Letters to His Son, 1750: On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a GentlemanChesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
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Letters to His Son, 1750: On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
Conduct of life
I thank you for your drawing, which I am impatient to see, and which I
shall hang up in a new gallery that I am building at Blackheath, and very
fond of; but I am still more impatient for another copy, which I wonder I
have not yet received, I mean the copy of your countenance. I believe,
were that a whole length, it would still fall a good deal short of the
dimensions of the drawing after Dominichino, which you say is about eight
feet high; and I take you, as well as myself, to be of the family of the
Piccolomini. Mr. Bathurst tells me that he thinks you rather taller than
I am; if so, you may very possibly get up to five feet eight inches,
which I would compound for, though I would wish you five feet ten. In
truth, what do I not wish you, that has a tendency to perfection? I say a
tendency only, for absolute perfection is not in human nature, so that it
would be idle to wish it. But I am very willing to compound for your
coming nearer to perfection than the generality of your contemporaries:
without a compliment to you, I think you bid fair for that. Mr. Harte
affirms (and if it were consistent with his character would, I believe,
swear) that you have no vices of the heart; you have undoubtedly a stock
of both ancient and modern learning, which I will venture to say nobody
of your age has, and which must now daily increase, do what you will.
What, then, do you want toward that practicable degree of perfection
which I wish you? Nothing but the knowledge, the turn, and the manners of
the world; I mean the 'beau monde'. These it is impossible that you can
yet have quite right; they are not given, they must be learned. But then,
on the other hand, it is impossible not to acquire them, if one has a
mind to them; for they are acquired insensibly, by keeping good company,
if one has but the least attention to their characters and manners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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