these require attention, or else your time is quite lost. There are a great many people who think themselves employed all day, and who if they were to cast up their accounts at night, would find that they had done just nothing. They have read two or three hours mechanically, without attending to what they read, and consequently without either retaining it or reasoning upon it. From thence they saunter into company, without taking any part in it, and without observing the characters of the persons or the subjects of the conversation; but are either thinking of some trifle, foreign to the present purpose, or often not thinking at all, — which silly and idle suspension of thought they would dignify with the name of absence and distraction. They go afterwards, it may be, to the play, where they gape at the company and the lights, but without minding the very thing they went to, the play. XVII. A WISE GUIDE THE BEST FRIEND. LONDON, Nov. 24, 1747. Whatever your pleasures may be, I neither can nor shall envy you them, as old people are sometimes suspected by young people to do; and I shall only lament, if they should prove such as are unbecoming a man of honor or below a man of sense. But you will be the real sufferer if they are such. As therefore it is plain that I can have no other motive than that of affection in whatever I say to you, you ought to look upon me as your best, and for some years to come, your only friend. True friendship requires certain proportions of age and manners, and can never subsist where they are extremely different, except in the relations of parent and child, where affection on one side and regard on the other make up the difference. The friendship which you may contract with people of your own age may be sincere, may be warm, but must be for some time reciprocally unprofitable, as there can be no experience on either side. The young leading the young is like the blind leading the blind," they will both fall into the ditch." The only sure guide is he who has often gone the road which you want to go. Let me be that guide, who have gone all roads, and who can consequently point out to you the best. If you ask me why I went any of the bad roads myself, I will answer you very truly that it was for want of a good guide; ill example invited me one way, and a good guide was wanting to show me a better. But if anybody capable of advising me had taken the same pains with me which I have taken, and will continue to take with you, I should have avoided many follies and inconveniences which undirected youth run me into. My father was neither desirous nor able to advise me;1 which is what, I 1 Lord Chesterfield's father seems to have contracted a dislike to him; and his early training fell to the care of his grandmother, Lady Halifax. hope, you cannot say of yours. You see that I make use only of the word "advice," because I would much rather have the assent of your reason to my advice than the submission of your will to my authority. This, I persuade myself, will happen from that degree of sense which I think you have; and therefore I will go on advising, and with hopes of success. XVIII. THE VALUE OF TIME. LONDON, Dec. 11, O. S. 1747. DEAR BOY, There is nothing which I more wish that you should know, and which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of Time. It is in everybody's mouth, but in few people's practice. Every fool who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove at once the value and the fleetness of time. The sun-dials, likewise, all over Europe have some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that nobody squanders away their time without hearing and seeing daily how necessary it is to employ it well, and how irrecoverable it is if lost. But all these admonitions are useless where there is not a fund of good sense and reason to suggest them rather than receive them. By the manner in which you now tell me that you employ your time, I flatter myself that you have that fund; that is the fund which will make you rich indeed. I do not therefore mean to give you a critical essay upon the use and abuse of time, but I will only give you some hints with regard to the use of one particular period of that long time which, I hope, you have before you; I mean the next two years. Remember then, that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be the master of while you breathe. Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old. I neither require nor expect from you great application to books after you are once thrown out into the great world. I know it is impossible, and it may even in some cases be improper; this therefore is your time, and your only time, for unwearied and uninterrupted application. If you should sometimes think it a little laborious, consider that labor is the unavoidable fatigue of a necessary journey. The more hours a day you travel, the sooner you will be at your journey's end. The sooner you are qualified for your liberty, the sooner you shall have it; and your manumission will entirely depend upon the manner in which you employ the intermediate time. I think I offer you a very good bargain when I promise you upon my word that if you will do everything that I would have you do till you are eighteen, I will do everything that you would have me do ever afterwards. XIX. TIME WELL AND TIME ILL SPENT. -OBSERVATION RECOMMENDED. BATH, Feb. 16, o. s. 1748. DEAR BOY, The first use that I made of my liberty 1 was to come hither, where I arrived yesterday. My health, though not fundamentally bad, yet for want of proper attention of late wanted some repairs, which these waters never fail giving it. I shall drink them a month, and return to London, there to enjoy the comforts of social life instead of groaning under the load of business. I have given the description of the life that I propose to lead for the future in this motto, which I have put up in the frieze of my library in my new house,2 Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et, inertibus horis I must observe to you upon this occasion that the uninterrupted satisfaction which I expect to find in that library will be chiefly owing to my having employed some part of my life well at your age. I wish I had employed it better, and my satisfaction would now be complete; but, however, I planted while young that degree of knowledge which is now my refuge and my shelter. Make your plantations still more extensive; they will more than pay you for your trouble. I do not regret the time that I passed 1 He had just resigned the office of Secretary of State. 2 Chesterfield House in London. |