reckoned good scholars, though they know pretty accurately the
governments of Athens and Rome, are totally ignorant of the constitution
of any one country now in Europe, even of their own. Read just Latin and
Greek enough to keep up your classical learning, which will be an
ornament to you while young, and a comfort to you when old. But the true
useful knowledge, and especially for you, is the modern knowledge above
mentioned. It is that must qualify you both for domestic and foreign
business, and it is to that, therefore, that you should principally
direct your attention; and I know, with great pleasure, that you do so. I
would not thus commend you to yourself, if I thought commendations would
have upon you those ill effects, which they frequently have upon weak
minds. I think you are much above being a vain coxcomb, overrating your
own merit, and insulting others with the superabundance of it. On the
contrary, I am convinced that the consciousness of merit makes a man of
sense more modest, though more firm. A man who displays his own merit is
a coxcomb, and a man who does not know it is a fool. A man of sense knows
it, exerts it, avails himself of it, but never boasts of it; and always
SEEMS rather to under than over value it, though in truth, he sets the
right value upon it. It is a very true maxim of La Bruyere's (an author
well worth your studying), 'qu'on ne vaut dans ce monde, que ce que l'on
veut valoir'. A man who is really diffident, timid, and bashful, be his
merit what it will, never can push himself in the world; his despondency
throws him into inaction; and the forward, the bustling, and the
petulant, will always get the better of him. The manner makes the whole
difference. What would be impudence in one manner, is only a proper and
decent assurance in another. A man of sense, and of knowledge in the
world, will assert his own rights, and pursue his own objects, as
steadily and intrepidly as the most impudent man living, and commonly
more so; but then he has art enough to give an outward air of modesty to
all he does. This engages and prevails, while the very same things shock