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.—­The next property of epistolary style is perspicuity, and is oftentimes by affectation of some wit ill angled for, or ostentation of some hidden terms of art.  Few words they darken speech, and so do too many; as well too much light hurteth the eyes, as too little; and a long bill of chancery confounds the understanding as much as the shortest note; therefore, let not your letters be penned like English statutes, and this is obtained.  These vices are eschewed by pondering your business well and distinctly concerning yourself, which is much furthered by uttering your thoughts, and letting them as well come forth to the light and judgment of your own outward senses as to the censure of other men’s ears; for that is the reason why many good scholars speak but fumblingly; like a rich man, that for want of particular note and difference can bring you no certain ware readily out of his shop.  Hence it is that talkative shallow men do often content the hearers more than the wise.  But this may find a speedier redress in writing, where all comes under the last examination of the eyes.  First, mind it well, then pen it, then examine it, then amend it, and you may be in the better hope of doing reasonably well.  Under this virtue may come plainness, which is not to be curious in the order as to answer a letter, as if you were to answer to interrogatories.  As to the first, first; and to the second, secondly, &c. but both in method to use (as ladies do in their attire) a diligent kind of negligence, and their sportive freedom; though with some men you are not to jest, or practise tricks; yet the delivery of the most important