TALENT AND BREEDING.--Remember always, what I have told you a thousand times, that all the talents in the world will want all their lustre, and some part of their use too, if they are not adorned with that easy good breeding, that engaging manner, and those graces which seduce and prepossess people in your favor at first sight. A proper care of your person is by no means to be neglected; always extremely clean; upon proper occasions, fine. Your carriage genteel, and your motions graceful. Take particular care of your manner and address, when you present yourself in company. Let them be respectful without meanness, easy without too much familiarity, genteel without affectation, and insinuating without any seeming art or design. [_Same date._] POLISH.--Now, though I would not recommend to you to go into woman’s company in search of solid knowledge or judgment, yet it has its use in other respects; for it certainly polishes the manners, and gives _une certaine tournure_, which is very necessary in the course of the world; and which Englishmen have generally less of than any people in the world. [_Jan. 2, 1748._] A GOOD SUPPER.--I cannot say that your suppers are luxurious, but you must own they are solid; and a quart of soup, and two pounds of potatoes, will enable you to pass the night without great impatience for your breakfast next morning. One part of your supper (the potatoes) is the constant diet of my old friends and countrymen, the Irish, who are the healthiest and the strongest men that I know in Europe. [_Same date._] A GREEK PROFESSOR.--Since you do not care to be an assessor of the Imperial Chamber, and desire an establishment in England; what do you think of being Greek professor at one of our universities? It is a very pretty sinecure, and requires very little knowledge (much less than, I hope, you have already) of that language. [_Jan. 15, 1748._]