not at
the same time give it. To be pleased one must please. What pleases you in
others, will in general please them in you. Paris is indisputably the
seat of the GRACES; they will even court you, if you are not too coy.
Frequent and observe the best companies there, and you will soon be
naturalized among them; you will soon find how particularly attentive
they are to the correctness and elegance of their language, and to the
graces of their enunciation: they would even call the understanding of a
man in question, who should neglect or not know the infinite advantages
arising from them. 'Narrer, reciter, declamer bien', are serious studies
among them, and well deserve to be so everywhere. The conversations, even
among the women, frequently turn upon the elegancies and minutest
delicacies of the French language. An 'enjouement', a gallant turn,
prevails in all their companies, to women, with whom they neither are,
nor pretend to be, in love; but should you (as may very possibly happen)
fall really in love there with some woman of fashion and sense (for I do
not suppose you capable of falling in love with a strumpet), and that
your rival, without half your parts or knowledge, should get the better
of you, merely by dint of manners, 'enjouement, badinage', etc., how
would you regret not having sufficiently attended to those
accomplishments which you despised as superficial and trifling, but which
you would then find of real consequence in the course of the world! And
men, as well as women, are taken by those external graces. Shut up your
books, then, now as a business, and open them only as a pleasure; but let
the great book of the world be your serious study; read it over and over,
get it by heart, adopt its style, and make it your own.

When I cast up your account as it now stands, I rejoice to see the
balance so much in your favor; and that the items per contra are so few,
and of such a nature, that they may be very easily cancelled. By way of
debtor and creditor, it stands thus:

Creditor. By French Debtor. To English
German Enunciation
Italian Manners
Latin
Greek
Logic
Ethics
History
|Naturae
Jus |Gentium
|Publicum

This, my dear friend, is a very true account; and a very encouraging one
for you. A man who owes so little can clear it off in a very little time,
and, if he is a prudent man, will;