of outrunning them in court and parliament, as you set out much earlier
than they. They generally begin but to see the world at one-and-twenty;
you will by that age have seen all Europe. They set out upon their
travels unlicked cubs: and in their travels they only lick one another,
for they seldom go into any other company. They know nothing but the
English world, and the worst part of that too, and generally very little
of any but the English language; and they come home, at three or
four-and-twenty, refined and polished (as is said in one of Congreve's
plays) like Dutch skippers from a whale-fishing. The care which has been
taken of you, and (to do you justice) the care that you have taken of
yourself, has left you, at the age of nineteen only, nothing to acquire
but the knowledge of the world, manners, address, and those exterior
accomplishments. But they are great and necessary acquisitions, to those
who have sense enough to know their true value; and your getting them
before you are one-and-twenty, and before you enter upon the active and
shining scene of life, will give you such an advantage over all your
contemporaries, that they cannot overtake you: they must be distanced.
You may probably be placed about a young prince, who will probably be a
young king. There all the various arts of pleasing, the engaging address,
the versatility of manners, the brillant, the graces, will outweigh, and
yet outrun all solid knowledge and unpolished merit. Oil yourself,
therefore, and be both supple and shining, for that race, if you would be
first, or early at the goal. Ladies will most probably too have something
to say there; and those who are best with them will probably be best
SOMEWHERE ELSE. Labor this great point, my dear child, indefatigably;
attend to the very smallest parts, the minutest graces, the most trifling
circumstances, that can possibly concur in forming the shining character
of a complete gentleman, 'un galant homme, un homme de cour', a man of
business and pleasure; 'estime des hommes, recherche des femmes, aime de
tout le monde'. In this view, observe the shining part of every man of