teach you to write a genteel, legible, liberal hand, and quick; not the hand of a procureur or a writing-master, but that sort of hand in which the first ‘Commis’ in foreign bureaus commonly write; for I tell you truly, that were I Lord Albemarle, nothing should remain in my bureau written in your present hand.  From hand to arms the transition is natural; is the carriage and motion of your arms so too?  The motion of the arms is the most material part of a man’s air, especially in dancing; the feet are not near so material.  If a man dances well from the waist upward, wears his hat well, and moves his head properly, he dances well.  Do the women say that you dress well? for that is necessary too for a young fellow.  Have you ‘un gout vif’, or a passion for anybody?  I do not ask for whom:  an Iphigenia would both give you the desire, and teach you the means to please.

In a fortnight or three weeks you will see Sir Charles Hotham at Paris, in his way to Toulouse, where he is to stay a year or two.  Pray be very civil to him, but do not carry him into company, except presenting him to Lord Albemarle; for, as he is not to stay at Paris above a week, we do not desire that he should taste of that dissipation:  you may show him a play and an opera.  Adieu, my dear child.

LETTER CXXXVI

London, March 25, O. S. 1751.

My dear friend:  What a happy period of your life is this?  Pleasure is now, and ought to be, your business.  While you were younger, dry rules, and unconnected words, were the unpleasant objects of your labors.  When you grow older, the anxiety, the vexations, the disappointments inseparable from public business, will require the greatest share of your time and attention; your pleasures may, indeed, conduce to your business, and your business will quicken your pleasures; but still your time must, at least, be divided:  whereas now it is wholly your own, and cannot be so well employed as in the pleasures of a gentleman.  The world is now the only book you want, and almost the only one you ought to read:  that necessary book can only be read in company, in public places, at meals, and in ‘ruelles’.  You must be in the pleasures, in order to learn the manners of good company.  In premeditated, or in formal business, people conceal, or at least endeavor to conceal, their characters:  whereas pleasures discover them, and the heart breaks out through the guard of the understanding.  Those are often propitious moments for skillful negotiators to improve.  In your destination particularly, the able conduct of pleasures is of infinite use; to keep a good table, and to do the honors of it gracefully, and ‘sur le ton de la bonne compagnie’, is absolutely necessary for a foreign minister.  There is a certain light table chit-chat, useful to keep off improper and too serious subjects, which is only to be learned in the pleasures of good company.  In truth it may be trifling; but, trifling as it is, a man of parts and experience of the world will give an agreeable turn to it.  ’L’art de badiner agreablement’ is by no means to be despised.