Monsieur L'Abbat

Published in Dublin in 1734 the translation of The Art of Fencing or The Use of the Small Sword by Monsieur L’Abbat contains a list of simple advice.
Exchange step for thrust, partner for enemy and dance for assault and all applies very well to tango.

1. Make no wry faces or motions that are disagreeable to the sight.
2. Be not affected, negligent, nor stiff.
3. Don’t flatter yourself in your lessons, and still less in assaults.
4. Be not vain at the thrusts you give, nor show contempt when you receive them.
5. Don’t think yourself expert, but that you may become so.
6. Do nothing that’s useless, every action should tend to your advantage.
7. Lessons and assaults are only valuable when the application and genius make them so.
8. Too good an opinion spoils many people, and too bad a one still more.
9. A natural disposition and practice are necessary in lessons, but in assaults there must be a genius besides.
10. The goodness of lessons and of assaults does not consist so much in the length as in the manner of them.
11. Before you applaud a thrust given, examine if chance had no hand in it.
12. Thrusts of experience, and those of chance are different, the first come often, the others seldom happen, you may depend on one, but not on the other.
13. In battle let valour and prudence go together, the lyon’s courage with the fox’s craft.
14. To be in possession of what you know, you must be in possession of yourself.
15. Undertake nothing but what your strength and the capacity of the enemy will admit of in the execution.
16. The beauty of an assault appears in the execution of the design.
17. Make no thrust without considering the advantage and danger of it.
18. If the eye and wrist precede the body, the execution will be good.
19. Be always cautious, time lost cannot be regained.
20. To know what you risque you must know what you are worth.
21. Twenty good qualities will not make you perfect, and one bad one will hinder your being so.
22. Judge of a thrust rather by reason than by it’s success; the one may fail, but the other cannot.
23. To parry well is much, but it is nothing when you can do more.
24. Practice is either a good or an evil; all consists in the choice of it.
25. When you think yourself skilful and dexterous, ’tis then you are not so.
26. ‘Tis not enough that your parts agree, they must also answer the enemy’s motions.
27. The knowing a good without practising it, turns to an evil.
28. Two skilful men acting together, fight more with their heads than with their hands.