I fear and suspect, that you have taken it into your head in most cases, that the matter is all, and the manner little or nothing. If you have, undeceive yourself, and be convinced that, in everything, the manner is full as important as the matter. If you speak the sense of an angel in bad words and with a disagreeable utterance, nobody will hear you twice, who can help it. If you write epistles as well as Cicero, but in a very bad hand, and very ill-spelled, whoever receives will laugh at them; and if you had the figure of Adonis, with an awkward air and motions, it will disgust, instead of pleasing. Study manner, therefore, in everything, if you would be anything. UNPREPOSSESSING MANNERS. This epigram in Martial, Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare; Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te; has puzzled a great many people, who can not conceive how it is possible to love any body, and yet not know the reason why. I think I conceive Martial’s meaning very clearly, though the nature of the epigram, which is to be short, would not allow him to explain it more fully; and I take it to be this: O Sabidis, you are a very worthy, deserving man; you have a thousand good qualities, you have a great deal of learning; I esteem, I respect, but for the soul of me I can not love you, though I can not particularly say why. You are not _amiable_; you have not those engaging manners, those pleasing attentions, those graces, and that address, which are absolutely necessary to please, though impossible to define. I can not say it is this or that particular thing that hinders me from loving you; it is the whole together; and upon the whole you are not agreeable.