London, November 3, 1749. From the time that you have had life, it has been the principal and favourite object of mine to make you as perfect as the imperfections of human nature will allow. In this view, I have grudged no pains nor expense in your education, convinced that education, more than nature, is the cause of that great difference which you see in the characters of men. While you were a child I endeavoured to form your heart habitually to virtue and honour, before your understanding was capable of showing you their beauty and utility. Those principles, which you then got, like your grammar rules, only by rote, are now, I am persuaded, fixed and confirmed by reason.
My next object was sound and useful learning. All that remains for me then to wish, to recommend, to inculcate, to order, and to insist upon, is good breeding, without which all your other qualifications will be lame, unadorned, and to a certain degree unavailing. And here I fear, and have too much reason to believe, that you are greatly deficient. The remainder of this letter, therefore, shall be--and it will not be the last by a great many--upon the subject of good breeding.
A friend of yours and mine has very justly defined good breeding to be the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them. Taking this for granted, as I think it cannot be disputed, it is astonishing to me that anybody who has good sense and good nature, and I believe you have both, can essentially fail in good breeding. As to the modes of it, indeed, they vary according to persons and places and circumstances, and are only to be acquired by observation and experience; but the substance of it is everywhere and eternally the same. Good manners are, to particular societies, what good morals are to society in general; their cement and their security. And as laws are enacted to enforce good morals, or, at least, to prevent the ill-effects of bad ones, so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied and received, to enforce good manners, and punish bad ones.
Mutual complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences, are as natural an implied compact between civilised people as protection and obedience are between kings and subjects; whoever, in either case, violates that compact justly forfeits all advantages arising from it. For my own part, I really think that, next to the consciousness of doing a good action, that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing; and the epithet which I should covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred.
I will conclude with these axioms:
That the deepest learning, without good breeding, is unwelcome and tiresome pedantry, and of use nowhere but in a man's own closet; and, consequently, of little or no use at all.
That a man who is not perfectly well-bred, is unfit for good company, and therefore unwelcome in it; will consequently dislike it soon, afterwards renounce it, and be reduced to solitude, or, what is considerably worse, low and bad company.
IV.--The Fruits of Observation
London, September 22, 1752. The day after the date of my last, I received your letter of the 8th. I approve extremely of your intended progress. I would have you see everything with your own eyes, and hear everything with your own ears, for I know, by very long experience, that it is very unsafe to trust to other people's, Vanity and interest cause many misrepresentations, and folly causes many more. Few people have parts enough to relate exactly and judiciously; and those who have, for some reason or other, never fail to sink or to add some circumstances.
The reception which you have met with at Hanover I look upon as an omen of your being well-received everywhere else, for, to tell you the truth, it was the place that I distrusted the most in that particular. But there is a certain conduct, there are certaines manières, that will, and must, get the better of all difficulties of that kind. It is to acquire them that you still continue abroad, and go from court to court; they are personal, local, and temporal; they are modes which vary, and owe their existence to accidents, whim, and humour. All the sense and reason in the world would never point them out; nothing but experience, observation, and what is called knowledge of the world can possibly teach them.