<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0084" id="link2H_4_0084"></SPAN></p>
<h2> LETTER LXXXII </h2>
<h3> LONDON, September 22, O. S. 1749. </h3>
<p>DEAR BOY: If I had faith in philters and love potions, I should suspect
that you had given Sir Charles Williams some, by the manner in which he
speaks of you, not only to me, but to everybody else. I will not repeat to
you what he says of the extent and correctness of your knowledge, as it
might either make you vain, or persuade you that you had already enough of
what nobody can have too much. You will easily imagine how many questions
I asked, and how narrowly I sifted him upon your subject; he answered me,
and I dare say with truth, just as I could have wished; till satisfied
entirely with his accounts of your character and learning, I inquired into
other matters, intrinsically indeed of less consequence, but still of
great consequence to every man, and of more to you than to almost any man:
I mean, your address, manners, and air. To these questions, the same truth
which he had observed before, obliged him to give me much less
satisfactory answers. And as he thought himself, in friendship both to you
and me, obliged to tell me the disagreeable as well as the agreeable
truths, upon the same principle I think myself obliged to repeat them to
you.</p>
<p>He told me then, that in company you were frequently most PROVOKINGLY
inattentive, absent; and distrait; that you came into a room, and
presented yourself, very awkwardly; that at table you constantly threw
down knives, forks, napkins, bread, etc., and that you neglected your
person and dress, to a degree unpardonable at any age, and much more so at
yours.</p>
<p>These things, howsoever immaterial they may seem to people who do not know
the world, and the nature of mankind, give me, who know them to be
exceedingly material, very great concern. I have long distrusted you, and
therefore frequently admonished you, upon these articles; and I tell you
plainly, that I shall not be easy till I hear a very different account of
them. I know no one thing more offensive to a company than that
inattention and DISTRACTION. It is showing them the utmost contempt; and
people never forgive contempt. No man is distrait with the man he fears,
or the woman he loves; which is a proof that every man can get the better
of that DISTRACTION, when he thinks it worth his while to do so; and, take
my word for it, it is always worth his while. For my own part, I would
rather be in company with a dead man, than with an absent one; for if the
dead man gives me no pleasure; at least he shows me no contempt; whereas,
the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does
not think me worth his attention. Besides, can an absent man make any
observations upon the characters customs, and manners of the company? No.
He may be in the best companies all his lifetime (if they will admit him,
which, if I were they, I would not) and never be one jot the wiser. I
never will converse with an absent man; one may as well talk to a deaf
one. It is, in truth, a practical blunder, to address ourselves to a man
who we see plainly neither hears, minds, or understands us. Moreover, I
aver that no man is, in any degree, fit for either business or
conversation, who cannot and does not direct and command his attention to
the present object, be that what it will. You know, by experience, that I
grudge no expense in your education, but I will positively not keep you a
Flapper. You may read, in Dr. Swift, the description of these flappers,
and the use they were of to your friends the Laputans; whose minds
(Gulliver says) are so taken up with intense speculations, that they
neither can speak nor attend to the discourses of others, without being
roused by some external traction upon the organs of speech and hearing;
for which reason, those people who are able to afford it, always keep a
flapper in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk about,
or make visits without him. This flapper is likewise employed diligently
to attend his master in his walks; and, upon occasion, to give a soft flap
upon his eyes, because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he
is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his
head against every post, and, in the streets, of jostling others, or being
jostled into the kennel himself. If CHRISTIAN will undertake this province
into the bargain, with all my heart; but I will not allow him any increase
of wages upon that score. In short, I give you fair warning, that, when we
meet, if you are absent in mind, I will soon be absent in body; for it
will be impossible for me to stay in the room; and if at table you throw
down your knife, plate, bread, etc., and hack the wing of a chicken for
half an hour, without being able to cut it off, and your sleeve all the
time in another dish, I must rise from the table to escape the fever you
would certainly give me. Good God! how I should be shocked, if you came
into my room, for the first time, with two left legs, presenting yourself
with all the graces and dignity of a tailor, and your clothes hanging upon
you, like those in Monmouth street, upon tenter-hooks! whereas, I expect,
nay, require, to see you present yourself with the easy and genteel air of
a man of fashion, who has kept good company. I expect you not only well
dressed but very well dressed; I expect a gracefulness in all your
motions, and something particularly engaging in your address, All this I
expect, and all this it is in your power, by care and attention, to make
me find; but to tell you the plain truth, if I do not find it, we shall
not converse very much together; for I cannot stand inattention and
awkwardness; it would endanger my health. You have often seen, and I have
as often made you observe L——'s distinguished inattention and
awkwardness. Wrapped up, like a Laputan, in intense thought, and possibly
sometimes in no thought at all (which, I believe, is very often the case
with absent people), he does not know his most intimate acquaintance by
sight, or answers them as if he were at cross purposes. He leaves his hat
in one room, his sword in another, and would leave his shoes in a third,
if his buckles, though awry, did not save them: his legs and arms, by his
awkward management of them, seem to have undergone the question
extraordinaire; and his head, always hanging upon one or other of his
shoulders, seems to have received the first stroke upon a block. I
sincerely value and esteem him for his parts, learning, and virtue; but,
for the soul of me, I cannot love him in company. This will be universally
the case, in common life, of every inattentive, awkward man, let his real
merit and knowledge be ever so great. When I was of your age, I desired to
shine, as far as I was able, in every part of life; and was as attentive
to my manners, my dress, and my air, in company of evenings, as to my
books and my tutor in the mornings. A young fellow should be ambitious to
shine in everything—and, of the two, always rather overdo than
underdo. These things are by no means trifles: they are of infinite
consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great world, and who
would make a figure or a fortune in it. It is not sufficient to deserve
well; one must please well too. Awkward, disagreeable merit will never
carry anybody far. Wherever you find a good dancing-master, pray let him
put you upon your haunches; not so much for the sake of dancing, as for
coming into a room, and presenting yourself genteelly and gracefully.
Women, whom you ought to endeavor to please, cannot forgive vulgar and
awkward air and gestures; 'il leur faut du brillant'. The generality of
men are pretty like them, and are equally taken by the same exterior
graces.</p>
<p>I am very glad that you have received the diamond buckles safe; all I
desire in return for them is, that they may be buckled even upon your
feet, and that your stockings may not hide them. I should be sorry that
you were an egregious fop; but, I protest, that of the two, I would rather
have you a fop than a sloven. I think negligence in my own dress, even at
my age, when certainly I expect no advantages from my dress, would be
indecent with regard to others. I have done with fine clothes; but I will
have my plain clothes fit me, and made like other people's: In the
evenings, I recommend to you the company of women of fashion, who have a
right to attention and will be paid it. Their company will smooth your
manners, and give you a habit of attention and respect, of which you will
find the advantage among men.</p>
<p>My plan for you, from the beginning, has been to make you shine equally in
the learned and in the polite world; the former part is almost completed
to my wishes, and will, I am persuaded, in a little time more, be quite
so. The latter part is still in your power to complete; and I flatter
myself that you will do it, or else the former part will avail you very
little; especially in your department, where the exterior address and
graces do half the business; they must be the harbingers of your merit, or
your merit will be very coldly received; all can, and do judge of the
former, few of the latter.</p>
<p>Mr. Harte tells me that you have grown very much since your illness; if
you get up to five feet ten, or even nine inches, your figure will
probably be a good one; and if well dressed and genteel, will probably
please; which is a much greater advantage to a man than people commonly
think. Lord Bacon calls it a letter of recommendation.</p>
<p>I would wish you to be the omnis homo, 'l'homme universel'. You are nearer
it, if you please, than ever anybody was at your age; and if you will but,
for the course of this next year only, exert your whole attention to your
studies in the morning, and to your address, manners, air and tournure in
the evenings, you will be the man I wish you, and the man that is rarely
seen.</p>
<p>Our letters go, at best, so irregularly, and so often miscarry totally,
that for greater security I repeat the same things. So, though I
acknowledged by last post Mr. Harte's letter of the 8th September, N. S.,
I acknowledge it again by this to you. If this should find you still at
Verona, let it inform you that I wish you would set out soon for Naples;
unless Mr. Harte should think it better for you to stay at Verona, or any
other place on this side Rome, till you go there for the Jubilee. Nay, if
he likes it better, I am very willing that you should go directly from
Verona to Rome; for you cannot have too much of Rome, whether upon account
of the language, the curiosities, or the company. My only reason for
mentioning Naples, is for the sake of the climate, upon account of your
health; but if Mr. Harte thinks that your health is now so well restored
as to be above climate, he may steer your course wherever he thinks
proper: and, for aught I know, your going directly to Rome, and
consequently staying there so much the longer, may be as well as anything
else. I think you and I cannot put our affairs in better hands than in Mr.
Harte's; and I will stake his infallibility against the Pope's, with some
odds on his side. Apropos of the Pope: remember to be presented to him
before you leave Rome, and go through the necessary ceremonies for it,
whether of kissing his slipper or his b—-h; for I would never
deprive myself of anything that I wanted to do or see, by refusing to
comply with an established custom. When I was in Catholic countries, I
never declined kneeling in their churches at the elevation, nor elsewhere,
when the Host went by. It is a complaisance due to the custom of the
place, and by no means, as some silly people have imagined, an implied
approbation of their doctrine. Bodily attitudes and situations are things
so very indifferent in themselves, that I would quarrel with nobody about
them. It may, indeed, be improper for Mr. Harte to pay that tribute of
complaisance, upon account of his character.</p>
<p>This letter is a very long, and possibly a very tedious one; but my
anxiety for your perfection is so great, and particularly at this critical
and decisive period of your life, that I am only afraid of omitting, but
never of repeating, or dwelling too long upon anything that I think may be
of the least use to you. Have the same anxiety for yourself, that I have
for you, and all will do well. Adieu! my dear child.</p>
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