and it will made any book, which you shall read in that manner, very present in your mind.  Books of science, and of a grave sort, must be read with continuity; but there are very many, and even very useful ones, which may be read with advantage by snatches, and unconnectedly; such are all the good Latin poets, except Virgil in his “AEneid”:  and such are most of the modern poets, in which you will find many pieces worth reading, that will not take up above seven or eight minutes.  Bayle’s, Moreri’s, and other dictionaries, are proper books to take and shut up for the little intervals of (otherwise) idle time, that everybody has in the course of the day, between either their studies or their pleasures.  Good night.

LETTER XXII

London, December 18, O. S. 1747.

Dear Boy:  As two mails are now due from Holland,

I have no letters of yours, or Mr. Harte’s to acknowledge; so that this letter is the effect of that ‘scribendi cacoethes,’ which my fears, my hopes, and my doubts, concerning you give me.  When I have wrote you a very long letter upon any subject, it is no sooner gone, but I think I have omitted something in it, which might be of use to you; and then I prepare the supplement for the next post:  or else some new subject occurs to me, upon which I fancy I can give you some informations, or point out some rules which may be advantageous to you.  This sets me to writing again, though God knows whether to any purpose or not; a few years more can only ascertain that.  But, whatever my success may be, my anxiety and my care can only be the effects of that tender affection which I have for you; and which you cannot represent to yourself greater than it really is.  But do not mistake the nature of that affection, and think it of a kind that you may with impunity abuse.  It is not natural affection, there being in reality no such thing; for, if there were, some inward sentiment must necessarily and reciprocally discover the parent to the child, and the child to the parent, without any exterior indications, knowledge, or acquaintance whatsoever; which never happened since the creation of the world, whatever poets, romance, and novel writers, and such sentiment-mongers, may be pleased to say to the contrary.  Neither is my affection for you that of a mother, of which the only, or at least the chief objects, are health and life:  I wish you them both most heartily; but, at the same time, I confess they are by no means my principal care.

My object is to have you fit to live; which, if you are not, I do not desire that you should live at all.  My affection for you then is, and only will be, proportioned to your merit; which is the only affection that one rational being ought to have for another.  Hitherto I have discovered nothing wrong in your heart, or your head:  on the contrary I think I see sense in the one, and sentiments in the other.  This