1831.3 C -195 ] 



THE PEllILS OF PEKMANSHIP. 



A damn'd cramp piece of penmanship a? ever I saw in my life. I can read your print hand very 

 well. But here, there are such handles, and shanks, and dashes, that one can scarce tell the head 

 from the taiL Site Stoops to Conquer. 



I wonder whether this will be legible to the printer ! I marvel 

 whether this dull prose will appear as such, or glitter in the pages ot 

 the MonthUj " in the gewgaw of verse !" No matter ; for the sake of a 

 thousand in my own situation I will risk all : besides, I have begun to 

 reform ! Portentous word — what does it mean ? But phsa ! I must 

 keep that for a political article. 



Among Lord Chesterfield's dogmata on minor moi-als, is an impera- 

 tive injunction to write a clear and legible hand. This was very easy 

 for his lordship to recommend, but I should like to know whether he 

 practised what he preached. Let that, however, be as it may, this I 

 know, that for the whole of my life I have been trying to realise his di- 

 rection, without being able to arrive at its consummation. But though 

 I cannot improve my hand- writing, I can improve Chesterfield ; and 

 when I publish an edition of his works, so far from its being a minor 

 moral, I shall give it a brevet of majority, as its importance deserves, 

 and as the few remarks which I have here thrown together will satisfac- 

 torily prove. Whether I shall convince the world, I know not; but, at 

 all events, I preach with an honest conscience, in token whereof I am at 

 this moment paying six guineas a quarter to a writing master, to teach 

 me a new mode of executing pot-hooks and hangers — ecce signum ! This 

 is my first specimen : I hope it will not lead the printer far a-field — that 

 he will be able to intypify the lesson I would convey, so that it may not 

 remain like every other written communication I have ever made — a la- 

 byrinth of black strokes upon white paper — as full of meaning, and as 

 impossible to be understood, as an original copy of Confucius. I have 

 often wondered why, considering that my case is no uncommon one, it 

 has not become customary, in this improving age, to establish private 

 printing-presses, for the embodying and expression of all epistolary cor- 

 respondence whatever. We have a glimmering of the propriety of this 

 plan in the printed formula of invitations. We do not entrust them to 

 the misconceptive hazards of the autographic art ; then why far dearer 

 tilings — our love-letters — the sacred communications between man and 

 wife.'' When I consider the events of only my own life, I am lost in 

 wonder to imagine the blindness that leads us to consign these vital con- 

 cerns to mere ordinary penmanship. The only way in which I can ac- 

 count for it is, that bad writers, with that self-esteem which is one of the 

 innate qualities of our nature, pretend to make easy work of reading 

 their own scratches for the sake of coming to the conclusion — not that 

 their sci*awl, but the perverse reading of their correspondents, is to 

 blame. jNIy eyes, however, are opened. Jlay tlicse confessions of a 

 modern liieroglypliicer bring other people to their senses. 



Tlie foregoing observations may be looked upon in the light of a ge- 

 neral admission. I will now come to particulars. I was almost about to 

 say that I was born with a natural incapacity for forming those outward 

 and visil)le signs of our inward thoughts, by which so much of tlie 

 action of our life's drama is carried on ; but, though I have read of him 

 wlio " lisped in luuubers," I never heard of any infant tiiat was pre- 

 to write either billet-doux or Idlrc prrcinplunc in liis 



