LETTER V. Bath, Jan. 24, 1754. I WILL lose not a moment before I return my most tender and warm thanks to the most amiable, valuable, and noble minded of youths, for the infinite pleasure his letter gives me. My dear nephew, what a beautiful thing is genuine goodness, and how lovely does the human mind appear, in its native purity, (in a nature as happy as yours,) before the taints of a corrupted world have touched it! To guard you from the fatal effects of all the dangers that surround and beset youth, (and many they are, nam váriæ illudunt Pestes,) I thank God, is become my pleasing and very important charge; your own choice, and our nearness in blood, and still more, a dearer and nearer relation of hearts, which I feel between us, all concur to make it so. I shall seek then every occa sion, my dear young friend, of being useful to you, by offering you those lights, which one must have lived some years in the world to see the full force and extent of, and which the best mind and clearest understanding will suggest imperfectly, in any case, and in the most difficult, delicate, and essential points perhaps not at all, till experience, that dearbought instructor, comes to our assist ance. What I shall therefore make my task, (a happy delightful task, if I prove a safeguard to so much opening virtue,) is to be for some years, what you cannot be to yourself, your experience; experience anticipated, and ready digested for your use, Thus we will endeavour, my dear child, to join the two best seasons of life, to establish your virtue and your happiness upon solid foundations: Miscens Autumni et Veris Honores. So much in general. I will now, my dear nephew, say a few things to you upon a matter where you have sur prisingly little to learn, considering you have seen nothing but Boconnock; I mean behaviour. Behaviour is of infinite advantage or prejudice to a man, as he happens to have formed it to a graceful, noble, engaging, and proper manner, or to a vulgar, coarse, ill-bred, or awkward and ungenteel one. Behaviour, though an external thing which seems rather to belong to the body than to the mind, is certainly founded in considerable virtues: though I have known instances of good men, with something very revolting and offensive in their manner of behaviour, especially when they have the misfortune to be naturally very awkward and ungenteel; and which their mistaken friends have helped to confirm them in, by telling them, they were above such trifles, as being genteel, dancing, fencing, riding, and doing all manly exercises, with grace and vigour. As if the body, because inferior, were not a part of the composition of man: and the proper, easy, ready, and graceful use of himself, both in mind and limb, did not go to make up the character of an accomplished man. You are in no danger of falling into this preposterous error: and I had a great pleasure in finding you, when I first saw you in London, so well disposed by nature, and so properly attentive to make yourself D |