“Si quid enim placet,
                    Si quid dulce horninum sensibus influit,
                    Debentur lepidis omnia Gratiis.”

["If anything please that I write, if it infuse delight into men’s
minds, all is due to the charming Graces.”  The verses are probably
by some modern poet.]

They abandon me throughout; all I write is rude; polish and beauty are wanting:  I cannot set things off to any advantage; my handling adds nothing to the matter; for which reason I must have it forcible, very full, and that has lustre of its own.  If I pitch upon subjects that are popular and gay, ’tis to follow my own inclination, who do not affect a grave and ceremonious wisdom, as the world does; and to make myself more sprightly, but not my style more wanton, which would rather have them grave and severe; at least if I may call that a style which is an inform and irregular way of speaking, a popular jargon, a proceeding without definition, division, conclusion, perplexed like that Amafanius and Rabirius.—­[Cicero, Acad., i. 2.]—­I can neither please nor delight, nor even tickle my readers:  the best story in the world is spoiled by my handling, and becomes flat; I cannot speak but in rough earnest, and am totally unprovided of that facility which I observe in many of my acquaintance, of entertaining the first comers and keeping a whole company in breath, or taking up the ear of a prince with all sorts of discourse without wearying themselves:  they never want matter by reason of the faculty and grace they have in taking hold of the first thing that starts up, and accommodating it to the humour and capacity of those with whom they have to do.  Princes do not much affect solid discourses, nor I to tell stories.  The first and easiest reasons, which are commonly the best taken, I know not how to employ:  I am an ill orator to the common sort.  I am apt of everything to say the extremest that I know.  Cicero is of opinion that in treatises of philosophy the exordium is the hardest part; if this be true, I am wise in sticking to the conclusion.  And yet we are to know how to wind the string to all notes, and the sharpest is that which is the most seldom touched.  There is at least as much perfection in elevating an empty as in supporting a weighty thing.  A man must sometimes superficially handle things, and sometimes push them home.  I know very well that most men keep themselves in this lower form from not conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark; but I likewise know that the greatest masters, and Xenophon and Plato are often seen to stoop to this low and popular manner of speaking and treating of things, but supporting it with graces which never fail them.

Farther, my language has nothing in it that is facile and polished; ’tis rough, free, and irregular, and as such pleases, if not my judgment, at all events my inclination, but I very well perceive that I sometimes give myself too much rein, and that by endeavouring to avoid art and affectation I fall into the other inconvenience: