As we have few letters, we have likewise few criticisms
upon the epistolary style. The observations with which Walsh has
introduced his pages of inanity, are such as give him little claim to
the rank assigned him by Dryden among the criticks. _Letters_, says he,
_are intended as resemblances of conversation, and the chief
excellencies of conversation are good humour and good breeding_. This
remark, equally valuable for its novelty and propriety, he dilates and
enforces with an appearance of complete acquiescence in his own
discovery.
No man was ever in doubt about the moral qualities of a letter. It has
been always known that he who endeavours to please must appear pleased,
and he who would not provoke rudeness must not practise it. But the
question among those who establish rules for an epistolary performance
is how gaiety or civility may be properly expressed; as among the
criticks in history it is not contested whether truth ought to be
preserved, but by what mode of diction it is best adorned.
As letters are written on all subjects, in all states of mind, they
cannot be properly reduced to settled rules, or described by any single
characteristick; and we may safely disentangle our minds from critical
embarrassments, by determining that a letter has no peculiarity but its
form, and that nothing is to be refused admission, which would be proper
in any other method of treating the same subject.
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