say what methods Duval may take, if
you decline his challenge. I am sensible that you are under some
disadvantages in this proffered combat. Your climate, at this time of the
year especially, delights more in the wood fire, than in the poetic fire;
and I conceive the Muses, if there are any at Leipsig, to be rather
shivering than singing; nay, I question whether Apollo is even known
there as god of Verse, or as god of Light: perhaps a little as god of
Physic. These will be fair excuses, if your performance should fall
something short; though I do not apprehend that it will.

While you have been at Leipsig, which is a place of study more than of
pleasure or company, you have had all opportunities of pursuing your
studies uninterruptedly; and have had, I believe, very few temptations to
the contrary. But the case will be quite different at Berlin, where the
splendor and dissipation of a court and the 'beau monde', will present
themselves to you in gaudy shapes, attractive enough to all young people.
Do not think, now, that like an old fellow, I am going to advise you to
reject them, and shut yourself up in your closet: quite the contrary; I
advise you to take your share, and enter into them with spirit and
pleasure; but then I advise you, too, to allot your time so prudently, as
that learning may keep pace with pleasures; there is full time, in the
course of the day, for both, if you do but manage that time right and
like a good economist. The whole morning, if diligently and attentively
devoted to solid studies, will go a great way at the year's end; and the
evenings spent in the pleasures of good company, will go as far in
teaching you a knowledge, not much less necessary than the other, I mean
the knowledge of the world. Between these two necessary studies, that of
books in the morning, and that of the world in the evening, you see that
you will not have one minute to squander or slattern away. Nobody ever
lent themselves more than I did, when I was young, to the pleasures and
dissipation of good company. I even did it too much. But then, I can
assure you, that I always found time for serious studies; and, when I
could find it no other way, I took it out of my sleep, for I resolved
always to rise early in the morning, however late I went to bed at night;
and this resolution I have kept so sacred, that, unless when I have been
confined to my bed by illness, I have not, for more than forty years,
ever been in bed at nine