No More Learning

_Omnibus hoc vitium est_. There are different
grades in all these classes. One will turn his telescope toward a
back-yard, another toward Uranus; one will tell you that he dined with
Smith, another that he supped with Plato. In one particular, all men may
be considered as belonging to the first grand division, inasmuch as they
all seem equally desirous of discovering the mote in their neighbor's eye.

To one or another of these species every human being may safely be
referred. I think it beyond a peradventure that Jonah prosecuted some
inquiries into the digestive apparatus of whales, and that Noah sealed
up a letter in an empty bottle, that news in regard to him might not be
wanting in case of the worst. They had else been super or subter human.
I conceive, also, that, as there are certain persons who continually
peep and pry at the keyhole of that mysterious door through which,
sooner or later, we all make our exits, so there are doubtless ghosts
fidgeting and fretting on the other side of it, because they have no
means of conveying back to this world the scraps of news they have
picked up in that. For there is an answer ready somewhere to every
question, the great law of _give and take_ runs through all nature, and
if we see a hook, we may be sure that an eye is waiting for it. I read
in every face I meet a standing advertisement of information wanted in
regard to A. B. , or that the friends of C. D. can hear something to his
disadvantage by application to such a one.

It was to gratify the two great passions of asking and answering that
epistolary correspondence was first invented.
Letters (for by this
usurped title epistles are now commonly known) are of several kinds.
First, there are those which are not letters at all--as letters-patent,
letters dismissory, letters enclosing bills, letters of administration,
Pliny's letters, letters of diplomacy, of Cato, of Mentor, of Lords
Lyttelton, Chesterfield, and Orrery, of Jacob Behmen, Seneca (whom St.
Jerome includes in his list of sacred writers), letters from abroad,
from sons in college to their fathers, letters of marque, and letters
generally, which are in no wise letters of mark. Second, are real
letters, such as those of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, Howell, Lamb, D. Y. , the
first letters from children (printed in staggering capitals), Letters
from New York, letters of credit, and others, interesting for the sake
of the writer or the thing written. I have read also letters from Europe
by a gentleman named Pinto, containing some curious gossip, and which I
hope to see collected for the benefit of the curious. There are,
besides, letters addressed to posterity,--as epitaphs, for example,
written for their own monuments by monarchs, whereby we have lately
become possessed of the names of several great conquerors and kings of
kings, hitherto unheard of and still unpronounceable, but valuable to
the student of the entirely dark ages. The letter of our Saviour to King
Abgarus, that which St. Peter sent to King Pepin in the year of grace
755, that of the Virgin to the magistrates of Messina, that of the
Sanhedrim of Toledo to Annas and Caiaphas, A. D. 35, that of Galeazzo
Sforza's spirit to his brother Lodovico, that of St. Gregory
Thaumaturgus to the D----l, and that of this last-mentioned active
police-magistrate to a nun of Girgenti, I would place in a class by
themselves, as also the letters of candidates, concerning which I shall
dilate more fully in a note at the end of the following poem. At present
_sat prata biberunt_. Only, concerning the shape of letters, they are
all either square or oblong, to which general figures circular letters
and round-robins also conform themselves. --H.