for these next six months, at least six
hours every morning, uninterruptedly, may be inviolably sacred to your
studies with Mr. Harte. I do not know whether he will require so much;
but I know that I do, and hope you will, and consequently prevail with
him to give you that time; I own it is a good deal: but when both you and
he consider that the work will be so much better, and so much sooner
done, by such an assiduous and continued application, you will, neither
of you, think it too much, and each will find his account in it. So much
for the mornings, which from your own good sense, and Mr. Harte's
tenderness and care of you, will, I am sure, be thus well employed. It is
not only reasonable, but useful too, that your evenings should be devoted
to amusements and pleasures: and therefore I not only allow, but
recommend, that they should be employed at assemblies, balls, SPECTACLES,
and in the best companies; with this restriction only, that the
consequences of the evening's diversions may not break in upon the
morning's studies, by breakfastings, visits, and idle parties into the
country. At your age, you need not be ashamed, when any of these morning
parties are proposed, to say that you must beg to be excused, for you are
obliged to devote your mornings to Mr. Harte; that I will have it so; and
that you dare not do otherwise. Lay it all upon me; though I am persuaded
it will be as much your own inclination as it is mine. But those
frivolous, idle people, whose time hangs upon their own hands, and who
desire to make others lose theirs too, are not to be reasoned with: and
indeed it would be doing them too much honor. The shortest civil answers
are the best; I CANNOT, I DARE NOT, instead of I WILL NOT; for if you
were to enter with them into the necessity of study end the usefulness of
knowledge, it would only furnish them with matter for silly jests; which,
though I would not have you mind, I would not have you invite. I will
suppose you at Rome studying six hours uninterruptedly with Mr. Harte,
every morning, and passing your evenings with the best company of Rome,
observing their manners and forming your own; and I will suppose a number
of idle, sauntering, illiterate English, as there commonly is there,
living entirely with one another, supping, drinking, and sitting up late
at each other's lodgings; commonly in riots and scrapes when drunk, and
never in good company when sober. I will take one of these pretty
fellows,