Adieu!  I will conclude like a pedant, ’Levius fit patientia quicquid corrigere est nefas.’

LETTER CCXLII

London, April 16, 1759

My dear friend:  With humble submission to you, I still say that if Prince Ferdinand can make a defensive campaign this year, he will have done a great deal, considering the great inequality of numbers.  The little advantages of taking a regiment or two prisoners, or cutting another to pieces, are but trifling articles in the great account; they are only the pence, the pounds are yet to come; and I take it for granted, that neither the French, nor the Court of Vienna, will have ‘le dementi’ of their main object, which is unquestionably Hanover; for that is the ‘summa summarum’; and they will certainly take care to draw a force together for this purpose, too great for any that Prince Ferdinand has, or can have, to oppose them.  In short, mark the end on’t, ’j’en augure mal’.  If France, Austria, the Empire, Russia, and Sweden, are not, at long run, too hard for the two Electors of Hanover and Brandenburg, there must be some invisible power, some tutelar deities, that miraculously interpose in favor of the latter.

You encourage me to accept all the powers that goats, asses, and bulls, can give me, by engaging for my not making an ill use of them; but I own, I cannot help distrusting myself a little, or rather human nature; for it is an old and very true observation, that there are misers of money, but none of power; and the non-use of the one, and the abuse of the other, increase in proportion to their quantity.

I am very sorry to tell you that Harte’s “Gustavus Adolphus” does not take at all, and consequently sells very little:  it is certainly informing, and full of good matter; but it is as certain too, that the style is execrable:  where the devil he picked it up, I cannot conceive, for it is a bad style, of a new and singular kind; it is full of Latinisms, Gallicisms, Germanisms, and all isms but Anglicisms; in some places pompous, in others vulgar and low.  Surely, before the end of the world, people, and you in particular, will discover that the manner, in everything, is at least as important as the matter; and that the latter never can please, without a good degree of elegance in the former.  This holds true in everything in life:  in writing, conversing, business, the help of the Graces is absolutely necessary; and whoever vainly thinks himself above them, will find he is mistaken when it will be too late to court them, for they will not come to strangers of an advanced age.  There is an history lately come out, of the “Reign of Mary Queen of Scots” and her son (no matter by whom) King James, written by one Robertson, a Scotchman, which for clearness, purity, and dignity of style, I will not scruple to compare with the best historians extant, not excepting Davila, Guicciardini, and perhaps Livy.  Its success has consequently been great, and a second edition is already published and bought up.  I take it for granted, that it is to be had, or at least borrowed, at Hamburg, or I would send it to you.