whereas your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he hates, fhows him, that he is at leaft an object of your attention; flatters his vanity, and makes him poffibly more your friend than a more important fervice would have done. With regard to women, attentions ftill below these are neceffary, and, by the custom of the world, in fome measure due, according to the laws of good-breeding. in My long and frequent letters which I fend you, great doubt of their fuccefs, put me in mind of certain papers, which you have very lately, and I formerly, fent up to kites, along the ftring, which we call meffengers; fome of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the ftring, and but few of them got up and ftuck to the kite. But I will content myself now, as I did then, if fome of my prefent meffengers do but ftick to you.-Adieu ! LETTER XLIII. DEAR BOY, On Pleafure... Review of his own Life. PLEASUR London, March the 27th. LEASURE is the rock which most young people fplit upon; they launch out with crowded fails in queft of it, but without a compafs to direct their courfe, or reafon fufficient to fteer the veffel; for want of which, pain and fame, inftead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage. Do not think that I mean to fnarl at pleafure, like a ftoic; no, I mean to point it out, and recommend it to you, like an Epicurean: I wish you a great deal; and my only view is to hinder you from mistaking it. The character which moft young men firft aim at is, that of a man of pleafure; but they generally take it upon truft; and instead of confulting their own taste and inclinations, they blindly adopt whatever those with whom they chiefly converfe are pleased to call by the name of pleasure; and a man of pleasure, in the vulgar acceptation of that phrafe, means only a beaftly drunkard, an abandoned whore-mafter, and a profligate fwearer and curfer. As it may be of use to you, I am not unwilling, though at the fame time afhamed, to own, that the vices of my youth proceeded much more from my filly refolution of being what I heard called a man of pleafure, than from my own inclinations. Ialways naturally hated drinking; and yet I have often drunk, with difguft at the time, attended by great ficknefs the next day, only because I then confidered drinking as a neceffary qualification for a fine gentleman, and a man of pleasure. The fame as to gaming. I did not want money, and confequently had no occafion to play for it; but F thought play another neceffary ingredient in the com |