University of Virginia Library

LETTERS
OF
JOHN RANDOLPH.

LETTER I.

I send you by the New Orleans mail, "letters written
by the great Mr. Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, to
his nephew, when at college." You know my opinion of
Lord Chatham: that he was at once the greatest practical
statesman that ever lived, and the most transcendent orator.
With all this, he was a truly good man, (indeed, he must
have been, since virtue is essential to great excellence in
laudable pursuits,) and the most elegant and polished gentleman
of his time.

When I speak of a practical statesman, I wish you
to understand me. A man may possess great theoretic
knowledge on any subject, and yet be a poor practitioner.
To take an example from the profession which you seem to
have chosen, in preference to any other,—a man might have
all the best medical authors by heart, know the treatment
which is considered to be most judicious for every disease,
and the properties of every medicine, so as, in conversation,

to vie with any, and to outshine the greater part of his profession,
and yet be so deficient in practice, as, when brought
to a patient, to be unable to tell what his disease was, and, of
course, how it was to have been treated,—whether the pulse
indicated depletion or stimulants. Such is the difference
between theory and practice; one is disease on paper, where
all goes smoothly, and the patient infallibly recovers: the
other is disease in the subject of malady, in man himself,
where symptoms are complicated, and the various considerations
of age, sex, and condition, in the patient, baffle the
most skilful, and dismay the most experienced—where the
patient dies.

I fear, from the shortness of your letter, from the incorrectness
of its orthography and syntax, and from the
omission of some material words, that want of paper was
not your ONLY cause for omitting to write the week before
last. Enclosed you have something to obviate that objection.—

Surely you cannot have read over, once what you wrote.
Moreover, the hand is a very bad one; many words blotted,
and every part of it betrays negligence and a carelessness of
excelling—a most deplorable symptom in a young man.

Is Dr. Robinson in Farmville, and is he likely to remain
there? Would you prefer being at Hamp. Sid. Coll. to staying

at Bizarre? I am very uneasy about you, my dear boy.
In your letters I see no trace of your studies—no mention
made of Ovid or Homer—nothing as to your manner of disposing
of your time. As soon as I am well enough, I shall
set off for Bizarre. God bless you.