The first is brevity; for they must
not be treatises or discourses (your letters) except it be to learned
men.
not be treatises or discourses (your letters) except it be to learned
men.
Ben Jonson - Discoveries Made Upon Men, and Some Poems
If it
be so then in words, which fly and escape censure, and where one good
phrase begs pardon for many incongruities and faults, how shall he then
be thought wise whose penning is thin and shallow? how shall you look for
wit from him whose leisure and head, assisted with the examination of his
eyes, yield you no life or sharpness in his writing?
_De stylo epistolari_. --_Inventio_. --In writing there is to be regarded the
invention and the fashion. For the invention, that ariseth upon your
business, whereof there can be no rules of more certainty, or precepts of
better direction given, than conjecture can lay down from the several
occasions of men's particular lives and vocations: but sometimes men make
baseness of kindness: As "I could not satisfy myself till I had
discharged my remembrance, and charged my letters with commendation to
you;" or, "My business is no other than to testify my love to you, and to
put you in mind of my willingness to do you all kind offices;" or, "Sir,
have you leisure to descend to the remembering of that assurance you have
long possessed in your servant, and upon your next opportunity make him
happy with some commands from you? " or the like; that go a-begging for
some meaning, and labour to be delivered of the great burden of nothing.
When you have invented, and that your business be matter, and not bare
form, or mere ceremony, but some earnest, then are you to proceed to the
ordering of it, and digesting the parts, which is had out of two
circumstances. One is the understanding of the persons to whom you are
to write; the other is the coherence of your sentence; for men's capacity
to weigh what will be apprehended with greatest attention or leisure;
what next regarded and longed for especially, and what last will leave
satisfaction, and (as it were) the sweetest memorial and belief of all
that is passed in his understanding whom you write to. For the
consequence of sentences, you must be sure that every clause do give the
cue one to the other, and be bespoken ere it come. So much for invention
and order.
_Modus_. --1. _Brevitas_. --Now for fashion: it consists in four things,
which are qualities of your style.
The first is brevity; for they must
not be treatises or discourses (your letters) except it be to learned
men. And even among them there is a kind of thrift and saving of words.
Therefore you are to examine the clearest passages of your understanding,
and through them to convey the sweetest and most significant words you
can devise, that you may the easier teach them the readiest way to
another man's apprehension, and open their meaning fully, roundly, and
distinctly, so as the reader may not think a second view cast away upon
your letter. And though respect be a part following this, yet now here,
and still I must remember it, if you write to a man, whose estate and
sense, as senses, you are familiar with, you may the bolder (to set a
task to his brain) venture on a knot. But if to your superior, you are
bound to measure him in three farther points: first, with interest in
him; secondly, his capacity in your letters; thirdly, his leisure to
peruse them. For your interest or favour with him, you are to be the
shorter or longer, more familiar or submiss, as he will afford you time.
For his capacity, you are to be quicker and fuller of those reaches and
glances of wit or learning, as he is able to entertain them. For his
leisure, you are commanded to the greater briefness, as his place is of
greater discharges and cares. But with your betters, you are not to put
riddles of wit, by being too scarce of words; not to cause the trouble of
making breviates by writing too riotous and wastingly. Brevity is
attained in matter by avoiding idle compliments, prefaces, protestations,
parentheses, superfluous circuit of figures and digressions: in the
composition, by omitting conjunctions [_not only_, _but also_; _both the
one and the other_, _whereby it cometh to pass_] and such like idle
particles, that have no great business in a serious letter but breaking
of sentences, as oftentimes a short journey is made long by unnessary
baits.
_Quintilian_. --But, as Quintilian saith, there is a briefness of the parts
sometimes that makes the whole long: "As I came to the stairs, I took a
pair of oars, they launched out, rowed apace, I landed at the court gate,
I paid my fare, went up to the presence, asked for my lord, I was
admitted. " All this is but, "I went to the court and spake with my
lord. " This is the fault of some Latin writers within these last hundred
years of my reading, and perhaps Seneca may be appeached of it; I accuse
him not.
2. _Perspicuitas_.
be so then in words, which fly and escape censure, and where one good
phrase begs pardon for many incongruities and faults, how shall he then
be thought wise whose penning is thin and shallow? how shall you look for
wit from him whose leisure and head, assisted with the examination of his
eyes, yield you no life or sharpness in his writing?
_De stylo epistolari_. --_Inventio_. --In writing there is to be regarded the
invention and the fashion. For the invention, that ariseth upon your
business, whereof there can be no rules of more certainty, or precepts of
better direction given, than conjecture can lay down from the several
occasions of men's particular lives and vocations: but sometimes men make
baseness of kindness: As "I could not satisfy myself till I had
discharged my remembrance, and charged my letters with commendation to
you;" or, "My business is no other than to testify my love to you, and to
put you in mind of my willingness to do you all kind offices;" or, "Sir,
have you leisure to descend to the remembering of that assurance you have
long possessed in your servant, and upon your next opportunity make him
happy with some commands from you? " or the like; that go a-begging for
some meaning, and labour to be delivered of the great burden of nothing.
When you have invented, and that your business be matter, and not bare
form, or mere ceremony, but some earnest, then are you to proceed to the
ordering of it, and digesting the parts, which is had out of two
circumstances. One is the understanding of the persons to whom you are
to write; the other is the coherence of your sentence; for men's capacity
to weigh what will be apprehended with greatest attention or leisure;
what next regarded and longed for especially, and what last will leave
satisfaction, and (as it were) the sweetest memorial and belief of all
that is passed in his understanding whom you write to. For the
consequence of sentences, you must be sure that every clause do give the
cue one to the other, and be bespoken ere it come. So much for invention
and order.
_Modus_. --1. _Brevitas_. --Now for fashion: it consists in four things,
which are qualities of your style.
The first is brevity; for they must
not be treatises or discourses (your letters) except it be to learned
men. And even among them there is a kind of thrift and saving of words.
Therefore you are to examine the clearest passages of your understanding,
and through them to convey the sweetest and most significant words you
can devise, that you may the easier teach them the readiest way to
another man's apprehension, and open their meaning fully, roundly, and
distinctly, so as the reader may not think a second view cast away upon
your letter. And though respect be a part following this, yet now here,
and still I must remember it, if you write to a man, whose estate and
sense, as senses, you are familiar with, you may the bolder (to set a
task to his brain) venture on a knot. But if to your superior, you are
bound to measure him in three farther points: first, with interest in
him; secondly, his capacity in your letters; thirdly, his leisure to
peruse them. For your interest or favour with him, you are to be the
shorter or longer, more familiar or submiss, as he will afford you time.
For his capacity, you are to be quicker and fuller of those reaches and
glances of wit or learning, as he is able to entertain them. For his
leisure, you are commanded to the greater briefness, as his place is of
greater discharges and cares. But with your betters, you are not to put
riddles of wit, by being too scarce of words; not to cause the trouble of
making breviates by writing too riotous and wastingly. Brevity is
attained in matter by avoiding idle compliments, prefaces, protestations,
parentheses, superfluous circuit of figures and digressions: in the
composition, by omitting conjunctions [_not only_, _but also_; _both the
one and the other_, _whereby it cometh to pass_] and such like idle
particles, that have no great business in a serious letter but breaking
of sentences, as oftentimes a short journey is made long by unnessary
baits.
_Quintilian_. --But, as Quintilian saith, there is a briefness of the parts
sometimes that makes the whole long: "As I came to the stairs, I took a
pair of oars, they launched out, rowed apace, I landed at the court gate,
I paid my fare, went up to the presence, asked for my lord, I was
admitted. " All this is but, "I went to the court and spake with my
lord. " This is the fault of some Latin writers within these last hundred
years of my reading, and perhaps Seneca may be appeached of it; I accuse
him not.
2. _Perspicuitas_.
