LETTER CXCIII

London, January 15, 1754

My dear friend:  I have this moment received your letter of the 26th past from Munich.  Since you are got so well out of the distress and dangers of your journey from Manheim, I am glad that you were in them: 

          “Condisce i diletti
          Memorie di pene,
          Ne sa che sia bene
          Chi mal non soffri.”

They were but little samples of the much greater distress and dangers which you must expect to meet within your great, and I hope, long journey through life.  In some parts of it, flowers are scattered, with profusion, the road is smooth, and the prospect pleasant:  but in others (and I fear the greater number) the road is rugged, beset with thorns and briars, and cut by torrents.  Gather the flowers in your way; but, at the same time, guard against the briars that are either mixed with them, or that most certainly succeed them.

I thank you for your wild boar; who, now he is dead, I assure him, ’se laissera bien manger malgre qu’il en ait’; though I am not so sure that I should have had that personal valor which so successfully distinguished you in single combat with him, which made him bite the dust like Homer’s heroes, and, to conclude my period sublimely, put him into that Pickle, from which I propose eating him.  At the same time that I applaud your valor, I must do justice to your modesty; which candidly admits that you were not overmatched, and that your adversary was about your own age and size.  A Maracassin, being under a year old, would have been below your indignation.  ‘Bete de compagne’, being under two years old, was still, in my opinion, below your glory; but I guess that your enemy was ‘un Ragot’, that is, from two to three years old; an age and size which, between man and boar, answer pretty well to yours.

If accidents of bad roads or waters do not detain you at Munich, I do not fancy that pleasures will:  and I rather believe you will seek for, and find them, at the Carnival at Berlin; in which supposition, I eventually direct this letter to your banker there.  While you are at Berlin (I earnestly recommend it to you again and again) pray care to see, hear, know, and mind, everything there.  The ablest prince in Europe is surely an object that deserves attention; and the least thing that he does, like the smallest sketches of the greatest painters, has its value, and a considerable one too.

Read with care the Code Frederick, and inform yourself of the good effects of it in those parts of, his dominions where it has taken place, and where it has banished the former chicanes, quirks, and quibbles of the old law.  Do not think any detail too minute or trifling for your inquiry and observation.  I wish that you could find one hour’s leisure every day, to read some good Italian author, and to converse in that language with our worthy friend Signor Angelo Cori; it would both refresh and improve your Italian, which, of the many languages you know, I take to be that in which you are the least perfect; but of which, too, you already know enough to make yourself master of, with very little trouble, whenever you please.