do with diligence, pray
take care to continue your German, which you may have frequent
opportunities of speaking. I would also have you keep up your knowledge
of the 'Jus Publicum Imperii', by looking over, now and then, those
INESTIMABLE MANUSCRIPTS which Sir Charles Williams, who arrived here last
week, assures me you have made upon that subject. It will be of very
great use to you, when you come to be concerned in foreign affairs; as
you shall be (if you qualify yourself for them) younger than ever any
other was: I mean before you are twenty. Sir Charles tells me, that he
will answer for your learning; and that, he believes, you will acquire
that address, and those graces, which are so necessary to give it its
full lustre and value. But he confesses, that he doubts more of the
latter than of the former. The justice which he does Mr. Harte, in his
panegyrics of him, makes me hope that there is likewise a great deal of
truth in his encomiums of you. Are you pleased with, and proud of the
reputation which you have already acquired? Surely you are, for I am sure
I am. Will you do anything to lessen or forfeit it? Surely you will not.
And will you not do all you can to extend and increase it? Surely you
will. It is only going on for a year and a half longer, as you have gone
on for the two years last past, and devoting half the day only to
application; and you will be sure to make the earliest figure and fortune
in the world, that ever man made. Adieu.

LETTER LXXXII

LONDON, September 22, O. S. 1749.

DEAR BOY: If I had faith in philters and love potions, I should suspect
that you had given Sir Charles Williams some, by the manner in which he
speaks of you, not only to me, but to everybody else. I will not repeat
to you what he says of the extent and correctness of your knowledge, as
it might either make you vain, or persuade you that you had already
enough of what nobody can have too much. You will easily imagine how many
questions I asked, and how narrowly I sifted him upon your subject; he
answered me, and I dare say with truth, just as I could have wished; till
satisfied entirely with his accounts of your character and learning, I
inquired into other matters, intrinsically indeed of less consequence,
but still of great consequence to every man, and of more to you than to
almost any man: I mean, your address, manners, and air. To these
questions, the same truth which he had observed before, obliged him to
gi