Letter 141

To Herculian. Do not be surprised that I am sending two letters with the same messenger. Consider it your punishment for that unreasonable reproach of yours — and fill yourself up with my garrulousness. In any case, I have more to say to you than a single letter can hold.

Letter 141: A Lost Text [1] To Herculian Do not be surprised that I am giving two letters for you to the same messenger. First consider yourself undergoing punishment for your unreasonable reproach, and replenish yourself with my garrulity; in the next place, I wish my second missive to fulfill another object. I beg you to give me back the brief composition in iambics, in which the author holds converse with his own soul. note [Unidentified; according to Letter 143 , Herculian sent the poem back.] I thought that I should be able to piece this together again from memory, but now there seems every chance of its not resembling the one in question at all, and of my using my invention rather than my memory in attempting to write it down. [2] Perhaps it would be worse or perhaps better, but one should not in any case bring the same offspring twice into the world, when one may have the thing that has already been born. Send me back, then, a copy of the quatrain, in the name of the very soul that the sheet of paper seeks to adorn. But do this as quickly and as safely as possible, that is to say, by one of those who are certain to deliver it, for in erring in either way you will accomplish nothing at all. If you are slow in sending it, it will no longer find me here; and the same thing will happen if you give it to one who will not deliver it at all.