I hope our two boys are well, for then I am sure you are so.  I am, with great truth and esteem, your most faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield.

LETTER CCCXV

Bath, October 28, 1769.

Madam:  Your kind anxiety for my health and life is more than, in my opinion, they are both worth; without the former the latter is a burden; and, indeed, I am very weary of it.  I think I have got some benefit by drinking these waters, and by bathing, for my old stiff, rheumatic limbs; for, I believe, I could now outcrawl a snail, or perhaps even a tortoise.

I hope the boys are well.  Phil, I dare say, has been in some scrapes; but he will get triumphantly out of them, by dint of strength and resolution.  I am, with great truth and esteem, your most faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield.

LETTER CCCXVI

Bath, November 5, 1769.

Madam:  I remember very well the paragraph which you quote from a letter of mine to Mrs. du Bouchet, and see no reason yet to retract that opinion, in general, which at least nineteen widows in twenty had authorized.  I had not then the pleasure of your acquaintance:  I had seen you but twice or thrice; and I had no reason to think that you would deviate, as you have done, from other widows, so much as to put perpetual shackles upon yourself, for the sake of your children.  But (if I may use a vulgarism) one swallow makes no summer:  five righteous were formerly necessary to save a city, and they could not be found; so, till I find four more such righteous widows as yourself, I shall entertain my former notions of widowhood in general.

I can assure you that I drink here very soberly and cautiously, and at the same time keep so cool a diet that I do not find the least symptom of heat, much less of inflammation.  By the way, I never had that complaint, in consequence of having drank these waters; for I have had it but four times, and always in the middle of summer.  Mr. Hawkins is timorous, even to minutia, and my sister delights in them.

Charles will be a scholar, if you please; but our little Philip, without being one, will be something or other as good, though I do not yet guess what.  I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country, that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life.  Useful knowledge in my opinion consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement.

You are, by this time, certainly tired with this long letter, which I could prove to you from Horace’s own words (for I am a scholar) to be a bad one; he says, that water-drinkers can write nothing good:  so I am, with real truth and esteem, your most faithful, humble servant, Chesterfield.