thaniel Bacon ought to be extracted in the best method you can: but in general my advice to you is, not to common-place upon paper, but, as an equivalent to it, to endeavour to range and methodize in your head what you read, and by so doing frequently and habitually to fix matter in the memory. I desired you some time since to read lord Clarendon's History of the civil wars. I have lately read a much honester and more instructive book, of the same period of history; it is the History of the Parliament, by Thomas May*, esq. &c. I will send it to you as soon as you return to Cambridge. If you have not read Burnet's History of his own Times, I beg you will. I hope your father is well. My love to the girls. Your ever affec tionate. LETTER LXXVI. FROM THE EARL OF CHATHAM TO HIS NEPHEW THOMAS PITT, ESQ. MY DEAR NEPHEW, Pay-Office, April 9, 1755. I REJOICE extremely to hear that your father and the girls are not unentertained in their travels : • May, the translator of Lucan, had been much countenanced by Charles the First, but quitted the court on some personal disgust, and afterwards became secretary to the parliament. His History was published in 1647, under their authority and license, and cannot by any means be considered as an impartial work. It is however well worthy of being attentively read; and the contemptuous character given of it by Clarendon (Life, vol. i. p. 35) is as much below its real merit as Clarendon's own History is superior to it. in the mean time your travels through the paths of literature, arts, and sciences (a road, sometimes set with flowers, and sometimes difficult, laborious, and arduous), are not only infinitely more profit. able in future, but at present, upon the whole, infinitely more delightful. My own travels at present are none of the pleasantest; I am going through a fit of the gout; with much proper pain, and what proper patience I may. Avis au lecteur, my sweet boy: Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." Let no excesses lay the foundations of gout and the rest of Pandora's box; nor any immoralities or vicious courses sow the seeds of a too late aud painful repentance. Here ends my sermon, which, I trust, you are not fine gentleman enough, or in plain English, silly fellow enough, to laugh at. Lady Hester is much yours. Let me hear some account of your intercourse with the Muses; and believe me ever, your truly most affectionate. LETTER LXXVII. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. Pay-Office, April 15, 1755. A THOUSAND thanks to my dear boy for a very pretty letter. I like extremely the account you give of your literary life; the reflections you make upon some West Saxon actors in the times you are reading, are natural, manly, and sensible, and flow from a heart that will make you far superior to any of them. I am content you should be interrupted (provided the interruption be not long) in the course of your reading, by declaiming in defence of the thesis you have so wisely chosen to maintain. It is true indeed that the affirmative maxim, Omne solum forti patria est, has supported some great and good men under the persecutions of faction and party injustice, and taught them to prefer an hospitable retreat in a foreign land, to an unnatural mother-country. Some few such may be found in ancient times: in our own country also some; such was Algernon Sidney, Ludlow, and others. But how dangerous is it to trust frail, corrupt man, with such an aphorism! What fatal casuistry is it big with! How many a villain might, and has, masked himself in sayings of ancient illustrious exiles, while he was, in fact, dissolving all the nearest and dearest ties that hold societies together, and spurning at all laws divine and buman! How easy the transition from this political to some impious ecclesiastical aphorisms! If all soils are alike to the brave and virtuous, so may all churches and modes of worship; that is, all will be equally neglected and violated. Instead of every soil being his country, he will have no one for his country; he will be the forlorn outcast of mankind. Such was the late Bolingbroke of impious memory. Let me know when your declamation is over. Pardon an observation on style: "I received yours" is vulgar and mercantile; "Your letter" is the way of writing. Inclose your letters in a cover; it is more polite. END OF VOL V. Whittingham and Road, Printers, Goswell Street, London. DLE |