I do not wish to give you a learned essay on books, nor to advise you what authors to read. Your taste is now matured, and that faculty will see that justice is done to its delicacy. The great object of study is to teach us how, and not what to think; and the principal art of authorship is the power of pilfering with judgment from the ruins of ancient lore. But trust not to this poor and suspicious honor. Rely for success on the daring emprise of your own genius, and should it fail to lift you from the earth, descend not to the dunghill of pedantry. Be a poet for the women—a historian for the men—and a scholar for your own happiness. Confirm your taste by satiating memory with the beauties of the Spectator, and let Horace hourly talk you into the dignity and elegance of the sensible gentleman. Be accurate, rather than extensive, in your knowledge of history, and a recollection of dates will give you victory in every contest. Learn the technicalities of geometry; for this will satisfy the groping mathematician, while the world will take your pedantry for wisdom, and your crabbed words for learning. There has been, and ever will be, an everlasting conflict between the radiant course of genius, and the mole-hill track of diagrams and problems. Strength of mind is claimed as the attribute of mathematical study, while we forget that any other study, pursued with the same strictness of attention, will equally fashion the mind into system and method, while it will be free from the slavish obedience and indurated dulness, which result from the memory of lines and proportions.
You know, my dear boy, my notions concerning your dress. Express nothing in fancy; and without being the Alpha or Omega of fashion, be neither fop nor sloven, and dress for the effect of general and not particular dignity, and never wear a striped cravat. Do not ape eccentricity of manner and opinion, and take the world in a laughing and good humored mood. I detest a beardless Cato, for I never knew one of them, who could stand fire. Talk to women about every thing but prudence and propriety, and they will think you as wise as you are well bred; for they cannot bear the restraint of advice, or the judgment of criticism. Tasso makes his heroine taunt Rinaldo with gravity and sedateness, and when she calls him a "Zenocrates in love" the volume of her eloquence exhibits the bitterest venom of female invective.
Chalgrave is now still, solitary, and deserted; and were it not for Lucy's cheerful voice, I should look on myself as a living tomb. Your pup Gildippe tore off the cover of my Elzevir Horace, an offence deserving a halter, yet she is pardoned for your sake. Tell me not of Sir Isaac Newton's diamond, for he never destroyed a jewel so rare, and so highly prized—ask Col. H. if a colt is best broken in a snaffle-bit—and tell him 'tis downright superstition to worm a genuine pointer. I send the pistols made by Wodgen and Barton, and carrying a ball of the most approved weight. Do write to me, and never forget that you are a Granby.
I am, my dear boy,
Yours truly,
CHARLES GRANBY.
P. S. Translate the Ode to Fortune for me! Old Schrevelli said that he had rather be the author of that poem, than the Emperor of all the Austrias, and there was more sense than enthusiasm in his noble preference.
P. S. Never scrape your bullets with a knife—but use a flat file. Do not play the flute; and never write verses on a "flower presented to a lady," on "a lady singing," or on "receiving a lock of hair;" for of all puppyism, this is the smallest accomplishment.
P. S. Never buy a gaudy handkerchief! Do not say raised, disremember, expect for suspect; and never end the common courtesies of conversation with the frigid Sir! "Thank ye Sir!" Drink tea instead of coffee, for 'tis more patrician; and do not render yourself suspected by pronouncing criticisms on wines.
The postscripts were multiplied through a full page, which presented a striking picture of all the odd conceits—incongruous notions, and broad feeling which tortured my kind uncle's tranquil brain, and I arose from the perusal of his letter with mingled emotions of love, respect, and laughter. Lucy's epistle was like that of all girls, full of small news, long words, and burning sentences of love and sentiment, and inquiring in a postscript of the health of Arthur Ludwell, as her mother was greatly interested in his welfare. Frederick gave me a learned dissertation on the origin of civil society, and the philosophy of Bolingbroke, scourging me into frantic ambition, and ending with a prayer that I would ever keep my honor untainted. My honor was then the subject of their hopes and fears; and, as I eyed the pistols, I found the fierceness of my nature lurking with a tranquil rapture around the open, and undisguised hints of my family. To my temperament, the neat and elegant workmanship, and the beautiful polish of the pistols, argued sternness and chivalry: and under the protection of the code of honor, I was determined, by braving every conflict, to gratify my long, deep, and vindictive hate of Pilton. How curiously constituted, how wayward, and yet how uncontrollable is the swelling pulse of the human heart, when agitated by some momentary and master passion; at any other period, the remembrance of Isa Gordon, would have soothed me into a lover's thoughtful gloom, but now every gentle and luxuriant tendril which was woven around my heart was a crushed and bleeding ruin, and I examined my uncle's gift of blood—only to murmur the name of Pilton.
My visits to Miss Pilton's had been attentive, and constant, and I had concealed my fraud with such art, that I found her listening with unhesitating confidence, to the deceitful passion which I daily uttered. Cautious of proposing matrimony, yet ever alert to hint it—affecting distress and melancholy—and alternately jealous and confiding, I awoke her sympathy, only to gain her passionate and abiding affection, while I secured my victory by every art which duplicity could invent, or falsehood suggest. I saw her reject the accomplished and educated youth whose pure and guileless feelings had retained the early romance of childhood's love, and when I found her in tears, with her head reclining on my bosom, she told me, with a blushing cheek, that she had sacrificed him, whose singleness and purity of heart she could not doubt, for me alone.