Just as I had written what goes before, I received your letter of the 24th, N. S., but I have not received that which you mention for Mr. Harte.  Yours is of the kind that I desire; for I want to see your private picture, drawn by yourself, at different sittings; for though, as it is drawn by yourself, I presume you will take the most advantageous likeness, yet I think that I have skill enough in that kind of painting to discover the true features, though ever so artfully colored, or thrown into skillful lights and shades.

By your account of the German play, which I do not know whether I should call tragedy or comedy, the only shining part of it (since I am in a way of quibbling) seems to have been the fox’s tail.  I presume, too, that the play has had the same fate with the squib, and has gone off no more.  I remember a squib much better applied, when it was made the device of the colors of a French regiment of grenadiers; it was represented bursting, with this motto under it:  ‘Peream dum luceam’.

I like the description of your pic-NIC; where I take it for granted, that your cards are only to break the formality of a circle, and your SYMPOSION intended more to promote conversation than drinking.  Such an amicable collision, as Lord Shaftesbury very prettily calls it, rubs off and smooths those rough corners which mere nature has given to the smoothest of us.  I hope some part, at least, of the conversation is in German.  ‘A propos’:  tell me do you speak that language correctly, and do you write it with ease?  I have no doubt of your mastering the other modern languages, which are much easier, and occur much oftener; for which reason, I desire that you will apply most diligently to German, while you are in Germany, that you may speak and write that language most correctly.

I expect to meet Mr. Eliot in London, in about three weeks, after which you will soon see him at Leipsig.  Adieu.

LETTER LVI

London, November 18, O. S. 1748.

Dear boy:  Whatever I see or whatever I hear, my first consideration is, whether it can in any way be useful to you.  As a proof of this, I went accidentally the other day into a print-shop, where, among many others, I found one print from a famous design of Carlo Maratti, who died about thirty years ago, and was the last eminent painter in Europe:  the subject is ‘il Studio del Disegno’; or “The School of Drawing.”  An old man, supposed to be the master, points to his scholars, who are variously employed in perspective, geometry, and the observation of the statues of antiquity.  With regard to perspective, of which there are some little specimens, he has wrote, ‘Tanto che basti’, that is, “As much as is sufficient”; with regard to geometry, ‘Tanto che basti’ again; with regard to the contemplation of the ancient statues, there is written, ’Non mai a bastanza’,—­“There