ter, but always capable of great improvement
by cultivation and experience.

You say that you want some hints for a letter to Lady Chesterfield; more
use and knowledge of the world will teach you occasionally to write and
talk genteelly, 'sup des riens', which I can tell you is a very useful
part upon worldly knowledge; for in some companies, it would be imprudent
to talk of anything else; and with very many people it is impossible to
talk of anything else; they would not understand you. Adieu.

LETTER CXLIX

LONDON, June 24, O. S. 1751

MY DEAR FRIEND: Air, address, manners, and graces are of such infinite
advantage to whoever has them, and so peculiarly and essentially
necessary for you, that now, as the time of our meeting draws near, I
tremble for fear I should not find you possessed of them; and, to tell
you the truth, I doubt you are not yet sufficiently convinced for their
importance. There is, for instance, your intimate friend, Mr. H-----, who
with great merit, deep knowledge, and a thousand good qualities, will
never make a figure in the world while he lives. Why? Merely for want of
those external and showish accomplishments, which he began the world too
late to acquire; and which, with his studious and philosophical turn, I
believe he thinks are not worth his attention. He may, very probably,
make a figure in the republic of letters, but he had ten thousand times
better make a figure as a man of the world and of business in the
republic of the United Provinces, which, take my word for it, he never
will.

As I open myself, without the least reserve, whenever I think that my
doing so can be of any use to you, I will give you a short account of
myself. When I first came into the world, which was at the age you are of
now, so that, by the way, you have got the start of me in that important
article by two or three years at least,--at nineteen I left the
University of Cambridge, where I was an absolute pedant; when I talked my
best, I quoted Horace; when I aimed at being facetious, I quoted Martial;
and when I had a mind to be a fine gentleman, I talked Ovid. I was
convinced that none but the ancients had common sense; that the classics
contained everything that was either necessary, useful, or ornamental to
men; and I was not without thoughts of wearing the 'toga virilis' of the
Romans, instead of the vulgar and illiberal dress of the moderns. With
these excellent notions I went first to The Hague, wher