Letters to His Son 1746-47 | Page 6

be better or worse;

though at best you will now and then find some bad roads, and some
bad inns. Take care, therefore, to keep that necessary 'voiture' in perfect
good repair; examine, improve, and strengthen it every day: it is in the
power, and ought to be the care, of every man to do it; he that neglects
it, deserves to feel, and certainly will feel, the fatal effects of that
negligence.
'A propos' of negligence: I must say something to you upon that subject.
You know I have often told you, that my affection for you was not a
weak, womanish one; and, far from blinding me, it makes me but more
quick- sighted as to your faults; those it is not only my right, but my
duty to tell you of; and it is your duty and your interest to correct them.
In the strict scrutiny which I have made into you, I have (thank God)
hitherto not discovered any vice of the heart, or any peculiar weakness
of the head: but I have discovered laziness, inattention, and indifference;
faults which are only pardonable in old men, who, in the decline of life,
when health and spirits fail, have a kind of claim to that sort of
tranquillity. But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel;
alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar,
'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum.' You seem to want
that 'vivida vis animi,' which spurs and excites most young men to
please, to shine, to excel. Without the desire and the pains necessary to
be considerable, depend upon it, you never can be so; as, without the
desire and attention necessary to please, you never can please. 'Nullum
numen abest, si sit prudentia,' is unquestionably true, with regard to
everything except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of common
understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labor, make
himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet. Your destination is
the great and busy world; your immediate object is the affairs, the
interests, and the history, the constitutions, the customs, and the
manners of the several parts of Europe. In this, any man of common
sense may, by common application, be sure to excel. Ancient and
modern history are, by attention, easily attainable. Geography and
chronology the same, none of them requiring any uncommon share of
genius or invention. Speaking and Writing, clearly, correctly, and with
ease and grace, are certainly to be acquired, by reading the best authors
with care, and by attention to the best living models. These are the
qualifications more particularly necessary for you, in your department,

which you may be possessed of, if you please; and which, I tell you
fairly, I shall be very angry at you, if you are not; because, as you have
the means in your hands, it will be your own fault only.
If care and application are necessary to the acquiring of those
qualifications, without which you can never be considerable, nor make
a figure in the world, they are not less necessary with regard to the
lesser accomplishments, which are requisite to make you agreeable and
pleasing in society. In truth, whatever is worth doing at all, is worth
doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention: I therefore
carry the necessity of attention down to the lowest things, even to
dancing and dress. Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for
a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it that you may learn to
do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act. Dress is of
the same nature; you must dress; therefore attend to it; not in order to
rival or to excel a fop in it, but in order to avoid singularity, and
consequently ridicule. Take great care always to be dressed like the
reasonable people of your own age, in the place where you are; whose
dress is never spoken of one way or another, as either too negligent or
too much studied.
What is commonly called an absent man, is commonly either a very
weak, or a very affected man; but be he which he will, he is, I am sure,
a very disagreeable man in company. He fails in all the common offices
of civility; he seems not to know those people to-day, whom yesterday
he appeared to live in intimacy with. He takes no part in the general
conversation; but, on the contrary, breaks into it from time to time, with
some start of his own, as if he waked from a dream. This (as I said
before) is a sure indication, either of a mind so weak that it is not able
to bear above one