I long to read Voltaire’s ‘Rome Sauvee’, which, by the very faults that your severe critics find with it, I am sure I shall like; for I will at an any time give up a good deal of regularity for a great deal of brillant; and for the brillant surely nobody is equal to Voltaire.  Catiline’s conspiracy is an unhappy subject for a tragedy; it is too single, and gives no opportunity to the poet to excite any of the tender passions; the whole is one intended act of horror, Crebillon was sensible of this defect, and to create another interest, most absurdly made Catiline in love with Cicero’s daughter, and her with him.

I am very glad that you went to Versailles, and dined with Monsieur de St. Contest.  That is company to learn ‘les bonnes manieres’ in; and it seems you had ‘les bonnes morceaux’ into the bargain.  Though you were no part of the King of France’s conversation with the foreign ministers, and probably not much entertained with it, do you think that it is not very useful to you to hear it, and to observe the turn and manners of people of that sort?  It is extremely useful to know it well.  The same in the next rank of people, such as ministers of state, etc., in whose company, though you cannot yet, at your age, bear a part, and consequently be diverted, you will observe and learn, what hereafter it may be necessary for you to act.

Tell Sir John Lambert that I have this day fixed Mr. Spencer’s having his credit upon him; Mr. Hoare had also recommended him.  I believe Mr. Spencer will set out next month for some place in France, but not Paris.  I am sure he wants a great deal of France, for at present he is most entirely English:  and you know very well what I think of that.  And so we bid you heartily good-night.

LETTER CLXIII

London, March 16, O. S. 1752

My dear friend:  How do you go on with the most useful and most necessary of all studies, the study of the world?  Do you find that you gain knowledge?  And does your daily experience at once extend and demonstrate your improvement?  You will possibly ask me how you can judge of that yourself.  I will tell you a sure way of knowing.  Examine yourself, and see whether your notions of the world are changed, by experience, from what they were two years ago in theory; for that alone is one favorable symptom of improvement.  At that age (I remember it in myself) every notion that one forms is erroneous; one hath seen few models, and those none of the best, to form one’s self upon.  One thinks that everything is to be carried by spirit and vigor; that art is meanness, and that versatility and complaisance are the refuge of pusilanimity and weakness.  This most mistaken opinion gives an indelicacy, a ‘brusquerie’, and a roughness to the manners.  Fools, who can never be undeceived, retain them as long as they live:  reflection, with a little experience, makes men of sense shake