but as it adds lustre to the more solid advantages both of the heart and mind. I have often touched upon good breeding to you before; so that this letter shall be upon the next necessary qualification to it, which is a genteel, easy manner, and carriage, wholly free from those odd tricks, ill habits, and awkwardnesses, which even many very worthy and sensible people have in their behaviour. However trifling a genteel manner may sound, it is of 10 many proofs of having kept bad and low com

From this account of what you should not do, you may easily judge of what you should do; and a due attention to the manners of people of fashion, and who have seen the world, 5 will make it habitual and familiar to you.

There is likewise an awkwardness of expression and words, most carefully to be avoided; such as false English, bad pronunciation, old sayings, and common proverbs; which are so

pany. For example; if, instead of saying that tastes are different, and that every man has his own peculiar one, you should let off a proverb, and say, That what is one man's meat is

very great consequence towards pleasing in private life, especially the women; which, one time or other, you will think worth pleasing; and I have known many a man from his awkwardness, give people such a dislike of him at 15 another man's poison; or else, Everyone as

they like, as the good man said when he kissed his cow; everybody would be persuaded that you had never kept company with anybody above footmen and housemaids.

Attention will do all this; and without attention, nothing is to be done; want of attention, which is really want of thought, is either folly or madness. You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe, at once, all the people in the room; their motions, their looks, and their words, and yet without staring at them, and seeming to be an observer, this quick and unobserved observation is of in

first, that all his merit could not get the better
of it afterwards. Whereas a genteel manner
prepossesses people in your favour, bends them
towards you, and makes them wish to like you.
Awkwardness can proceed from two causes; 20
either from not having kept good company,
or from not having attended to it. As for your
keeping good company, I will take care of
that; do you take care to observe their ways
and manners, and to form your own upon 25
them. Attention is absolutely necessary to
this, as indeed it is for everything else; and a
man without attention is not fit to live in the
world. When an awkward fellow first comes
into the room, it is highly probable, that his 30 finite advantage in life, and is to be acquired
sword gets between his legs, and throws him
down, or makes him stumble at least; when he
has recovered this accident, he goes and places
himself in the very place of the whole room
where he should not; then he soon lets his hat 35
fall down, and, in taking it up again, throws
down his cane; in recovering his cane, his hat
falls down a second time; so that he is a quarter
of an hour before he is in order again. If he
drinks tea or coffee, he certainly scalds his 40 I find the improvements I expect, at my return.

mouth, and lets either the cup or the saucer
fall, and spills the tea or coffee in his breeches.
At dinner, his awkwardness distinguishes it-
self particularly as he has more to do: there he
holds his knife, fork, and spoon differently from 45
other people; eats with his knife to the great
danger of his mouth, picks his teeth with his
fork, and puts his spoon which has been in his
throat twenty times, into the dishes again. If
he is to carve, he can never hit the joint; but, 50
in his vain efforts to cut through the bone,
scatters the sauce in everybody's face. He
generally daubs himself with soup and grease,
though his napkin is commonly stuck through
a button-hole and tickles his chin. . . . All 55
this, I own, is not in any degree criminal; but
it is highly disagreeable and ridiculous in com-
pany, and ought most carefully to be avoided
by whoever desires to please.

with care; and, on the contrary, what is called absence, which is a thoughtlessness, and want of attention about what is doing, makes a man so like either a fool or a madman, that, for my part, I see no real difference. A fool never has thought; a madman has lost it; and an absent man is, for the time, without it.

Adieu! Direct your next to me, Chez Monsieur Chabert, Banquier, à Paris; and take care

STYLE

(From Letter CCIII)

I have written to you so often of late upon good breeding, address, les manières liantes,1 the graces, etc. that I shall confine this letter to another subject, pretty near akin to them, and which, I am sure, you are full as deficient in; I mean, style.

Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received as your person, though ever so well proportioned, would, if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters. It is not every understanding that can judge of matter; but every ear can and does judge more or less 1 Pleasing manners.

of style; and were I either to speak or write to the public, I should prefer moderate matter, adorned with all the beauties and elegancies of style, to the strongest matter in the world, ill-worded and ill-delivered. Your business is Negotiation abroad, and Oratory in the House of Commons at home. What figure can you make in either case if your style be inelegant, I do not say bad? Imagine yourself writing an office-letter to a Secretary of 10 upon whom a censure was moved, happily

A person of the House of Commons, speaking two years ago upon naval affairs, asserted that we had then the finest navy upon the face of the yearth. This happy mixture of blunder 5 and vulgarism, you may easily imagine, was matter of immediate ridicule; but I can assure you that it continues so still, and will be remembered as long as he lives and speaks. Another, speaking in defence of a gentleman

State, which letter is to be read by the whole Cabinet Council, and very possibly afterwards laid before Parliament; any one barbarism, solecism, or vulgarism in it would, in a very few days, circulate through the whole king- 15 dom to your disgrace and ridicule. For instance; I will suppose you had written the following letter from the Hague; to the Secretary of State at London; and leave you to suppose the consequences of it.

said that he thought that gentleman was more liable to be thanked and rewarded, than censured. You know, I presume, that liable can never be used in a good sense.

3

You have with you three or four of the best English authors, Dryden, Atterbury, and Swift; read them with the utmost care, and with a particular care to their language, and they may possibly correct that curious in20 felicity of diction, which you acquired at Westminster. Mr. Harte excepted, I will admit that you have met with very few English abroad who could improve your style; and with many, I dare say, who speak as ill as yourself, and it may be worse; you must therefore take the more pains, and consult your authors and Mr. Harte the more. I need not tell you how attentive the Romans and Greeks, particularly the Athenians were to this object. It is also a study among the Italians and the French, witness their respective Academies and Dictionaries, for improving and fixing their languages. To our shame be it spoken, it is less attended to here than in any polite country; but that is no reason why you should not attend to it; on the contrary it will distinguish you the more. Cicero says, very truly, that it is glorious to excel other men in that very article, in which men excel brutes, speech.

My Lord-I had last night, the honour of your Lordship's letter of the 24th; and will set about doing the orders contained therein; and if so be that I can get that affair done by the next post, I will not fail for to give your 25 Lordship an account of it by next post. I have told the French Minister, as how, that if that affair be not soon concluded, your Lordship would think it all long of him; and that he must have neglected for to have wrote to his Court 30 about it. I must beg leave to put your Lordship in mind, as how, that I am now full three quarters in arrear; and if so be that I do not very soon receive at least one half year, I shall cut a very bad figure; for this here place is very 35 dear. I shall be vastly beholden to your Lordship for that there mark of your favour; and so I rest, or remain, Your, etc.

You will tell me, possibly that this is a caricatura of an illiberal and inelegant style; 40 I will admit it: but I assure you, at the same time, that a despatch with less than half these faults would blow you up forever. It is by no means sufficient to be free from faults in speaking and writing; you must do both correctly 45 and elegantly. In faults of this kind it is not ille optimus qui minimis urgetur;2 but he is unpardonable that has any at all, because it is his own fault: he need only attend to, observe, and imitate the best authors.

Constant experience has shown me, that great purity and elegance of style, with a graceful elocution, cover a multitude of faults in either a speaker or a writer. For my own part, I confess (and I believe most people are of my mind) that if a speaker should ungracefully mutter or stammer out to me the sense of an angel, deformed by barbarisms and solecisms, or larded with vulgarisms, he should 50 never speak to me a second time, if I could help it. Gain the heart, or you gain nothing; the eyes and the ears are only the road to the heart. Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts though they will secure them when

It is a very true saying, that a man must be born a poet, but that he may make himself an orator; and the very first principle of an orator is, to speak his own language, particularly, with the utmost purity and elegance. A man 55 will be forgiven, even great errors, in a foreign language; but in his own even the least slips are justly laid hold of and ridiculed.

2 He is the best who is the least burdened.

& Francis Atterbury (1662–1732), a prominent preacher, and clever writer and controversialist. He was the friend of Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke, and other distinguished men of his time.

Walter Harte (c. 1707-1774), who was tutor to Chesterfield's son. He wrote various poems and essays, and a History of Gustavus Adolphus,

gained. Pray have that truth ever in your
mind. Engage the eyes by your address, air,
and motions; soothe the ears by the elegance
and harmony of your diction; the heart will
certainly follow, and the whole man or woman
will as certainly follow the heart. I must
repeat it to you over and over again, that with
all the knowledge which you may have at
present or hereafter acquire, and with all the
merit that ever man had, if you have not a
graceful address, liberal and engaging manners,
a prepossessing air, and a good degree of elo-
quence in speaking and writing, you will be
nobody; but will have the daily mortification of
seeing people, with not one-tenth part of your 15
merit or knowledge, get the start of you and
disgrace you both in company and in business.

Henry Fielding

1707-1754

PARTRIDGE AT THE PLAY

(From Tom Jones, 1749)

10

As soon as the play, which was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, began, Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the entrance of the ghost; upon which he asked 5 Jones, "What man was that in the strange dress; something," said he, "like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it is not armour, is it?" Jones answered, "That is the ghost." To which Partridge replied, with a smile, "Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though I can't say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him, better than that comes to. No, no, sir, ghosts don't appear in such dresses as that, neither." In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbourhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue, till the scene between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick,3 which he had 20 denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling, that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the stage? "O la! sir," said he, "I perceive now

anything; for I know it is but a play. And if it was really a ghost, it could do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much company; and yet if I was frightened, I am not the only

Mr. Jones having spent three hours in read- 25 it is what you told me. I am not afraid of ing and kissing the aforesaid letter,1 and being at last, in a state of good spirits, from the lastmentioned considerations, he agreed to carry an appointment, which he had before made, into execution. This was, to attend Mrs. 30 person." "Why, who," cries Jones, "dost thou Miller, and her younger daughter, into the gallery at the playhouse and to admit Mr. Partridge as one of the company. For as Jones had really that taste for humour which many affect, he expected to enjoy much enter- 35 in my life. Ay, ay: go along with you! Ay, to

tainment in the criticisms of Partridge, from whom he expected the simple dictates of nature, unimproved, indeed, but likewise unadulterated, by art.

take to be such a coward here besides thyself?" "Nay, you may call me coward, if you will; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened

be sure! Who's fool then? Will you? Lud have mercy upon such foolhardiness!-Whatever happens, it is good enough for you.Follow you? I'd follow the devil as soon.

can put on what likeness he pleases.-Oh! here he is again.-No farther! No, you have gone far enough already; farther than I'd have gone for all the king's dominions." Jones offered to speak, but Partridge cried, "Hush, hush! dear sir, don't you hear him?" And during the whole speech of the ghost, he sat with his eyes partly fixed on the ghost and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same passions

In the first row then of the first gallery did 40 Nay, perhaps it is the devil-for they say he Mr. Jones, Mrs. Miller, her youngest daughter, and Partridge, take their places. Partridge immediately declared it was the finest place he had ever been in. When the first music was played he said, "It was a wonder how so 45 many fiddlers could play at one time, without putting one another out." While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs. Miller, "Look, look, Madam, the very picture of the man in the end of the common- 50 which succeeded each other in Hamlet, sucprayer book before the gunpowder-treason service." Nor could he help observing with a sigh, when all the candles were lighted, "That here were candles enow burnt in one night, to keep an honest poor family for a whole twelve- 55 month."

1 i. e., a letter from Sophia Western, with whom Tom Jones, the hero of the story, is in love.

A country barber and schoolmaster, who has become the follower and companion of Tom Jones.

ceeding likewise in him.

་

When the scene was over Jones said, "Why, Partridge, you exceed my expectations. You enjoy the play more than I conceived possible."

David Garrick (1717-79), the friend of Johnson, Reynolds, and Goldsmith, and the greatest English actor of his time. Garrick began his career on the stage in 1741, his Richard III, produced in that year, was immediately successful; he played many and varied parts, and retired from the stage in 1776.