LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

NO. IV.--TO POMPOSITY.

YOUR EXCELLENCY,

How difficult it is to succeed in giving pleasure. When I addressed
you recently, I honestly intended to gratify you by the adoption of
a tone of easy familiarity. Surely, I thought to myself, I cannot be
wrong if I address my friend POMPOSITY by his name, and speak to him
in a chatty rather than in an inflated style. If I chose the latter,
might he not think that I was poking fun at him by cheap parody,
and manifest his displeasure by bringing a host of BULMERS about my
ears? These considerations prevailed with me, and the result was the
letter you received. But, _O pectora cæca_! I have learnt from an
authoritative source that you are displeased. You resent, it seems,
what you are pleased to term my affectation of intimacy, and you beg
for a style of greater respect in any future communications. So be it.
I have pondered for hours, and have eventually come to the conclusion
that I shall best consult your wishes by addressing you in a manner
suited to diplomatic personages of importance. I have noticed that
in their official intercourse these gentlemen move on stilts of the
most rigid punctilio, and I have often pictured to myself the glow
of genuine pride which must suffuse the soul of an ambassador or a
foreign Minister when, for the first time, he finds himself styled an
Excellency. It may be of course that he knows himself to be anything
rather than excellent, but he will keep that knowledge to himself,
stowed away in some remote corner of his mind, and never on any
account allowed to interfere with his enjoyment of the ignorant and
empty compliments that others pay him.