The Essays, vol 7 | Page 6

any other, had I had to whom to
write; but I wanted such a settled intercourse, as I once had, to attract
me to it, to raise my fancy, and to support me. For to traffic with the
wind, as some others have done, and to forge vain names to direct my
letters to, in a serious subject, I could never do it but in a dream, being
a sworn enemy to all manner of falsification. I should have been more
diligent and more confident had I had a judicious and indulgent friend
whom to address, than thus to expose myself to the various judgments
of a whole people, and I am deceived if I had not succeeded better. I
have naturally a humorous and familiar style; but it is a style of my
own, not proper for public business, but, like the language I speak, too
compact, irregular, abrupt, and singular; and as to letters of ceremony
that have no other substance than a fine contexture of courteous words,
I am wholly to seek. I have neither faculty nor relish for those tedious
tenders of service and affection; I believe little in them from others, and
I should not forgive myself should I say to others more than I myself
believe. 'Tis, doubtless, very remote from the present practice; for there
never was so abject and servile prostitution of offers: life, soul,
devotion, adoration, vassal, slave, and I cannot tell what, as now; all
which expressions are so commonly and so indifferently posted to and
fro by every one and to every one, that when they would profess a
greater and more respectful inclination upon more just occasions, they
have not wherewithal to express it. I mortally hate all air of flattery,
which is the cause that I naturally fall into a shy, rough, and crude way
of speaking, that, to such as do not know me, may seem a little to relish

of disdain. I honour those most to whom I show the least honour, and
where my soul moves with the greatest cheerfulness, I easily forget the
ceremonies of look and gesture, and offer myself faintly and bluntly to
them to whom I am the most devoted: methinks they should read it in
my heart, and that the expression of my words does but injure the love I
have conceived within. To welcome, take leave, give thanks, accost,
offer my service, and such verbal formalities as the ceremonious laws
of our modern civility enjoin, I know no man so stupidly unprovided of
language as myself; and I have never been employed in writing letters
of favour and recommendation, that he, in whose behalf it was written,
did not think my mediation cold and imperfect. The Italians are great
printers of letters; I do believe I have at least an hundred several
volumes of them; of all which those of Annibale Caro seem to me to be
the best. If all the paper I have scribbled to the ladies at the time when
my hand was really prompted by my passion, were now in being, there
might, peradventure, be found a page worthy to be communicated to
our young inamoratos, that are besotted with that fury. I always write
my letters post-haste--so precipitately, that though I write intolerably ill,
I rather choose to do it myself, than to employ another; for I can find
none able to follow me: and I never transcribe any. I have accustomed
the great ones who know me to endure my blots and dashes, and upon
paper without fold or margin. Those that cost me the most pains, are
the worst; when I once begin to draw it in by head and shoulders, 'tis a
sign that I am not there. I fall too without premeditation or design; the
first word begets the second, and so to the end of the chapter. The
letters of this age consist more in fine edges and prefaces than in matter.
Just as I had rather write two letters than close and fold up one, and
always assign that employment to some other, so, when the real
business of my letter is dispatched, I would with all my heart transfer it
to another hand to add those long harangues, offers, and prayers, that
we place at the bottom, and should be glad that some new custom
would discharge us of that trouble; as also of superscribing them with a
long legend of qualities and titles, which for fear of mistakes, I have
often not written at all, and especially to men of the long robe and
finance; there are so many new offices, such a dispensation and
ordering of titles of honour, that 'tis hard to set them forth aright yet,
being so dearly bought, they are neither