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 to 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.

LETTER XLVII

London, August 23, O. S. 1748.

Dear boy:  Your friend, Mr. Eliot, has dined with me twice since I returned here, and I can say with truth that while I had the seals, I never examined or sifted a state prisoner with so much care and curiosity as I did him.  Nay, I did more; for, contrary to the laws of this country, I gave him in some manner, the question ordinary and extraordinary; and I have infinite pleasure in telling you that the rack which I put him to, did not extort from him one single word that was not such as I wished to hear of you.  I heartily congratulate you upon such an advantageous testimony, from so creditable a witness.  ‘Laudati a laudato viro’, is one of the greatest pleasures and honors a rational being can have; may you long continue to deserve it!  Your aversion to drinking and your dislike to gaming, which Mr. Eliot assures me are both very strong, give me, the greatest joy imaginable, for your sake:  as the former would ruin both your constitution and understanding, and the latter your fortune and character.  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 gew-gaws 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 next two 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 are only 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 desire; which is the case of very few pleasures.

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.