What delicacy of compliment, coupled with nobility of sentiment, the
fresh color of flattery not less, the rhetoric so graceful. One asks
if our New-England reserve has added any graces to the Elizabethan
courtliness, and if any feel quite at home in its tight costumes. Is it
a want of taste if one is taken with such courtly compliments, lofty
appreciation of character, such stately idealism, extravagant as it may
appear, and bordering on insincerity? I wish my behavior, my letters,
my address, may blush becomingly, court my friends' eyes as well as
affections, by coy diffidences, win by lively phrase, telling how
lovely presence is. Friendship is a plant that loves the sun,--thrives
ill under clouds. I know temperaments have their zones, and can excuse
the frigid manner of some in whose breasts there burns a hidden flame.
There is a reserve that seems to fear the affections will be frosted
by exposure, if not protected from any wind of acknowledgment. If
"your humble servant" is written seldomer at the end of the letter,
and "Sir" and "Madam" have dropped the once "Dear" and "My Dear"--used
these adjectively for ceremony's sake,--the address has lost so much
warmth and all the _abandon_ the words once implied. Must I withhold
expressing all I would, lest I should seem to imply more than I meant?
And has one nothing personal and private to communicate? It were not
unbecoming to inquire if our Puritan culture still held us in check,
life and literature were under eclipse, and the shadow threatening to
become central and total.
* * * * *
Of celebrated letters, Pliny's are among the most delightful. A perusal
of them refreshes and restores the old faith in persons and the
possibilities of friendship. Alas for an age, if indifferent to this
antique of virtue, the fair fellowships it celebrates, in the noble
names of which he gives so many illustrious examples in his charming
pages. Virtue seems something to be sought, to live and die for,
every accomplishment a part of it, and a possession. I confess to a
feeling, as I read, so modern and consonant to ideas and designs dear
to me, that for the time I seem to recover brothers and friends--if it
were not egotism to say it--in the aims and ends which I have so long
loved and still cherish as life's pursuit and problem. A vein of noble
morality pervades these letters which renders them admirable reading
for all times and ages. And his allusions to his own life and pursuits,
the glimpses he gives of his friends, commend his pages to all who seek
virtue and wisdom at their sources. To his friend Paternus he writes
with a tenderness and humanity to which the epithet Christian would add
little.
"The sickness which has lately run through my family, and carried
off several of my domestics, some of them, too, in the prime of their
years, has deeply afflicted me. I have two consolations, however; while
though they are not adequate to so considerable a loss, still they are
consolations. One is, that as I have always very readily manumized my
slaves, their death does not seem altogether immature, if they lived
long enough to receive their freedom; the other, that I have allowed
them to make a kind of will, which I observe as religiously as if they
were legally entitled to that privilege. I receive and obey their
last requests as so many absolute commands, suffering them to dispose
of their effects to whom they please; with this single restriction,
that they leave them to some of the family, which to persons in their
station is to be considered as a sort of commonwealth. But though I
endeavor to acquiesce under these reflections, yet the same tenderness
which led me to show them these indulgences, still breaks out and
renders me too sensitively affected by their deaths. However, I would
not wish to be incapable of these tender impressions of humanity,
though the generality of the world, I know, look upon losses of
this kind in no other view than as a diminution of their property,
and fancy, by cherishing such an unfeeling temper, they discover
superior fortitude and philosophy. Their fortitude and philosophy I
will not dispute; but humane, I am sure they are not; for it is the
very criterion of true manhood to feel those impressions of sorrow
which it endeavors to resist, and to admit not to be above the want
of consolation. But perhaps I have detained you too long upon this
subject, though not so long as I would. There is a certain pleasure
in giving vent to one's grief, especially when we pour out our sorrow
in the bosom of a friend, who will approve, or, at least, pardon our
tears. Farewell."