Cicero and his friends

Transcriber’s Note:
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
GASTON BOISSIER
OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY
TRANSLATED, WITH AN INDEX AND TABLE OF CONTENTS, BY
ADNAH DAVID JONES
THIRD EDITION
LONDON
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
CICERO AND HIS FRIENDS
The correspondence of political men of our time, when it is published, is far from having the same importance, because the exchange of sentiment and thought is not made so much by means of letters now as it was then. We have invented new methods. The immense publicity of the press has advantageously replaced those cautious communications which could not reach beyond a few persons. Now-a-days the newspapers keep a man informed of what is doing in the world, whatever unfrequented place he may have retired to. As he learns events almost as soon as they happen, he receives the excitement as well as the news of them, and has no need of a well-informed friend to apprise him of them. To seek for all that the newspapers have destroyed and replaced among us would be an interesting study. In Cicero’s time letters often took their place and rendered the same services. They were passed from hand to hand when they contained news men had an interest in knowing; and those of important persons which made known their sentiments were read, commented on, and copied. A politician, who was attacked, defended himself by them before people whose esteem he desired to preserve, and through them men tried to form a sort of public opinion in a limited public when the Forum was silent, as in Caesar’s time. The newspapers have taken up this duty now and make a business of politics, and as they are incomparably more convenient, rapid, and diffused, they have taken from correspondence one of its principal subjects.
It is true that private affairs remain for it, and we are tempted to think at first that this subject is inexhaustible, and that with the sentiments and affections of so many kinds that fill our home life it would always be rich enough. Nevertheless, I think that private correspondence becomes every day shorter and less interesting, where it is only a question of feeling and affection. That constant and agreeable intercourse which filled so large a place in the life of former times, tends almost to disappear, and one would say that by a strange chance the facility and rapidity of intercourse, which ought to give it more animation, have been injurious to it. Formerly, when there was no post, or when it was reserved for the emperor’s use, as with the Romans, men were obliged to take advantage of any opportunity that occurred, or to send their letters by a slave. Then writing was a serious affair. They did not want the messenger to make a useless journey; letters were made longer and more complete to avoid the necessity of beginning again too often; unconsciously they were more carefully finished, by the thought we naturally give to things that cost trouble and are not very easy. Even in the time of Madame de Sévigné, when the mails started only once or twice a week, writing was still a serious business to which every care was given. The mother, far from her daughter, had no sooner sent off her letter than she was thinking of the one she would send a few days later. Thoughts, memories, regrets gathered in her mind during this interval, and when she took up her pen “she could no longer govern this torrent.” Now, when we know that we can write when we will, we do not collect material as Madame de Sévigné did, we do not write a little every day, we no longer seek to “empty our budget,” or torment ourselves in order to forget nothing, lest forgetfulness should make the news stale by coming too late. While the periodical return of the post formerly brought more order and regularity into correspondence, the facility we have now for writing when we will causes us to write less often. We wait to have something to say, which is seldomer than one thinks. We write no more than is necessary; and this is very little for a correspondence whose chief pleasure lies in the superfluous, and we are threatened with a reduction of that little. Soon, no doubt, the telegraph will have replaced the post; we shall only communicate by this breathless instrument, the image of a matter-of-fact and hurried society, which, even in the style it employs, tries to use a little less than what is necessary. With this new progress the pleasure of private correspondence, already much impaired, will have disappeared for ever.