Monsieur du Boccage is another of your panegyrists; and he tells me that Madame Boccage ‘a pris avec vous le ton de mie et de bonne’; and that you like it very well.  You are in the right of it; it is the way of improving; endeavor to be upon that footing with every woman you converse with; excepting where there may be a tender point of connection; a point which I have nothing to do with; but if such a one there is, I hope she has not ‘de mauvais ni de vilains bras’, which I agree with you in thinking a very disagreeable thing.

I have sent you, by the opportunity of Pollok the courier, who was once my servant, two little parcels of Greek and English books; and shall send you two more by Mr. Yorke:  but I accompany them with this caution, that as you have not much time to read, you should employ it in reading what is the most necessary, and that is, indisputably modern historical, geographical, chronological, and political knowledge; the present constitution, maxims, force, riches, trade, commerce, characters, parties, and cabals of the several courts of Europe.  Many who are reckoned good scholars, though they know pretty accurately the governments of Athens and Rome, are totally ignorant of the constitution of any one country now in Europe, even of their own.  Read just Latin and Greek enough to keep up your classical learning, which will be an ornament to you while young, and a comfort to you when old.  But the true useful knowledge, and especially for you, is the modern knowledge above mentioned.  It is that must qualify you both for domestic and foreign business, and it is to that, therefore, that you should principally direct your attention; and I know, with great pleasure, that you do so.  I would not thus commend you to yourself, if I thought commendations would have upon you those ill effects, which they frequently have upon weak minds.  I think you are much above being a vain coxcomb, overrating your own merit, and insulting others with the superabundance of it.  On the contrary, I am convinced that the consciousness of merit makes a man of sense more modest, though more firm.  A man who displays his own merit is a coxcomb, and a man who does not know it is a fool.  A man of sense knows it, exerts it, avails himself of it, but never boasts of it; and always seems rather to under than over value it, though in truth, he sets the right value upon it.  It is a very true maxim of La Bruyere’s (an author well worth your studying), ’qu’on ne vaut dans ce monde, que ce que l’on veut valoir’.  A man who is really diffident, timid, and bashful, be his merit what it will, never can push himself in the world; his despondency throws him into inaction; and the forward, the bustling, and the petulant, will always get the better of him.  The manner makes the whole difference.  What would be impudence in one manner, is only a proper and decent assurance in another.  A man of sense, and of knowledge in the world, will assert his own rights, and pursue