I have been very ill this last fortnight, of your old Carniolian complaint, the ‘arthritis vaga’; luckily, it did not fall upon my breast, but seized on my right arm; there it fixed its seat of empire; but, as in all tyrannical governments, the remotest parts felt their share of its severity.  Last post I was not able to hold a pen long enough to write to you, and therefore desired Mr. Grevenkop to do it for me; but that letter was directed to Berlin.  My pain is now much abated, though I have still some fine remains of it in my shoulder, where I fear it will tease me a great while.  I must be careful to take Horace’s advice, and consider well, ‘Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent’.

Lady Chesterfield bids me make you her compliments, and assure you that the music will be much more welcome to her with you, than without you.

In some of my last letters, which were directed to, and will, I suppose, wait for you at Berlin, I complimented you, and with justice, upon your great improvement of late in the epistolary way, both with regard to the style and the turn of your letters; your four or five last to me have been very good ones, and one that you wrote to Mr. Harte, upon the new year, was so pretty a one, and he was so much and so justly pleased with it, that he sent it me from Windsor the instant he had read it.  This talent (and a most necessary one it is in the course of life) is to be acquired by resolving, and taking pains to acquire it; and, indeed, so is every talent except poetry, which is undoubtedly a gift.  Think, therefore, night and day, of the turn, the purity, the correctness, the perspicuity, and the elegance of whatever you speak or write; take my word for it, your labor will not be in vain, but greatly rewarded by the harvest of praise and success which it will bring you.  Delicacy of turn, and elegance of style, are ornaments as necessary to common sense, as attentions, address, and fashionable manners, are to common civility; both may subsist without them, but then, without being of the least use to the owner.  The figure of a man is exactly the same in dirty rags, or in the finest and best chosen clothes; but in which of the two he is the most likely to please, and to be received in good company, I leave to you to determine.

Both my arm and my paper hint to me, to bid you good-night.

LETTER CXCV

London, February 12, 1754.

My dear friend:  I take my aim, and let off this letter at you at Berlin; I should be sorry it missed you, because I believe you will read it with as much pleasure as I write it.  It is to inform you, that, after some difficulties and dangers, your seat in the new parliament is at last absolutely secured, and that without opposition, or the least necessity of your personal trouble or appearance.  This success, I must further inform you, is in a great degree owing to Mr. Eliot’s friendship to us both; for he brings you in with himself at his surest borough.  As it was impossible to act with more zeal and friendship than Mr. Eliot has acted in this whole affair, I desire that you will, by the very next post, write him a letter of thanks, warm and young thanks, not old and cold ones.  You may inclose it in yours to me, and, I will send it to him, for he is now in Cornwall.