The Art of Honest Feedback — Letters from a Stoic

A short letter, and one of the most personal, Seneca has read Lucilius's book and cannot put it down. Letter 46 is pure literary response. He opened it intending only to taste it, and found himself carried through to the end despite sunlight calling, hunger warning, and clouds gathering. He wasn't merely pleased.

He rejoiced. The style he describes: smooth, vigorous, chaste, not a burst of force but an even, uninterrupted flow. At first glance he might have attributed it to Livy or Epicurus. He finds in it Lucilius's own sweetness, his mildness, and something loftier too.

The advice he gives is brief: keep to this direction. Continue choosing subjects that lay hold of the mind and arouse it. He promises a more thorough judgment after a second reading, his first impressions, he admits, are still unsettled, as if he heard the book rather than read it.

He will tell Lucilius the truth. Lucky fellow, he says, to give a correspondent no excuse for flattery.