eminency in any branch of learning, one is not at a loss; but with those, whether men or women, who properly constitute what is called the beau monde, one must not choose deep subjects, nor hope to get any knowledge above that of orders, ranks, families, and court anecdotes; which are therefore the proper (and not altogether useless) subjects of that kind of conversation. Women, especially, are to be talked to, as below men, and above children. If you talk to them too deep, you only confound them, and lose your own labour; if you talk to them too frivolously, they perceive and resent the contempt. The proper tone for them is, what the French call the entregent, and is, in truth, the polite jargon of good company. Thus, if you are a good chymist, you may extract something out of everything.

A propos of the beau monde; I must again and again recommend the Graces to you. There is no doing without them in that world; and to make a good figure in that world is a great step towards making one in the world of business, particularly that part of it for which you are destined. An ungraceful manner of speaking, awkward motions, and a disagreeable address, are great clogs to the ablest man of business; as the opposite qualifications are of infinite advantage to him. I am therefore very glad that you learn to dance, since I am told there is a very good dancing-master at Leipsig. I would have you dance a minuet very well-not so much for the sake of the minuet itself (though that, if danced at all, ought to be danced well), as that it will give you an habitual genteel carriage, and manner of presenting yourself.

Since I am upon little things, I must mention another, which, though little enough in itself, yet, as it occurs at least once in every day, deserves some attention: I mean carving. Do you use yourself to carve adroitly and genteelly, without hacking half an hour across a bone, without bespattering the company with the sauce, and without overturning the glasses into your neighbours' pockets? These awkwardnesses are extremely disagreeable, and, if often repeated, bring ridicule. They are very easily avoided by a little attention and use.

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 orna

tum-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. Attention to all these things for the next two or three years will save you infinite trouble and endless regrets hereafter. May you, in the whole course of your life, have no reason for any one just regret ! Adieu !

Your Dresden china is arrived, and I have sent it to your Mamma.

DEAR BOY,

LXXIX.

LONDON, September 27, O.S. 1748.

I have received your Latin Lecture upon War, which, though it is not exactly the same Latin that Caesar, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid spoke, is, however, as good Latin as the erudite Germans speak or write. I have always observed, that the most learned people—that is, those who have read the most Latinwrite the worst; and this distinguishes the Latin of a gentleman scholar from that of a pedant. 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 favourite 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, optume than optimè, and any bad word, rather than any good one, provided he can but prove that, strictly speaking, it is Latinthat is, that it was written by a Roman. By this rule, I might now write to you in the language of Chaucer or Spenser, and assert that I wrote English, because it was English in their days; but I should be a most affected puppy if I did so, and you

would not understand three words of my letter. All these, and such-like affected peculiarities, are the characteristics of learned coxcombs and pedants, and are carefully avoided by all men of

sense.

I dipped, accidentally, the other day, into Pitiscus's * preface to his Lexicon, where I found a word that puzzled me, and which I did not remember ever to have met with before; it is the adverb præfisciné, which means, in a good hour-an expression which, by the superstition of it, appears to be low and vulgar. I looked for it, and at last I found that it is once or twice made use of in Plautus; upon the strength of which, this learned pedant thrusts it into his preface. Whenever you write Latin, remember that every word or phrase which you make use of, but cannot find in Cæsar, Cicero, Livy, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, is bad, illiberal Latin, though it may have been written by a Roman.

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 lentâ 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

*Born 1637, died 1727.

The opinion of Lord Chesterfield is entirely conformable to that of all great authorities upon this subject; such as Grotius, see his Droit de la Guerre, etc., livre iii. ch. iv. sec. 16, ed. Barbeyrac.-M.

me rather to warp the law, in order to authorise, 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.

it

may

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 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 anything out of anything; which is not so difficult as it would seem, if once one quits certain plain truths, obvious in gross 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,

A Spanish Jesuit (1589-1669) wrote "Cases of Conscience," etc.; his doctrines were opposed by Pascal in the Lettres Provinciales.

+George Berkeley, born 1685, F.T.C.D., 1707, Bp. of Cloyne, 1733, died 1753.

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 Leipsig, 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 subtilely 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.

I stumbled, the other day, at a bookseller's, upon Comte de Gabalis,* in two very little volumes, which I had formerly read. I read it over again, and with fresh astonishment. Most of the extravagancies are taken from the Jewish Rabbins, who broached those wild notions, and delivered them in the unintelligible jargon which the Cabalists and Rosicrucians deal in to this day. Their number is, I believe, much lessened, but there are still some; and I myself have known two, who studied and firmly believed in that mystical nonsense. What extravagancy is not man capable of entertaining, when once his shackled reason is led in triumph by fancy and prejudice! The ancient alchymists gave very much in to this stuff, by which they thought they should discover the philosopher's stone; and some of the most celebrated empirics employed it in the pursuit of the universal medicine. Paracelsus, † a bold empiric and wild cabalist, asserted that he had discovered it, and called it his Alkahest. Why, or wherefore, God knows; only that those madmen call nothing by an intelligible name. You may easily get this book from the Hague; read it, for it will both divert and astonish you; and, at the same time, teach you nil admirari; a very necessary lesson.

By the Abbé de Montfauçon de Villars, published at Paris in 1670; an English translation, entitled, "The Count of Gabalis, or the Extravagant Mysteries of the Cabalists," was published in London, 1680.

Paracelsus was born near Zurich in 1493, and died 1541.