Sir,--I observe in the _Athenæum_ of the 17th inst. a quotation from the
_Life of Goldsmith_ by Irving, in which the biographer seems to take
credit for appropriating to Goldsmith the merit of originating the
remark or maxim vulgarly ascribed to Talleyrand, that "the true end of
speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them."
This is certainly found in No. 3. of _The Bee_, by Goldsmith, and no
doubt Talleyrand acted upon the principle of dissimulation there
enunciated; but the idea is much older than either of those individuals,
as we learn from a note in p. 113. of vol. lxvii. _Quart. Rev._ quoting
two lines written by Young (nearly one hundred years before), in
allusion to courts:--
"Where Nature's end of language is declined,
And men talk only to conceal their mind."
Voltaire has used the same expression so long ago as 1763, in his little
satiric dialogue _La Chapon et la Poularde_, where the former,
complaining of the treachery of men says, "Ils n'emploient les paroles
que pour déguiser leurs pénsees." (see xxix. tom. _Oeuvres Complétes_,
pp. 83, 84. ed. Paris, 1822.)
The germ of the idea is also to be found in Lloyd's _State Worthies_,
where speaking of Roger Ascham, he is characterised as "an honest
man,--none being more able for, yet none more averse to, that
circumlocution and contrivance wherewith some men shadow their main
drift and purpose. Speech was made to open man to man, and not to hide
him; to promote commerce, and not betray it."
Lloyd's book first appeared in 1665, but I use the ed. by Whitworth,
vol. i. p. 503.