LETTER WRITING.--The best models[31] that you can form yourself upon, are Cicero, Cardinal d’Ossat, Madame Sevigné, and Comte Bussy Rabutin. Cicero’s epistles to Atticus and to his familiar friends are the best examples that you can imitate, in the friendly and the familiar style. The simplicity and clearness of Cardinal d’Ossat’s letters show how letters of business ought to be written; no affected turns, no attempt at wit, obscure or perplex his matter; which is always plainly and clearly stated, as business always should be. For gay and amusing letters, for _enjouement_ and _badinage_, there are none that equal Comte Bussy’s and Madame Sevigné’s. They are so natural, they seem to be the extempore conversations of two people of wit, rather than letters; which are commonly studied, though they ought not to be so. I would advise you to let that book be one in your itinerant library. [_July 20, 1747._] PERSONAL CLEANLINESS.--As you must attend to your manners, so you must not neglect your person; but take care to be very clean, well dressed, and genteel; to have no disagreeable attitudes, nor awkward tricks; which many people use themselves to, and then cannot leave them off. Do you take care to keep your teeth very clean, by washing them constantly every morning, and after every meal? This is very necessary, both to preserve your teeth a great while, and to save you a great deal of pain. Mine have plagued me long, and are now falling out, merely for want of care when I was of your age. Do you dress well, and not too well? Do you consider your air and manner of presenting yourself enough, and not too much? neither negligent nor stiff. All these things deserve a degree of care, a second-rate attention; they give an additional lustre to real merit. My Lord Bacon says that a pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation. It is certainly an agreeable forerunner of merit and smooths the way for it. [_July 30, 1747._] TRUTH.--Every man seeks for truth; but God only knows who has found it. It is, therefore, as unjust to persecute as it is absurd to ridicule people for those several opinions which they cannot help entertaining upon the conviction of their reason. [_Same date._]