But returning to the speaking virtue: I find no great choice betwixt not
knowing to speak anything but ill, and not knowing to speak anything but
well.

"Non est ornamentum virile concimitas."

["A carefully arranged dress is no manly ornament."
--Seneca, Ep., 115.]

The sages tell us that, as to what concerns knowledge, 'tis nothing but
philosophy; and as to what concerns effects, nothing but virtue, which is
generally proper to all degrees and to all orders.

There is something like this in these two other philosophers, for they
also promise eternity to the letters they write to their friends; but
'tis after another manner, and by accommodating themselves, for a good
end, to the vanity of another; for they write to them that if the concern
of making themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do
yet detain them in the management of public affairs, and make them fear
the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them, let them
never trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they shall have
credit enough with posterity to ensure them that were there nothing else
but the letters thus written to them, those letters will render their
names as known and famous as their own public actions could do. And
besides this difference, these are not idle and empty letters, that
contain nothing but a fine jingle of well-chosen words and delicate
couched phrases, but rather replete and abounding with grand discourses
of reason, by which a man may render himself not more eloquent, but more
wise, and that instruct us not to speak, but to do well. Away with that
eloquence that enchants us with itself, and not with actual things!
unless you will allow that of Cicero to be of so supreme a perfection as
to form a complete body of itself.

I shall farther add one story we read of him to this purpose, wherein his
nature will much more manifestly be laid open to us. He was to make an
oration in public, and found himself a little straitened for time to make
himself ready at his ease; when Eros, one of his slaves, brought him word
that the audience was deferred till the next day, at which he was so
ravished with joy that he enfranchised him for the good news.

Upon this subject of letters, I will add this more to what has been
already said, that it is a kind of writing wherein my friends think I can
do something; and I am willing to confess I should rather have chosen to
p