I do not mean that you should plod hours together in researches of this kind: no, you may employ your time more usefully: but I mean, that you should make the most of the moments you do employ, by method, and the pursuit of one single object at a time; nor should I call it a digression from that object, if when you meet with clashing and jarring pretensions of different princes to the same thing, you had immediately recourse to other books, in which those several pretensions were clearly stated; on the contrary, that is the only way of remembering those contested rights and claims: for, were a man to read ‘tout de suite’, Schwederus’s ‘Theatrum Pretensionum’, he would only be confounded by the variety, and remember none of them; whereas, by examining them occasionally, as they happen to occur, either in the course of your historical reading, or as they are agitated in your own times, you will retain them, by connecting them with those historical facts which occasioned your inquiry. For example, had you read, in the course of two or three folios of Pretensions, those, among others, of the two Kings of England and Prussia to Oost Frise, it is impossible, that you should have remembered them; but now, that they are become the debated object at the Diet at Ratisbon, and the topic of all political conversations, if you consult both books and persons concerning them, and inform yourself thoroughly, you will never forget them as long as you live. You will hear a great deal of them ow one side, at Hanover, and as much on the other side, afterward, at Berlin: hear both sides, and form your own opinion; but dispute with neither.
Letters from foreign ministers to their courts, and from their courts to them, are, if genuine, the best and most authentic records you can read, as far as they go. Cardinal d’Ossat’s, President Jeanin’s, D’Estrade’s, Sir William Temple’s, will not only inform your mind, but form your style; which, in letters of business, should be very plain and simple, but, at the same time, exceedingly clear, correct, and pure.
All that I have said may be reduced to these two or three plain principles: 1st, That you should now read very little, but converse a great deal; 2d, To read no useless, unprofitable books; and 3d, That those which you do read, may all tend to a certain object, and be relative to, and consequential of each other. In this method, half an hour’s reading every day will carry you a great way. People seldom know how to employ their time to the best advantage till they have too little left to employ; but if, at your age, in the beginning of life, people would but consider the value of it, and put every moment to interest, it is incredible what an additional fund of knowledge and pleasure such an economy would bring in. I look back with regret upon that large sum of time, which, in my youth, I lavished away idly, without either improvement or pleasure. Take warning betimes, and enjoy every moment; pleasures do not commonly last so long as life, and therefore should not be neglected; and the longest life is too short for knowledge, consequently every moment is precious.
I am surprised at having received no letter from you since you left Paris. I still direct this to Strasburgh, as I did my two last. I shall direct my next to the post house at Mayence, unless I receive, in the meantime, contrary instructions from you. Adieu. Remember les attentions: they must be your passports into good company.
LETTER CLXIX
LONDON, June, O. S. 1752.
MY DEAR FRIEND: Very few celebrated negotiators have been eminent for their learning. The most famous French negotiators (and I know no nation that can boast of abler) have been military men, as Monsieur d’Harcourt, Comte d’Estrades, Marechal d’Uxelles, and others. The late Duke of Marlborough, who was at least as able a negotiator as a general, was exceedingly ignorant of books, but extremely knowing in men, whereas the learned Grotius appeared, both in Sweden and in France, to be a very bungling minister. This is, in my opinion, very easily to be accounted for. A man of very deep learning must have employed the greatest part of his time in books; and a skillful negotiator must necessarily have employed much the greater part of his time with man. The sound scholar, when dragged out of his dusty closet into business, acts by book, and deals with men as he has read of them; not as he has known them by experience: he follows Spartan and Roman precedents, in what he falsely imagines to be similar cases; whereas two cases never were, since the beginning of the world, exactly alike; and he would be capable, where he thought spirit and vigor necessary, to draw a circle round the persons he treated with, and to insist upon a categorical answer before they went out of it, because he had read, in the Roman history, that once upon a time some Roman ambassador, did so. No; a certain degree of learning may help, but no degree of learning will ever make a skillful minister whereas a great knowledge of the world, of the characters, passions, and habits of mankind, has, without one grain of learning, made a thousand. Military men have seldom much knowledge of books; their education does not allow it; but what makes great amends for that want is, that they generally know a great deal of the world; they are thrown into it young; they see variety of nations and characters; and they soon find, that to rise, which is the aim of them all, they must first please: these concurrent causes almost always give them manners and politeness. In consequence of which, you see them always distinguished at courts, and favored by the women. I could wish that you had been of an age to have made a campaign or two as a volunteer. It would have given you an attention, a versatility, and an alertness; all which I doubt you want; and a great want it is.
A foreign minister has not great business to transact every day; so that his knowledge and his skill in negotiating are not frequently put to the trial; but he has that to do every day, and every hour of the day, which is necessary to prepare and smooth the way for his business; that is, to insinuate himself by his manners, not only into the houses, but into the confidence of the most considerable people of that place; to contribute to their pleasures, and insensibly not to be looked upon as a stranger himself. A skillful minister may very possibly be doing his master’s business full as well, in doing the honors gracefully and genteelly of a ball or a supper, as if he were laboriously writing a protocol in his closet. The Marechal d’Harcourt, by his magnificence, his manners, and his politeness, blunted the edge of the long aversion which the Spaniards had to the French. The court and the grandees were personally fond, of him, and frequented his house; and were at least insensibly brought to prefer a French to a German yoke; which I am convinced would never have happened, had Comte d’Harrach been Marechal d’Harcourt, or the Marechal d’Harcourt Comte d’Harrach. The Comte d’Estrades had, by ‘ses manieres polies et liantes’, formed such connections, and gained such an interest in the republic of the United Provinces, that Monsieur De Witt, the then Pensionary of Holland, often applied to him to use his interest with his friend, both in Holland and the other provinces, whenever he (De Witt) had a difficult point which he wanted to carry. This was certainly not brought about by his knowledge of books, but of men: dancing, fencing, and riding, with a little military architecture, were no doubt the top of his education; and if he knew that ‘collegium’ in Latin signified college in French, it must have been by accident. But he knew what was more useful: from thirteen years old he had been in the great world, and had read men and women so long, that he could then read them at sight.
Talking the other day, upon this and other subjects, all relative to you, with one who knows and loves you very well, and expressing my anxiety and wishes that your exterior accomplishments, as a man of fashion, might adorn, and at least equal your intrinsic merit as a man of sense and honor, the person interrupted me, and said: Set your heart at rest; that never will or can happen. It is not in character; that gentleness, that ‘douceur’, those attentions which you wish him to have, are not in his nature; and do what you will, nay, let him do what he will, he can never acquire them. Nature may be a little disguised and altered by care; but can by no means whatsoever be totally forced and changed. I denied this principle to a certain degree; but admitting, however, that in many respects our nature was not to be changed; and asserting, at the same time, that in others it might by care be very much altered and improved, so as in truth to be changed; that I took those exterior accomplishments, which we had been talking of, to be mere modes, and absolutely depending upon the will, and upon custom; and that, therefore, I was convinced that your good sense, which must show you the importance of them, would make you resolve at all events to acquire them, even in spite of nature, if nature be in the case. Our dispute, which lasted a great while, ended as Voltaire observes that disputes in England are apt to do, in a wager of fifty guineas; which I myself am to decide upon honor, and of which this is a faithful copy. If you think I shall win it, you may go my halves if you please; declare yourself in time. This I declare, that I would most cheerfully give a thousand guineas to win those fifty; you may secure them me if you please.