but it gives you time enough too for better things; I mean reading useful
books; and, what is still more useful, conversing with yourself some part
of every day. Lord Shaftesbury recommends self-conversation to all
authors; and I would recommend it to all men; they would be the better
for it. Some people have not time, and fewer have inclination, to enter
into that conversation; nay, very many dread it, and fly to the most
trifling dissipations, in order to avoid it; but, if a man would allot
half an hour every night for this self-conversation, and recapitulate
with himself whatever he has done, right or wrong, in the course of the
day, he would be both the better and the wiser for it. My deafness gives
me more than a sufficient time for self-conversation; and I have found
great advantages from it. My brother and Lady Stanhope are at last
finally parted. I was the negotiator between them; and had so much
trouble in it, that I would much rather negotiate the most difficult
point of the 'jus publicum Sacri Romani Imperii' with the whole Diet of
Ratisbon, than negotiate any point with any woman. If my brother had had
some of those self-conversations, which I recommend, he would not, I
believe, at past sixty, with a crazy, battered constitution, and deaf
into the bargain, have married a young girl, just turned of twenty, full
of health, and consequently of desires. But who takes warning by the fate
of others? This, perhaps, proceeds from a negligence of selfconversation.
God bless you.




LETTER CCLXI

BLACKHEATH, October 17, 1763