you in the learned world, Latin alone will not:  and Greek must be sought to be retained, for it never occurs like Latin.  When you read history or other books of amusement, let every language you are master of have its turn, so that you may not only retain, but improve in everyone.  I also desire that you will converse in German and Italian, with all the Germans and the Italians with whom you converse at all.  This will be a very agreeable and flattering thing to them, and a very useful one to you.

Pray apply yourself diligently to your exercises; for though the doing them well is not supremely meritorious, the doing them ill is illiberal, vulgar, and ridiculous.

I recommend theatrical representations to you; which are excellent at Paris.  The tragedies of Corneille and Racine, and the comedies of Moliere, well attended to, are admirable lessons, both for the heart and the head.  There is not, nor ever was, any theatre comparable to the French.  If the music of the French operas does not please your Italian ear, the words of them, at least, are sense and poetry, which is much more than I can, say of any Italian opera that I ever read or heard in my life.

I send you the inclosed letter of recommendation to Marquis Matignon, which I would have you deliver to him as soon as you can; you will, I am sure, feel the good effects of his warm friendship for me and Lord Bolingbroke, who has also wrote to him upon your subject.  By that, and by the other letters which I have sent you, you will be at once so thoroughly introduced into the best French company, that you must take some pains if you will keep bad; but that is what I do not suspect you of.  You have, I am sure, too much right ambition to prefer low and disgraceful company to that of your superiors, both in rank and age.  Your character, and consequently your fortune, absolutely depends upon the company you keep, and the turn you take at Paris.  I do not in the least mean a grave turn; on the contrary, a gay, a sprightly, but, at the same time, an elegant and liberal one.

Keep carefully out of all scrapes and quarrels.  They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France; where a man is dishonored by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it.  The young Frenchmen are hasty, giddy, and petulant; extremely national, and ‘avantageux’.  Forbear from any national jokes or reflections, which are always improper, and commonly unjust.  The colder northern nations generally look upon France as a whistling, singing, dancing, frivolous nation; this notion is very far from being a true one, though many ‘Petits maitres’ by their behavior seem to justify it; but those very ‘petits maltres’, when mellowed by age and experience, very often turn out very able men.  The number of great generals and statesmen, as well as excellent authors, that France has produced, is an undeniable proof, that it is not that frivolous, unthinking, empty nation that northern prejudices suppose it.  Seem to like and approve of everything at first, and I promise you that you will like and approve of many things afterward.