Mr. Moses Porter.
Scarborough, Dec. 4th, 1801.
“I give you thanks,” as Parson Fletcher says, for your dissertation upon
apologies and old sayings. You have stored up enough to fill a volume,
if I should take your last as a specimen of the quantity. However, they
are things I trouble myself but little about, and I should rather be
inclined to join in railing against them than in enumerating their good
effects. I perceive that you were much more inclined to be their
advocate after supper than you were before. You had just laid down your
pen after venting all your spleen and ill-nature (occasioned by your
impatience for roast-beef) upon these poor harmless old sayings. You
return, with an entire new set of sentiments on the subject. You
commence their advocate with more vehemence than is usual with you, and
conclude by making them the very foundation of every virtue. Now I have
endeavored to find some natural cause for this sudden change, but
cannot. Was it that you heard one trickle from the lips of some favorite
fair with eloquence too powerful to be resisted? Or was it a bumper of
wine which proved so warm a friend to them? Or was it the good-natured
effects of the roast-beef, which exhilarating your spirits, made you
look with an eye of pity and compassion on these poor neglected things,
and endeavor by rubbing off the rust and polishing them anew, to
compensate for your malicious endeavors to lessen their merit? But after
all I must confess myself a great enemy to them, in conversation
particularly. I never knew a person who made frequent use of them, but I
pitied them for the scanty portion of ideas which must have driven them
to such a paltry theft; and moreover, if I must steal the idea, I would
clothe it myself, lest its garment should betray me. I dislike them
because they are in every body’s mouth, the greatest fool on earth has
sense enough to use them with as much propriety as any other, and you
will find every old beggar has his wallet stuffed full of them, ready to
launch out on every occasion. I don’t know, however, but you are
perfectly right in what you say in their defence. I am inclined to
believe what you say is just, but I have so often seen instances of
their meaning being perverted to answer some vicious purpose that I am
compelled to believe the balance is against them. “So much for old
sayings.”—But now as to apologies, I must with _due reverence_ beg leave
to differ from you in my opinion of them. I am by no means inclined to
think they are never used but when we know ourselves in fault, and that
we ought always to suspect the sincerity of any one who makes them. You
certainly must have known instances when they were essentially
necessary, and not to have made them would have proved an obstinacy of
disposition quite as disagreeable as insincerity. I hate this parade and
nonsense about _independence_, which every gentleman of _ton_ puts on;
it always proves that the reality is small, when such a fuss is made for
the appearance. I know some gentlemen who boast of never having made an
apology, yet at the same time would say and do a thousand things much
more derogatory to their dear independence than fifty apologies, such as
any man of sense might make. I should be glad to see our fine gentlemen
more careful in avoiding anything that would require an apology, and not
like cowards skulk behind their flimsy shield of independence for
defence or security. I have as great an aversion to cringing apologies,
made on every occasion, as you possibly can have, and should always
suspect the sincerity of them.—If this class are the greater part of
them,—still I can conceive, nay I _have known_ instances when an apology
has heightened my opinion of a person instead of lessening it. If we are
in fault, ought we not to confess it? If we are _not_ in fault, ought we
not to exculpate ourselves? I should think a person valued my
approbation very little, if he knew I had any reason to censure him and
yet would not by a single word convince me I had been deceived. However,
I did not mean to dip so far into this _weighty_ subject, ’twould have
been better to have just touched the edges and away. Now really, Moses,
I write in pain if I am not good-natured; you must attribute it all to
the cold which makes my fingers tingle; I can’t write below, there is
such a gabbling. ’Tis a cold, comfortless night; the rain patters
against the window and the wind whistles round the house, it sounds like
December,—oh! that was an unlucky word! I feel gloomy at the sight of
it. The storm has driven all my thoughts back to myself for shelter. I
am at this moment so selfish and cross that I would not walk ten steps
to do good to any one. Our old windows here clatter so that I can hear
nothing else. I shall begin to think the candle burns blue, and that I
hear the groans of distress between the blasts of wind, which sound
hollow and dreary; even now the shadow of my pen on the wall looked like
a man’s arm, and as true as I live, here is a winding-sheet in the
candle. Oh these hobgoblin stories! we never get rid of them. I
sometimes, when sitting alone, after all are asleep in the house, get my
imagination so roused, that I look in fearful expectation that the tall
martial ghost of Hamlet will stalk before my eyes, or that some less
dignified one will step through the keyhole, or pop down
chimney.—Ghosts, what a looking word that is!!—nonsense!—what was I
going to say, something about ghosts and all not warming my fingers. I
declare this shall be the last letter I will write from the
fire,—December, and writing in the chamber without fire. Oh—monstrous!
But here am I at the end without saying several things I meant to. I
never, when I sit down to write, say any thing I wished or intended to
when I began. You found my letter, you say—’twas not worth the finding,
as it was too late to answer the purpose I wish. Write me often. I have
been entertained with Johnson’s life. We are alone, so write me often.