1I thank you for writing to me often. 1For you show yourself to me in the only way you can. 1I never receive a letter from you without our being together at once. 1If pictures of absent friends are pleasing to us, which renew the memory and lighten our longing with a false and empty comfort, how much more pleasing is a letter, which brings the real traces of an absent friend, his real marks? 1For what is sweetest in his presence, to recognise him, the hand of a friend imprinted on a letter supplies. 2You write that you heard the philosopher Serapion when he put in at your shore: 'He tends to wrench out his words at a great rush, and does not pour them out one at a time, but crowds and drives them on.
2For more come than a single voice can cope with.' 2I do not approve of this in a philosopher, whose delivery, like his life, ought to be composed; 2and nothing is orderly that is headlong and hurried. 2So in Homer that rapid speech, coming on without a break like snow, is given to the younger orator, while from the old man gentle speech flows, sweeter than honey. 3So take it like this: that rapid and abundant force of speaking is better suited to a street-performer than to one who is pleading a great and serious matter and teaching it. 3I do not want him to drip any more than to run; 3let him neither strain the ears nor overwhelm them.
3For that poverty and thinness too keeps the listener less attentive, through weariness at its halting slowness; yet what is waited for sinks in more easily than what flies past. 3Lastly, men are said to 'hand down' precepts to their pupils; 3what runs away is not handed down. 4Add now that speech which devotes itself to truth ought to be unstudied and simple. 4This popular speech has nothing of truth in it; 4it wants to move the crowd and sweep away unthinking ears by its rush; it does not offer itself to be examined, it is carried away. 4And how can it govern that cannot itself be governed? 4What of the fact that this speech, which is applied to healing minds, ought to sink down into us?
4Remedies do no good unless they linger. 5Besides, it has much emptiness and vanity in it; it has more sound than strength. 5What terrifies me must be soothed, what provokes me must be checked, what deceives me must be dispelled, luxury must be restrained, greed rebuked; 5which of these can be done in a hurry? 5What doctor treats the sick in passing? 5What of the fact that such a din of words rushing out without selection does not even give any pleasure? 6But just as for most things you would not have believed possible it is enough to have come to know them, so it is more than enough to have heard once those who have put words through their paces.
6For what would anyone wish to learn from them, what to imitate? 6What should he judge of the minds of those whose speech is disordered and unchecked and cannot be held back? 7Just as, with people running down a slope, their step is not halted where they decided, but, once the weight of the body is set going, it hurries along of itself and is carried further than they wished; 7so that speed in speaking is neither under its own control nor sufficiently becoming to philosophy, which ought to place its words, not fling them, and to proceed step by step. 8'What then? 8Will it not sometimes rise up too?' 8Why not?
8But with the dignity of character kept intact, which that violent and excessive force strips away. 8Let it have great strength, but controlled; 8let it be a perennial stream, not a torrent. 8I would scarcely allow even an orator such speed of speaking, which cannot be called back and goes on without law. 8For how will a juror be able to follow, who is sometimes even inexperienced and untrained? 8Even when ostentation or uncontrollable feeling has carried the orator away, let him hurry and pile on only as much as the ears can bear. 9You will act rightly, then, if you do not listen to those who ask how much they say, not how, and if you yourself prefer, if it must be, to speak as Publius Vinicius did, the stammerer.
9When someone asked how Publius Vinicius spoke, Asellius said: 'In a drawl.' 9For Geminus Varius said: 'How you can call that man eloquent I do not know; 9he cannot string three words together.' 9Why should you not prefer to speak as Vinicius did? 10Someone as tasteless may come along as the man who, when Vinicius was plucking out his words one by one, as if he were dictating rather than speaking, said: 'Speak up, have you anything to say?' 10For the rush of Quintus Haterius, the most celebrated orator of his day, I want to be far removed from a sane man; 10he never hesitated, never paused; 10he began only once, he stopped only once.
11Yet I think certain things are also more or less suited to different nations; 11in the Greeks you could put up with this licence; 11we, even when we write, have grown used to punctuating. 11Our own Cicero too, from whom Roman eloquence sprang forth, was a slow pacer. 11Roman speech looks about itself more, weighs itself, and offers itself to be weighed. 12Fabianus, a man outstanding in his life and his learning and, what comes after these, in his eloquence too, used to discourse briskly rather than excitedly, so that you could say it was ease, not speed. 12This I accept in a wise man, but I do not demand it; 12though his speech may come out without hindrance, I prefer that it be brought forth rather than that it flow forth.
13And I deter you from this disease all the more because this thing cannot happen to you unless you have ceased to feel shame; 13you would have to rub away your blushes and not listen to yourself. 13For that unheeding rush will bring many things which you would wish to criticise. 14That thing, I say, cannot happen to you while your modesty remains intact. 14Besides, there is need of daily practice, and your attention must be transferred from matter to words. 14And even if words are at hand and can run on without any effort of yours, still they must be moderated. 14For just as a more modest gait befits a wise man, so does restrained speech, not bold.
14So the sum of sums will be this: I bid you be slow of speech. 14Farewell.