consequently every moment is precious.

I am surprised at having received no letter from you since you left
Paris. I still direct this to Strasburgh, as I did my two last. I shall
direct my next to the post house at Mayence, unless I receive, in the
meantime, contrary instructions from you. Adieu. Remember les attentions:
they must be your passports into good company.




LETTER CLXIX

LONDON, June, O. S. 1752.

MY DEAR FRIEND: Very few celebrated negotiators have been eminent for
their learning. The most famous French negotiators (and I know no nation
that can boast of abler) have been military men, as Monsieur d'Harcourt,
Comte d'Estrades, Marechal d'Uxelles, and others. The late Duke of
Marlborough, who was at least as able a negotiator as a general, was
exceedingly ignorant of books, but extremely knowing in men, whereas the
learned Grotius appeared, both in Sweden and in France, to be a very
bungling minister. This is, in my opinion, very easily to be accounted
for. A man of very deep learning must have employed the greatest part of
his time in books; and a skillful negotiator must necessarily have
employed much the greater part of his time with man. The sound scholar,
when dragged out of his dusty closet into business, acts by book, and
deals with men as he has read of them; not as he has known them by
experience: he follows Spartan and Roman precedents, in what he falsely
imagines to be similar cases; whereas two cases never were, since the