of and
ridiculed.

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 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 defense of a gentleman, upon whom a censure
was moved, happily 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.

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 view to their language, and they may possibly correct that
CURIOUS INFELICITY 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.

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 barbarism and
solecisms, or larded with vulgarisms, he should 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 the only roads to the heart. Merit and knowledge
will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained. Pray,
have that truth ever in your mind. Engage the eyes by your address, air,
and motions; s