If the handling seems to cause the difficulty, and if that proceeds from him who presents the argument, not only in the opinion of the unpractised reader, but truly in the view of those who are able to judge, then such a writer is worthy of blame, in seeking to expound without sufficient study; but if the defective handling is due not to the writer, but to plain misunderstanding, then there is small praise to the reader who misconstrues without regard to courtesy or reverence for truth.
As for my style in treatment, if it be charged with difficulty, that also proceeds from choice, being intended to show that I come from the forge, being always familiar with strong steel and pithy stuff in the reading of good writers, and therefore bound to resemble that metal in my style. To argue closely and with sequence, to trace causes and effects, to seek sinews and sound strength rather than waste flesh, is seemly for a student, especially when he writes for perpetuity, where the reader may keep the book by him to study at his leisure, not being forced either to take it all at once or forgo it altogether, as is the case in speech. Discourses that are entirely popular, or are written in haste for the moment, may well be slight in manner, for their life is short; and where what is said is at once to be put to present use, the plainer the style the more plausible it will be, and therefore most excellent in its kind, since the expression must be adapted to the immediate end in view, leaving nothing to muse on, as there is no time for musing. But where the matter is no courier to post away in haste, and there must be musing on it, another course must be taken, and yet the manner of delivery must not be thought hard, nor compared with others of a different kind, considering that it is meant to teach, and can use such plainness only as the subject admits of. Does any man of judgment in learning and in the Latin tongue think that Cicero’s orations and his discourses in philosophy were equally well known and of equal plainness to the people of Rome, though both in their own way are plain enough to us, who know the Latin tongue better than our own, because we pore over it, and pay no attention to our own? Certainly not, as appears from many passages in Cicero himself, where he notes the difference, and confesses that the newness of the subjects which he transported from Greece was the cause of some darkness to the ordinary reader, and of some contempt to the learned because they fancied the Greek more. Yet neither ignorance nor contempt could discourage his pen from seeking the advantage of his own language, by translating into it the learning which others wished to remain in the Greek; he kept on his course, and in the end the tide turned in his favour, bringing him the credit which he enjoys to this day. And he himself bears witness that the resistance he met with was due not only to the matter of which he treated, but also to his manner of expression, and even to the very words he used, which being strange and newly-coined were not understood by the ordinary reader. “I could write of these things,” he says, meaning philosophical subjects, “like Amasanius” (an obscure writer of apophthegms) “but in that case not like myself; as plainly as he, but not then so as to satisfy myself, or do justice to the subject as I should handle it. I must define, divide, distinguish, exercise judgment, and use the terms of art. I must have regard as well to those from whom my learning is borrowed, that they may say they meant it so, as to those for whom it is borrowed, that they may say they understand it.”