Still, let us not be disposed to take away from the royal lady the honor of having invented an art which her sex have, in modern years, carried to a perfection scarcely attainable by the male sex; for it may be set down as an axiom that one woman's letter is worth a dozen letters by men.
After all, the instances of communication by means of letter writing to which allusions have thus been made are plainly no specimens of that use of the invention which constitutes it the medium of free thought and intelligence, or even the simple vehicle of domestic intercourse. Those letters or missives were either formal announcements of authoritative mandates and despatches, or, at best, only the conveyancers of certain information, to be the motive to some act or understanding, or to determine or direct some course of proceeding. There are no examples of what can properly be called familiar letters before the time of Cicero, whose correspondence may justly be regarded as among the most precious remains of ancient literature which have survived to our own day. In connection with this remark, we may be permitted to observe that, as with the greatest of ancient, so with the greatest of modern orators, he was distinguished for the beauty, power, and brilliancy of his letters. There are few instances of English style more charming in themselves than the epistles, whether published or still in manuscript, written by that versatile and wonderful person, Daniel Webster. (Nunquam tetigit quod non ornavit.) How copious is their expression! How facile and felicitous their illustrations! What grace! What beauty of diction! What simplicity, elevated by a matchless elegance! Nothing more clearly proves the various talents of both the Roman and the American statesman than that they should no more have excelled in their forensic achievements on grand occasions than in those common and trivial affairs of every-day life, so unaffected and so effortless as the writing of letters to their friends.
All the letters of Greek and Roman origin which have come down to us seem to be doubtful, except those of Plato and Isocrates, until the days of Cicero. Under his genius the mind of the Roman nation took a sudden spring, and the polite literature of the world was embellished by epistolary composition. As the rules and illustrations of poetic writing were borrowed by Aristotle from the example of Homer, so the practice and authority of Cicero appear to have furnished precepts best entitled to determine the character and merits of the epistolary style. He esteemed it as a species of composition enjoying the privilege of great ease and familiarity, as well in its diction as in its treatment of its subject, and also in its employment of the weapons of wit and humor. The general style most suitable to its spirit and character he considered to be that most in use in the ordinary and daily intercourse of society. He admired a simple and playful use of language, and he affected, as he asserts, a common and almost plebeian manner of writing, using words of every-day stamp in his correspondence. In his view of letter writing, its style and manner ought to vary with the complexion of its subject matter, and be subjected to no abstract system of rules. Ho propounds three principal kinds of epistles: first, that which merely conveys interesting intelligence, being, as he says, the very object for which the thing itself came into existence; second, the jocose letter; third, the serious and solemn letter. And it was besides the opinion of the great orator—an opinion sanctioned and ratified by all honorable persons then and in our own day—that there is something sacred in the contents of a letter which gives it the strongest claims to be withheld from third persons. 'For who,' he exclaims, in his second Philippic, 'who that is at all influenced by good habits and feelings, has ever allowed himself to resent an affront or injury by exposing to others any letters received from the offending persons during their intercourse of friendship?' 'What else,' he eloquently exclaims, 'would be the tendency of such conduct but to rob the very life of life of its social charms! How many pleasantries find their way into letters, as amusing to the correspondents as they are insipid to others; and how many subjects of serious interest, which are entirely unfit to be brought before the public!'
Truly is it gratifying, in our treatment of this topic, to be able to adduce such high, classical authority concerning the sacred and inviolable character of all private correspondence. In our humble view, not only is the seal of a letter a lock more impregnable to the hand of honor than the strongest bank safe which the expert Mr. Hobbs might vainly have tried to open; but even when that seal has already been rightfully broken and the contents of the letter exposed, those contents are to the eye of delicacy as unreadable as if written in that Bass language which Adam and Eve are said to have spoken while in the garden of Eden, and which, since the fall, none but angels have ever been able to comprehend. Now, if Cicero thought it base for a third party to read a private letter, what eloquent thunder would he not have hurled at the head of that wretch who not only read, but printed and published it! There is an epithet, which, in certain parts of New England, the folks apply to the poorest of poor scamps—'mean.' Now who, in this round world, of all that dwell therein, can be found one half so 'mean' as the betrayer and revealer of another's secrets? A whip should be placed in every honest hand to lash the rascal naked through the world. He should be fastened in an air-tight mail bag, and sent jolting and bouncing, amid innumerable letters and packages and ponderous franked documents of members of Congress, over all the roughest roads of our Northwestern country!
To return to what a letter should be. It seems, upon the whole, to have been Cicero's opinion—and in this we shall fain agree as well as in his view of the secrecy of letters—that, whether the subject be solemn or familiar, learned or colloquial, general or particular, political or domestic, an easy, vivacious, unaffected diction gives to epistolary writing its proper grace and perfection.
In very truth, good letter writing is little else than conversation upon paper, carried on between parties personally separate, with this especial advantage, that it brings the minds of the interlocutors into reciprocal action, with more room for reflection, and with, fewer disturbances than can usually consist with personal conversation.
We have thus made mention of Cicero as the greatest of authorities with regard to this subject, because he was himself the greatest of letter writers. The epistle was the shape in which his versatile and beautiful mind most gracefully ran and moulded itself. His fluctuating and unstable character no less than his vanity and love of distinction, seemed to minister occasion to those varied forms of diction and expression in which the genius of animated letter writing may be said to delight. Read his 'Familiar Letters,' if not in Latin, yet in translation, if you wish to study the most perfect specimens of this style—a style which has not been equalled or approached since his day.
Next to the letters of the great Roman orator, merit points to those of the philosopher Seneca. He, too, cultivates and enjoins an easy and unstudied diction. So great is the excellence of his letters; so nearly is their beauty allied to the beauty of our Holy Scriptures; so does he seem to anticipate the morals and teachings of our Christian dispensation, that it is almost reprehensible to speak of them at all, without setting forth their extraordinary charms of style and thought, even in a larger space than the present article can be allowed to occupy.
After Seneca, the next most noted of the ancient letter writers was Pliny the younger. And now we are brought down to the days of the Apostles and their Epistles. With a simple reverential allusion to the letters of St. Paul and the other immediate followers of our Lord, letters that teach men the way of salvation—we pass to a more modern consideration of our topic.
Letters can hardly be classified. They are of various sorts. Most of them, as schoolboys say, end in t-i-o-n, tion. There are Letters of Introduction; Letters of Congratulation; Letters of Consolation; Letters of Invitation; Letters of Recommendation; Letters of Administration. There are, moreover, letters of friendship, business letters, letters of diplomacy, letters of credit, letters patent, letters of marque (apt also to be letters of mark), and love letters—the last being by no means least.