I shall receive just such accounts of your conduct at Paris as I could wish; for I tell you beforehand, that I shall be most minutely informed of all that you do, and almost of all that you say there.  Enjoy the pleasures of youth, you cannot do better:  but refine and dignify them like a man, of parts; let them raise, and not sink; let them adorn and not vilify your character; let them, in short, be the pleasures of a gentleman, and taken with your equals at least, but rather with your superiors, and those chiefly French.

Inquire into the characters of the several Academicians, before you form a connection with any of them; and be most upon your guard against those who make the most court to you.

You cannot study much in the Academy; but you may study usefully there, if you are an economist of your time, and bestow only upon good books those quarters and halves of hours, which occur to everybody in the course of almost every day; and which, at the year’s end, amount to a very considerable sum of time.  Let Greek, without fail, share some part of every day; I do not mean the Greek poets, the catches of Anacreon, or the tender complaints of Theocritus, or even the porter-like language of Homer’s heroes; of whom all smatterers in Greek know a little, quote often, and talk of always; but I mean Plato, Aristoteles, Demosthenes, and Thucydides, whom none but adepts know.  It is Greek that must distinguish you in the learned world, Latin alone will not:  and Greek must be sought to be retained, for it never occurs like Latin.  When you read history or other books of amusement, let every language you are master of have its turn, so that you may not only retain, but improve in everyone.  I also desire that you will converse in German and Italian, with all the Germans and the Italians with whom you converse at all.  This will be a very agreeable and flattering thing to them, and a very useful one to you.

Pray apply yourself diligently to your exercises; for though the doing them well is not supremely meritorious, the doing them ill is illiberal, vulgar, and ridiculous.

I recommend theatrical representations to you; which are excellent at Paris.  The tragedies of Corneille and Racine, and the comedies of Moliere, well attended to, are admirable lessons, both for the heart and the head.  There is not, nor ever was, any theatre comparable to the French.  If the music of the French operas does not please your Italian ear, the words of them, at least, are sense and poetry, which is much more than I can, say of any Italian opera that I ever read or heard in my life.