When you are with ‘des gens de robe’, suck them with regard to the constitution, and civil government, and ‘sic de caeteris’.  This shows you the advantage of keeping a great deal of different French company; an advantage much superior to any that you can possibly receive from loitering and sauntering away evenings in any English company at Paris, not even excepting Lord A------.  Love of ease, and fear of restraint (to both which I doubt you are, for a young fellow, too much addicted) may invite you among your countrymen:  but pray withstand those mean temptations, ‘et prenez sur vous’, for the sake of being in those assemblies, which alone can inform your mind and improve your manners.  You have not now many months to continue at Paris; make the most of them; get into every house there, if you can; extend acquaintance, know everything and everybody there; that when you leave it for other places, you may be ‘au fait’, and even able to explain whatever you may hear mentioned concerning it.  Adieu.

LETTER CLXI

London, March 2, O. S. 1752.

My dear friend:  Whereabouts are you in Ariosto?  Or have you gone through that most ingenious contexture of truth and lies, of serious and extravagant, of knights-errant, magicians, and all that various matter which he announces in the beginning of his poem: 

        Le Donne, I Cavalier, l’arme, gli amori,
        Le cortesie, l’audaci impreso io canto.

I am by no means sure that Homer had superior invention, or excelled more in description than Ariosto.  What can be more seducing and voluptuous, than the description of Alcina’s person and palace?  What more ingeniously extravagant, than the search made in the moon for Orlando’s lost wits, and the account of other people’s that were found there?  The whole is worth your attention, not only as an ingenious poem, but as the source of all modern tales, novels, fables, and romances; as Ovid’s “Metamorphoses;” was of the ancient ones; besides, that when you have read this work, nothing will be difficult to you in the Italian language.  You will read Tasso’s ‘Gierusalemme’, and the ‘Decamerone di Boccacio’, with great facility afterward; and when you have read those three authors, you will, in my opinion, have read all the works of invention that are worth reading in that language; though the Italians would be very angry at me for saying so.

A gentleman should know those which I call classical works, in every language; such as Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, etc., in French; Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, etc., in English; and the three authors above mentioned in Italian; whether you have any such in German I am not quite sure, nor, indeed, am I inquisitive.  These sort of books adorn the mind, improve the fancy, are frequently alluded to by, and are often the subjects of conversations of the best companies.  As you have languages to read, and memory to retain them, the knowledge of them is very well worth the little pains it will cost you, and will enable you to shine in company.  It is not pedantic to quote and allude to them, which it would be with regard to the ancients.