The excellence of Scott's, though always discoverable in Lockhart, was perhaps never easily appreciable till they were separately collected and published not very many years ago. It may indeed be suggested that the "Life and Letters" system, though very valuable as regards the "Life" is apt a little to obscure the excellence of the "Letters" themselves. Of this particular collection it is not too much to say that while it threw not the least stain on the character of one of the most faultless (one singular and heavily punished lapse excepted) of men of letters, it positively enhanced our knowledge of the variety of his literary powers.

Perhaps however the best of letter-writers amongst these four protagonists of the great Romantic Revival in England (the inevitable attempt sometimes made now to quarrel with that term is as inevitably silly) is the least good poet. Southey's letters, never yet fully but very voluminously published, have not been altogether fortunate in their fashion of publication. There have been questionings about the propriety of "Selected" Works; but there surely can be little doubt that in the case of Letters a certain amount of selection is not only justifiable but almost imperative. Everyone at all addicted to correspondence must know that in writing to different people on the same or closely adjacent days, if "anything has" in the common phrase "happened" he is bound to repeat himself. He may, if he has the sense of art, take care to vary his phrase even though he knows that no two letters will have the same reader; but he cannot vary his matter much. Southey's letters, in the two collections by his son and his son-in-law, were edited without due regard to this: and the third—those to Caroline Bowles, his second wife—might have been "thinned" in a different way. But the bulk of interesting matter is still very large and the quality of the presentation is excellent. If anyone fears to plunge into some dozen volumes let him look at the "Cats" and the "Statues" of Greta Hall, printed at the end of the Doctor, but both in form and nature letters. He will not hesitate much longer, if he knows good letter-stuff when he sees it.[25]

[Sidenote: LANDOR]

Most of the second group wrote letters worth reading, but only one of them reaches the first rank in the art; it is true that he is among the first of the first. The letters of Landor supply not the least part of that curious problem which is presented by his whole work. They naturally give less room than the apices of his regular prose and of his poetry for that marvellous perfection of style and phrase which is allowed even by those who complain of a want of substance in him. And another complaint of his "aloofness" affects them in two ways rather damagingly. When it is present it cuts at the root of one of the chief interests of letters, which is intimacy. When it is absent, and Landor presents himself in his well-known character of an angry baby (as for instance when he remarked of the Bishop who did not do something he wanted, that "God alone is great enough for him [Walter Savage Landor] to ask anything of twice") he becomes merely—or perhaps to very amiable folk rather painfully—ridiculous. De Quincey and Hazlitt diverted a good deal of what might have been utilised as mere letter-writing faculty into their very miscellaneous work for publication. Moore could write very good letters himself: but is perhaps most noted and notable in connection with the subject as being one of the earliest and best "Life-and-Letters" craftsmen in regard to Byron.

But none of these restrictions or provisos is requisite, or could for a moment be thought of, in reference to Charles Lamb. Of him, as of hardly any other writer of great excellence (perhaps Thackeray is most like him in this way) it can be said that if we had nothing but his letters we should almost be able to detect the qualities which he shows in his regular works. Some of the Essays of Elia and his other miscellanies are or pretend to be actual letters. Certainly not a few of his letters would seem not at all strange and by no means unable to hold up their heads, if they had appeared as Essays of that singularly fortunate Italian who had his name taken, not in vain but in order to be titular author of some of the choicest things in literature.

Indeed that unique combination of bookishness and native fancy which makes the "Eliesque" quality is obviously as well suited to the letter as to the essay, and would require but a stroke or two of the pen, in addition or deletion, to produce examples of either. One often feels as if it must have been, as the saying goes, a toss-up whether the London Magazine or some personal friend got a particular composition; whether it was issued to the public direct or waited for Serjeant Talfourd to collect and edit it. The two English writers whom, on very different sides of course, Lamb most resembles, and whom he may be said to have copied (of course as genius copies) most, are Sterne and Sir Thomas Browne. But between the actual letters and the actual works of these two, themselves, there is a great difference, while (as has just been noted) in Lamb's case there is none. The reason of course is that though Sir Thomas is one of our very greatest authors and the Reverend Yorick not by any means unplaced in the running for greatness, both are in the highest degree artificial: while Lamb's way of writing, complex as it is, necessitating as it must have done not a little reading and (as would seem almost necessary) not a little practice, seems to run as naturally as a child's babble. The very tricks—mechanical dots, dashes, aposiopeses—which offend us now and then in Sterne; the unfamiliar Latinisms which frighten some and disgust others in Browne, drop from Lamb's lips or pen like the pearls of the Fairy story. Unless you are born out of sympathy with Elia, you never think about them as tricks at all. Now this naturalness—it can hardly be said too often here—is the one thing needful in letters. The different forms of it may be as various and as far apart from each other as those of the other Nature in flora or fauna, on mountain and sea, in field and town. But if it is there, all is right.

[Sidenote: BYRON]

There are few more interesting groups in the population of our subject than that formed by the three poets whom we mentioned last when classifying the epistolers of the early nineteenth century. There is hardly one of them who has not been ranked by some far from contemptible judgments among our greatest as poets; and merely as letter-writers they have been put correspondingly high by others or the same. It is rather curious that the most contested as to his place as a poet has been, as a rule, allowed it most easily as a letter-writer. The enormous vogue which Byron's verse at once attained both at home and abroad—has at home if not abroad (where reputations of poets often depend upon extra-poetical causes) long ceased to be undisputed: indeed has chiefly been sustained by spasmodic and not too successful exertions of individuals. It was never, of course, paralleled in regard to his letters. But these letters early obtained high repute and have never, in the general estimate, lost it. Some good judges even among those who do not care very much for the poems, have gone so far as to put him among our very best epistolers; and few have put him very much lower. Acceptance of the former estimate certainly—perhaps even of the latter—depends however upon the extent to which people can also accept recognition in Byron of the qualities of "Sincerity and Strength." That he was always a great though often a careless craftsman, and sometimes a great artist in literature, nobody possessed of the slightest critical ability can deny or doubt. But there are some who shake their heads over the attribution of anything like "sincerity" to him, except very occasionally: and who if they had to translate his "strength" into Greek would select the word Bia ("violence") and not the word Kratos (simple "strength") from the dramatis personae of the Prometheus Vinctus. Now "sincerity" of a kind—even of that kind which we found in Walpole and did not find in Pope—has been contended for here as a necessity in the best, if not in all good, letters; and "violence" is almost fatal to them. Of a certain kind of letter Byron was no doubt a skilful practitioner.[26] But to some it will or may always seem that the vital principle of his correspondence is to that of the real "Best" as stage life to life off the stage. These two can sometimes approach each other marvellously: but they are never the same thing.

[Sidenote: SHELLEY]

When Mr. Matthew Arnold expressed the opinion that Shelley's letters were more valuable than his poetry it was, of course, as Lamb said of Coleridge "only his fun." In the words of another classic, he "did it to annoy, because he knew it teased" some people. The absurdity is perhaps best antagonised by the perfectly true remark that it only shows that Mr. Arnold understood the letters and did not understand the poetry. But it was a little unfortunate, not for the poetry but for the letters, against which it might create a prejudice. They are so good that they ought not to have been made victims of what in another person the same judge would have called, and rightly, a saugrenu[27] judgment. Like all good letters—perhaps all without exception according to Demetrius and Newman—they carry with them much of their author's idiosyncrasy, but in a fashion which should help to correct certain misjudgments of that idiosyncrasy itself. Shelley is "unearthly," but it is an entire mistake to suppose that his unearthliness can never become earthly to such an extent as is required. The beginning of The Recollection ("We wandered to the pine forest") is as vivid a picture of actual scenery as ever appeared on the walls of any Academy: and The Witch of Atlas itself, not to mention the portrait-frescoes in Adonais, is quite a waking dream. The quality of liveness is naturally still more prominent in the letters, because poetical transcendence of fact is not there required to accompany it. But it does accompany now and then; and the result is a blend or brand of letter-writing almost as unlike anything else as the writer's poetry, and in its own (doubtless lower) kind hardly less perfect. To prefer the letters to the poems is merely foolish, and to say that they are as good as the poems is perhaps excessive. But they comment and complete the Shelley of the Poems themselves in a manner for which we cannot be too thankful.

[Sidenote: KEATS]

The letters of Keats did not attract much notice till long after those of Byron, and no short time after those of Shelley, had secured it. This was by no means wholly, though it may have been to some extent indirectly, due to the partly stupid and partly malevolent attempts to smother his poetical reputation in its cradle. The letters were inaccessible till the late Lord Houghton practically resuscitated Keats; and till other persons—rather in the "Codlin not Short" manner—rushed in to correct and supplement Mr. Milnes as he then was. And it was even much later still before two very different editors, Sir Sidney Colvin and the late Mr. Buxton Forman, completed, or nearly so, the publication. Something must be said and may be touched on later in connection with a very important division of our subject in general, as to the publication by the last-named, of the letters to Fanny Brawne: but nothing in detail need be written, and it is almost needless to say that none of these letters will appear here. No one but a brute who is also something of a fool will think any the worse of Keats for writing them. A thought of sunt lacrimae rerum is all the price that need be paid by any one who chooses to read them, nor is it our business to characterise at length the taste and wits of the person who could publish them.[28]

But putting this question aside, it is unquestionable that for some years past there has been a tendency to value the Letters as a whole very highly. Not only has unusual critical power been claimed for Keats on the strength of them, but general epistolary merit; and though nobody, so far as one knows, has yet paralleled the absurdity above mentioned in the case of Shelley, Keats has been taken by some credit-worthy judges as an unusually strong witness to the truth of the proposition already adopted here, that poets are good letter-writers.

He certainly is no exception to the rule; but to what exact extent he exemplifies it may not be a matter to be settled quite off hand. There is no doubt that at his best Keats is excellent in this way, and that best is perhaps to be found with greatest certainty, by anyone who wants to dip before plunging, in the letters to his brother and sister-in-law, George and Georgiana. Those to his little sister Fanny are also charming in their way, though the peculiar and very happy mixture of life and literature to be found in the others does not, of course, occur in them. His letters of description, to whomsoever written, are, as one might expect, first-rate; and the very late specimen—one of his very last to anyone—to Mrs. not Miss Brawne is as brave as it is touching. As for the criticism, there are undoubtedly (as again we should expect from the author of the wonderful preface to Endymion) invaluable remarks—the inspiration of poetical practice turned into formulas of poetical theory. On the other hand, the famous advice to Shelley to "be more of an artist and load every rift with ore"—Shelley whose art transcends artistry and whose substance is as the unbroken nugget gold, so that there are no rifts in it to load—is, even when one remembers how often poets misunderstand each other,[29] rather "cold water to the back" of admiration.

It may, however, not unfairly introduce a very few considerations on the side of Keats's letters which is not so good. All but idolaters acknowledge a certain boyishness in him—a boyishness which is in fact no mean source contributary of his charm in verse. It is perhaps not always quite so charming in prose, and especially in letters. You do not want self-criticism of an obviously second-thought kind in them. But you do want that less obtrusive variety which prevents them from appearing unkempt, "down-at-heel" etc. Perhaps there is, at any rate in the earlier letters, something of this unkemptness in Keats as an epistoler.

A hasty person may say "What! do you venture to quarrel with letters where, side by side with agreeable miscellaneous details, you may suddenly come upon the original and virgin text of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'?" Most certainly not. Such a find, or one ten times less precious, would make one put up with accompaniments much more than ten times worse than the worst of Keats's letters. But it may be observed that the objection is only a fresh example of the unfortunate tendency[30] of mankind to "ignore elenchs" as the logicians say, or, as less pedantic phraseology has it, to talk beside the question. A man might put a thousand pound note (and you might spend many thousand pound notes without buying anything like the poem just mentioned) in a coarse, vulgar, trivial or in other ways objectionable letter. The note would be most welcome in itself, but it would not improve the quality of its covering epistle. Not, of course, that Keats's letters are coarse or vulgar, though they are sometimes rather trivial. But the point is that their excellency, as letters, does not depend on their enclosures (as we may call them) or even directly on their importance as biography which is certainly consummate. Are they good letters as such, and of how much goodness? Have they been presented as letters should be presented for reading? These are points on which, considering the title and range of this Introduction, it may not be improper to offer a few observations. We have already ventured to suggest that, if not the "be all and end all," at any rate the quality to be first enquired into as to its presence or its absence in letters, is "naturalness." And we have said something as to the propriety or impropriety of different modes of editing and publishing them. The present division of the subject seems to afford a specially good text for adding something more on both these matters.

As to the first point, the text is specially good because of the position of Keats in the most remarkable group in which we have rather found than placed him. To the present writer, as a reader, it seems, as has been already said whether justly or unjustly, that the element of "naturalness"—it is an ugly word, and French has no better, in fact none at all: though German is a little luckier with natuerlichkeit and Spanish much with naturaleza—is rather conspicuously deficient in Byron. In Shelley it is pre-eminent, and can only be missed by those who have no kindred touch of the nature which it reflects. Shelley could be vague, unpractical, mystical; he could sometimes be just a little silly; but it was no more possible for him to be affected, or to make those slips of taste which are a sort of minus corresponding to the plus of affectation, than it was (after Queen Mab at least) to write anything that was not poetry. Thus in addition to the literary perfection of his letters, they have the sine qua non of naturalness in perfection also.

But with Keats things are different. Opinions differ as to whether he ever quite reached maturity even in poetry to the extent into which Shelley struck straight with Alastor, never losing it afterwards, and leaving us only to wonder what conceivable accomplishment might have even transcended Adonais and its successors. That with all his marvellous promise and hardly less marvellous achievement, Keats was only reaching maturity when he died has been generally allowed by the saner judgments.[31] Now immaturity has perhaps its own naturalness which is sometimes, and in a way, very charming, but is not the naturalness pure and simple of maturity. Children are sometimes, nay often, very pretty, agreeable and amusing things: but there comes a time when we rather wish they would go to the nursery. Perhaps the "sometimes" occurs with Keats's earlier letters if not with his later.

[Sidenote: EDITING OF LETTERS]

He is thus also a text for the second part of our sermon—the duty of editors and publishers of correspondence. There is much to be said for the view that publication, as it has been put, "is an unpardonable sin," that is to say, that no author (or rather no author's ghost) can justly complain if what he once deliberately published is, when all but the control of the dead hand is off, republished. Il l'a voulu, as the famous tag from Moliere has it. But letters in the stricter sense—that is to say, pieces of private correspondence—are in very different case. Not only were they, save in very few instances, never meant for publication: but, which is of even more importance, they were never prepared for publication.[32] Not only, again, did the writer never see them in "proof," much less in "revise," as the technical terms go, but he never, so far as we know, exercised on them even the revision which all but the most careless authors give before sending their manuscripts to the printer. Some people of course do read over their letters before sending them: but it must be very rarely and in special, not to say dubious, cases that they do this with a view to the thing being seen by any other eyes than those of the intended recipient. It is therefore to the last degree unfair to plump letters on the market unselected and uncastigated. To what length the castigation should proceed is of course matter for individual taste and judgment. Nothing must be put in—that is clear; but as to what may or should be left out, "there's the rub." Perhaps the best criterion, though it may be admitted to be not very easy of application, is "Would the author, in publishing, have left it out or not?" Sometimes this will pass very violent expressions of opinion and even sentiments of doubtful morality and wisdom. But that it should invariably exclude mere trivialities, faults of taste, slovenlinesses of expression, etc., is at least the opinion of the present writer. And a "safety razor" of such things might perhaps with advantage have been used on Keats's, though he has written nothing which is in the least discreditable to him.



V

NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS. LATER

[Sidenote: A NINETEENTH CENTURY GROUP]

Part at least of these general remarks has a very special relevance to the rest of our story. There may be differences of respectable opinion as to the system of editing just advocated; but they will hardly concern one point—that the susceptibilities of living persons must be considered. To some extent indeed this is a mere counsel of selfish prudence: for an editor who neglects it may get himself into serious difficulties. Even where such danger does not exist, or might perhaps be disregarded, it is impossible for any decent person to run the risk of needlessly offending others. It will be seen at once that this introduces a new matter for consideration in regard to most—practically all—of the correspondences which we have still to survey. Even those just discussed have only recently passed from under its range. Shelley's son died not so very long ago: grandchildren of Byron much more recently; and if Keats had lived to the ordinary age of man and had, as he very likely would have done, married not Fanny Brawne, but somebody else later, a son or daughter of his (daughters are particularly and sometimes inconveniently loyal to their deceased parents) might be alive and flourishing now. As this constraint extends not merely to the families of the writers but to those of persons mentioned by them (not to speak of these persons themselves in the most recent cases), it exercises, as will at once be seen, a most wide-ranging cramp and brake upon publication. Blunders are occasionally made of course: the most remarkable in recent times was probably an oversight of the editor of Edward FitzGerald's letters, than which hardly any more interesting exist among those yet to be noticed. FitzGerald, quite innocently and without the slightest personal malevolence but thinking only of Mrs. Browning's work, had expressed himself (as anybody might in a private letter) to the effect that perhaps we need not be sorry for her death. Unfortunately the letter was published while her husband was still alive: and many people must remember the very natural and excusable, but somewhat excessive and undignified, explosion which followed on his part.

Such things must of course be avoided at all costs; and the consequence is that nineteenth century letters must frequently—in fact with rare if any exceptions—have appeared in a condition of expurgation which cannot but have affected their spirit and savour to a very considerable extent. It is for instance understood that Mr. Matthew Arnold's were very severely censored; and, while readily believing this and acquiescing in its probable propriety, the old Adam in some readers may be unable to refrain from regret.

Again, there is something to be said about the less good effects of that "Life-and-Letters" system which has been quite rightly welcomed and praised for its better ones. Drawing on the Letters—with good material to work on and good skill in the worker—improves the Life enormously; but it is by no means certain—indeed it has been hinted already—that the Letters themselves do not to a certain extent lose by it. Indeed from one point of view, the word "loss" may be used in its most literal meaning. The compiler of one very famous biography was said, for instance, to have—with a disregard of the value of letters as autographs which was magnificent perhaps in one way but far from "the game" in others—cut up the actual sheets and pasted the pieces on his manuscript, sending the whole to the printers and chancing the survival even of what was sent, when it came back with the proofs.

But there is another sense of "loss" which has also to be reckoned. The framework of biography is, or at least ought to be, something more than a mere frame: and it distracts attention from the letters themselves, breaks up their continuous effect, and in many cases necessitates at least occasional omission of parts which an editor of them by themselves would not think of excluding. Of course this is no argument against the plan as such: but it has, together with what was said recently, to be taken into account when we compare the epistolary position of the last century with that of its immediate predecessor.[33]

These remarks are made not in the least by way of depreciating or even making an apology for nineteenth century letters, but only in order to put the reader in a proper state for critical estimation of them. Nor is it necessary to repeat—still less to discuss—the more general lamentations with some reference to which we started as to any decay of letter-writing. Provisos and warnings may be taken as having been made sufficiently: and we pass to the actual survey.

It may have been noticed in reference to the principal group of letter-writers in the eighteenth that, with the exception of Cowper, they were all acquainted with each other. Walpole knew Lady Mary, Chesterfield and Gray; while Gray, if he did not know the other two, knew Walpole very well indeed. Something of the same sort might be contended for among those whom we have selected on the bridge of the eighteenth and nineteenth. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Lamb were of course intimately connected: Southey knew Landor and Shelley, Keats knew Shelley, Wordsworth and Lamb; while Byron and Shelley, however unequally, were pretty closely yoked together. It is not meant that in all these groups everybody wrote to each other; but that the writing faculty was curiously prominent—diffused like a kind of atmosphere—in all. Now if we look in the nineteenth for such a group it will be found perhaps less readily. But one such at least certainly exists, to wit that which includes Tennyson, Thackeray, Edward FitzGerald, Carlyle and his wife, Fanny Kemble, Sterling and one or two more. There are of course numerous others outside this group, and even in it Tennyson himself is not a very remarkable letter-writer, any more than his great rival, Browning, was. But there was the same diffusion of the letter-writing spirit which has been noticed above, and Thackeray, FitzGerald, the Carlyles, and perhaps Fanny Kemble are quite of the greater clans among our peculiar people.

The most remarkable of all these—and as it seems to the present writer, one of the most remarkable of all English letter-writers is one whose letters have never been collected,[34] and from whom, until comparatively lately, we had only few and as it were accidental specimens. It is hoped that, notwithstanding the great changes of taste recently as to reticence or indiscretion, there are still many people who can not only understand but thoroughly sympathise with Thackeray's disgust at the idea of having his "Life" written; and the even greater reluctance which he would certainly have felt at that of having his letters published. But, as has been suggested on a former occasion, when things are published there is nothing disgraceful in reading them: and it may be frankly admitted that lovers of English literature would have missed much pleasure and the opportunity of much admiration if the "Brookfield" letters, those to the Baxter family and others in America, those finally included in the "Biographical" edition, and yet others which have turned up sporadically had remained unknown. It may be doubted whether there is anything like them in our literature—if indeed there is in any other—for the double, treble or even more complicated gift of view into character, matter of interest, positive literary satisfaction, and (perhaps most remarkable of all) resemblance to and explanation of the author's "regular literature," as it has been called. In some respects they resemble the letters of Keats; but there is absent from them the immaturity which was noted in those, and which extended to both matter and style. They are more various in subject and tone than Shelley's. They are not deliberately quaint like Lamb's; and they naturally lack (whether this is wholly an advantage or not, may admit, though not here, of dispute) the restraint[35] which, in greater or less degree and in varied kind, characterizes the great eighteenth century epistolers.

[Sidenote: THACKERAY]

One additional charm which many of them possess may be regarded by extreme precisians as of doubtful legitimacy as far as comment here is concerned: but this may be ruled out as a superfluous scruple. It is the illumination of the text "by the author's own candles" as he himself says in a well-known Introduction: the actual "illustration" by insertion in the script, of little pen-drawings. The shortcomings of Thackeray's draughtsmanship have always been admitted: and by nobody more frankly than by himself. But they hardly affect this sort of "picturing" at all. The unfortunate inability to depict a pretty face which he deplored need do no harm whatever: and his lack of "composition" not much. A spice of caricature is almost invariably admissible in such things: and the same tricksy spirit which prompted the hundreds of initials, culs-de-lampe etc. contributed by him to Punch and to be found collected in the "Oxford" edition of his works, was most happily at hand for use in letters. Some years ago there appeared, in a catalogue of autographs for sale, an extract of text and cut which was irresistibly funny. The author and designer had had a mishap by slipping on that peculiarly treacherous suddenly frozen rain for which (though we are liable enough to it in England and though some living have seen the entire Strand turned into one huge pantomime scene, roars of laughter included, as people came out of theatres) we have no special name. (The French, in whose capital it is said to be even more frequent, call it verglas.) In telling it he had drawn himself sitting (as involuntarily though one hopes not so eternally as infelix Theseus) with arms, legs, hat, etcetera in disorder suitable to the occasion and with a facial expression of the most ludicrous dismay. It can hardly have taken a dozen strokes of the pen: but they simply glorified the letter.

In no sense, however, can the value and delight of Thackeray's letters be said to depend upon this bonus of illustration. Without it they would be among the most noteworthy and the most delectable of their kind. One sees in them the "first state" of that extraordinary glancing at all sorts of side-views, possible objections and comments on "what the other fellow thinks," which is the main secret in his published writings. If the view of him as a "sentimentalist" (which nobody, unless it is taken offensively, need refuse to accept) is strengthened by them, that absurd other view, which strangely prevailed so long, of his "cynicism" is utterly destroyed. We see the variety of his interests; the keenness of his sensations; the strange and kaleidoscopic rapidity of the changes in his mood and thought. And through the whole there runs the wonderful style which was so long unrecognised—nay, which those who go by the trumpery machine-made rules of "composition books" used gravely to stigmatise as "incorrect." Time lifts a great many (though not perhaps all) the restraints upon publication which have been discussed and advocated above: and it will probably be possible some day for posterity to possess, not only a collected body of the now scattered Thackeray letters, but a considerably larger one than has ever appeared even in extracts and catalogues. It will be an addition to our Epistolary Library which can bear comparison with any previous occupant of those shelves: and one of the books which deserve, in a very peculiar sense, the hackneyed praise of being "as good as a novel." For it will be almost the equivalent of an additional novel of its author's own—a William Makepeace Thackeray in the familiar novel-form of title, and in the old Richardsonian form of contents—but oh! how different from anything of Richardson's save that it might possibly make you hang yourself, not because you could not get to the story, but because you had come to the end of it.

[Sidenote: FITZGERALD]

If, however, anyone insists on a formal and more or less complete presentation, already existing, of nineteenth century "Letters" in a body by a single writer, the palm must probably be given to those (already referred to) of the translator or paraphrast of Omar Khayyam. Besides their great intrinsic interest and peculiar idiosyncrasy, they have, for anyone studying the subject as we are endeavouring to do, a curious attraction of comparison. Letter-writing, though by no means exclusively, would appear to be specially and peculiarly the forte of men who live somewhat special and peculiar lives—men without the ordinary family ties of wife and children—sometimes though by no means always, recluses; possibly to some extent "originals," "humourists," "eccentrics," as they have been called at different times and from different points of view. Even Walpole, fond as he was of society, belongs to the class after a fashion, as do also Chesterfield[36] and Lady Mary, while Gray, Cowper, and at a later period Lamb, are eminently of it. But hardly anyone so unquestionably comes under the classification as Edward FitzGerald. He certainly was for a time married, but that marriage as certainly was not made in Heaven, if it was not conspicuously of the other origin: and actual cohabitation lasted but a short time. He had no children, and though he frequently foregathered with the family from which he sprang, he was essentially a "solitary." Such solitaries, even if they do not ticket and advertise themselves as such after the fashion of Rousseau and Senancour and the author of Jacopo Ortis, naturally enough find in letters the outlet for communication with their fellows[37] which others find in conversation, and the occupation which those others have ready-made, in society, business of all kinds etc. That some copious and excellent letter-writers, such as for instance Southey, have been extremely busy, and "family men" of the most unblemished character, merely shows that the rule is not universal. But it may be observed that their letters usually have less intense idiosyncrasy than those of the others.

Of such idiosyncrasy, both in letters and in other work, few men have had more than the author of Euphranor and (as we have had to say before) the "translator or paraphrast" not merely of Persian but of Spanish and Greek masterpieces. It is indeed notorious that it was in this latter capacity that he showed the individuality of his genius most strongly. It is a frequently but perhaps idly[38] disputed question how much is Omar and how much FitzGerald, while the problem might certainly be extended by asking how much is Aeschylus and how much Calderon in his versions of those masters: but it does not concern us here. What does concern us is the fact that he has contrived to make his most famous exercise in translation signally, and the others to some extent, not dead "versions," but as it were reincarnations of the original, the spirit or the flesh (whichever anyone pleases) being his own, or both being blended of his and the author's. To do this requires a "strong nativity" though not in the equivocal sense in which another great translator of FitzGerald's own type[39] used that term. It shows in his scanty "original" work: but it shows also and perhaps more strongly in his letters. Everyone who has studied the history of the English Universities in connection with that of English literature knows, even if he has not been fortunate enough to experience it, the remarkable fashion in which, at certain times, colleges and coteries at Oxford and Cambridge have seemed to throw a strange and almost magical influence over a generation (hardly more) of undergraduates. There was unmistakably such an aura or atmosphere about in Trinity College, Cambridge, during the last of the twenties and the first of the thirties of the nineteenth century—a spirit of literature and humour, of seriousness and jest, of prose sense and half mystical poetry—which produced things as diverse as The Dying Swan and Clarke's Library of Useless Knowledge, Vanity Fair and the English Rubaiyat.

Of this curiously blended mood-combination—of which in their different ways Tennyson and Thackeray, as universally known, Brookfield, W. B. Donne, G. S. Venables, as less known, but noteworthy instances suggest themselves as examples—FitzGerald was certainly not the least remarkable. He had, as eccentrics usually and almost necessarily have, not a few limitations, some of which possibly were, though others certainly were not, deliberately assumed or accepted. He would not allow that Tennyson had ever in his later work (not latest by any means) done anything so good as his earlier. In that unlucky though quite blameless observation on Mrs. Browning which was referred to above, he ignored or showed himself unable to appreciate the fact that the poetess had never done anything better than, if anything so good as, some of her very latest work.[40] It cannot be considered an entirely adequate cause for ceasing to live with your wife,[41] that her dresses rustle; and many other instances of what may be called practical and literary non-sequiturs might be alleged against him. But all these "queernesses" are evidence of a temperament and a mode of thinking which are likely to produce very satisfactory letters. They are sure not to be dull: and when the queerness is accompanied by such literary power as "Fitz" possessed they are not likely to be merely silly, as some things are which attempt not to be dull. As a matter of fact they are delightful: and their variety is astonishing. Odd stories and odd experiences seem, despite his almost claustral life, to have had a habit of flying to FitzGerald like filings to a magnet—as for instance the irresistible anecdote of the parish clerk who insisted on giving out for singing casual remarks of the parson above him as if they were verses of a hymn, and who was duly echoed by the congregation. Even when he does not make you laugh he satisfies you: even when you do not agree with him you are obliged to him for having expressed his heresy.

[Sidenote: FANNY KEMBLE]

One of FitzGerald's special correspondents was, for reasons then imperative, not a member of the Cambridge group itself, but as closely connected with it as possible: being the sister of one of its actual members. John M. Kemble, one of our earliest and best Anglo-Saxon scholars in modern times, was, like others of his famous family (so far as is generally known) a person of varied talents, though he showed these neither in letter writing nor in the direction which Tennyson incorrectly augured in the "Sonnet to J. M. K." His sister Frances (invariably, like most though by no means all ladies of her name, called "Fanny"[42]) was a very remarkable person indeed. After taking early and with brilliant success to the stage which might almost be said to be hers by inheritance,[43] she married an American planter with even worse results (they were actually divorced) than her friend FitzGerald's marriage brought about later: and for many years returned to public life, not as an actress but as a reader. She wrote and published both prose and verse of various kinds: but her best known work and that which places her here, is a voluminous series of "Records," etc., much of which is composed of actual letters, while practically the whole of it is what we have called "letter-stuff." It has perhaps been published too voluminously: and it is certain that, as indeed one might expect, its parts are not equal in interest. But experienced and balanced judgment must always sum up in her favour as possessing, in letter- and even other writing, more than ordinary talent, perhaps never quite happily or fully developed. Merely as a person she seems to have exercised an extraordinary attraction without being exactly amiable[44]: and from the intellectual and artistic sides as a writer (we have nothing here to do with her histrionic powers) to have been what has sometimes in others been called "inorganic," "ill-regulated," "not brought off," etc., but of extraordinary capacity.

This may have had something to do with her sudden and exceptional success, when at barely twenty, and with no training except what heredity might give her, she "took the town [and the country] by storm" as Juliet, and very soon afterwards "carried" America likewise. But her "records" of these and other things are of almost the first quality: and this power of "recording" continued and was perhaps stimulated by the less as well as the more fortunate events of her life. It may be said indeed that in her time a young woman of full age (she was five and twenty), unusual experience of the world, and still more unusual wits, had no business to marry a planter in the Southern States, knowing that she was to live there, unless she had reconciled herself to the institution of slavery. Nor can anybody without prejudice deny this. But the inconsistency and the troubles it developed gave occasion to some very remarkable "recording," and the same had been the case earlier with her life, whether at home, on the stage, or in society, and was the case later whether she lived in England, in the Northern States, or on the Continent of Europe. Perhaps you never exactly like her: an unusual experience in the reading of letters, which for the most part are singularly reconciling from the mere fact of their explanatory quality. There is indeed no better confirmation of the well-known French saying tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Here, however, there are, as elsewhere, exceptions—Gray being perhaps one[45] as our present subject is another. But there are few things more interesting, though their interest may be somewhat tragic, than the spectacle of the way "things go wrong" so easily, so finally, so fatally. Fanny Kemble had a sister Adelaide, afterwards Mrs. Sartoris, with whom everything appears to have gone right: but with herself it "seemed otherwise to the Gods." And her letters or memoirs, or whatever they are to be called, are the record thereof, as well as of other things.

[Sidenote: THE CARLYLES]

The letters and "letter-stuff" of the Carlyles, husband and wife, according to the inevitable misfortune attending so much of our subject—supplied the occasion of volumes of that disgusting and most idle controversy which has made many people of taste pray that nothing biographical may ever be published about them. Far be it from us to take part in a game which if it does not always, like the unpleasant personage in the old ballad,

Come for ill and never for good,

certainly comes for the former much oftener than for the latter purpose and result. Sunt lacrimae rerum is—once more and as so often—the best and the sufficient observation. But there remains in the letters of both, and especially in those of the lady, plenty of wholesome interest and of justifiable—not spying or eavesdropping—information as to character. Judged comparatively, they certainly do not contradict the notion formerly referred to, that in some respects letter-writing is a specially feminine gift. Carlyle's own letters[46] have plenty of merit and attraction—some of the descriptive ones especially: and they demonstrate, in the infallible way which letters and letters alone can supply in the absence of long personal familiarity, that the general tone and key of his writings was no falsetto but a perfectly genuine thing—that the often urged contrast of the Life of Schiller, instead of evidencing affectation in the later work, only proves constraint in the earlier. At the same time, except for what may be called side-illustration of the works, and completion of the biography for those who want it, there is not very much in Carlyle's letters which would be a serious loss.

With his wife the case is different. Without her "Letters and Memorials" we might (it is rather improbable that we should, owing to the misdemeanours of more persons than one and the blow-fly appetite of a part of the public for sore places) have escaped a good deal of the ignoble wrangling above referred to. But we should not only have failed to appreciate a very remarkable character, but have missed some of the very best of our now existing contributions to epistolary literature. Personally Mrs. Carlyle was by no means a general favourite. She had a fearfully sharp tongue, and a still sharper wit in directing it upon her victims; her experiences were not very likely to edulcorate her acids and mollify her asperities. The letters show that, as so often happens, there was plenty of sweetness within the sharp exterior, and that her strength was the strength of passion, not of obduracy. But this is not all. There might have been biographical whitewashing of this kind without much gain to pure literature. But the letters showed likewise a power of expression, both lighter and more serious, which is hardly inferior to that found in any correspondence of man or woman, genuine or fictitious. Some people, not given to rash superlatives and pretty extensively acquainted with literature, have held that the letter describing her visit after many years to Haddington, and the reminiscences it called forth, has no superior in the vast range of our subject for pure pathos perfectly expressed, without constraint on nature yet without loss of dignity.[47] On the other hand, the half comic accounts of her domestic troubles etc. are worthy of Fielding or Thackeray. The fact is that Mrs. Carlyle possessed what is rare in women—humour. And she exemplified, as few other women and not so very many men have done, Anne Evans's matchless definition of it as "thinking in jest while feeling in earnest." Moreover while, as all true humourists can, she could drop the jest altogether when necessary, she could, as is the case with them likewise, never quite discard the earnest.

[Sidenote: MACAULAY AND DICKENS]

Some of the most distinguished of Carlyle's contemporaries, the great men of letters of the mid-nineteenth century, have left letters more or less copious and more or less valuable from one or both of the two sides, biographical and literary, but not eminently so. Macaulay's letters and diaries suit biography excellently, and have been excellently used in his. They lighten and sweeten the rather boisterous "cocksureness" of the published writings: and help his few but very remarkable poems other than the Lays (which are excellent but in a different kind) to show the soul and heart of the man as apart from his mere intellect. But they are not perhaps intrinsically very capital. So also in Dickens's case the "Life-and-Letters" system is excellently justified, but one does not know that the letters in themselves would always deserve a first class in this particular school of Literae Humaniores. Letter-writing admits—if it may not even require—a certain kind of egotism. But it must be what the French call an Egoisme a plusieurs—a temper which takes, if only for the moment, other people into itself and cares for them there. "The Inimitable" was perhaps too generally thinking of that Inimitable himself or of the fictitious creations of his marvellous genius. If, like his own Mr. Toots, he could have written some letters to or from them it would have been a very different thing. In this respect he does not, as in others he does, resemble Balzac, whose egotism was in a way as intense as his own and like it extended to his creations, but could extend farther: while the contrast with Thackeray is even more salient than in other cases from this same point of view. At the same time it must not be supposed that there is any intention here of belittling Dickens, either as a letter-writer or in any other way. It is only suggested that he lacks one of the things necessary to perfect letter-writing. Perhaps his most noteworthy productions in the style are his editorial criticisms—rather limited in taste and purview, but singularly shrewd within other limits. And many of the others tell their substance with that faculty of "telling" which he possessed as few have ever done, while the comedy of those given here is "the true Dickens."

[Sidenote: SOME NOVELISTS]

Mention of the three greatest novelists (English and French) of the mid-nineteenth century naturally suggests the rest of a class so predominant in that century's literary production. Their record in the matter is rather chequered, for reasons, in some respects and cases at any rate, not difficult to discover. Reference is elsewhere made to the disappointment experienced (perhaps not too reasonably) by some readers of the letters of George Eliot. A not dissimilar feeling had been expressed earlier in regard to those of Miss Austen: which, however, were intrinsically far superior. Except to her sister, and it may be even to her, Jane Austen was not at all likely to indulge in what is called in French epanchement: it was not in the least her line, whether in writing for publication or otherwise. Only one full year passed between the death of Miss Austen and the birth of Miss Evans, and the two illustrated very fairly the comfortable if not invariably accurate idea that when one human being dies another is born to succeed him or her in their special functions. But, as in other respects, they differed here remarkably; and though in neither case was the nature of the writer exactly expansive, this want of expansiveness was very differently conditioned. Miss Austen no doubt could, if she had chosen, (she has done something like it as it is) have written most delightful letters. A hundred scenes in the novels from Catherine Morland's tremors and trials, or John Dashwood's progressive limitations of generosity for his sisters, to some of the best things in Persuasion, would take letter form with the happiest results. But she did not choose that it should be so. George Eliot, on the other hand, after her earlier days, had ensconced herself in such a chrysalis of quasi-philosophical and quasi-scientific thought and speech that she could hardly have recovered the freedom of expression which is almost the soul of letter-writing.

Some of Bulwer's (the first Lord Lytton's) letters are remarkable in ways, especially that of literary criticism, which might hardly be expected by anyone who had insufficiently taken the measure of his strangely unequal and imperfect, yet as strangely varied, talent. But as the century went on a new prohibitory influence arose in the enormous professional production which began to be customary with novelists—principally tempted no doubt by the corresponding gain of money, but perhaps also by the nobler desire of increasing, or at least living up to, their reputations. Even short of the unbroken drudgery which, it is said, compelled one lady novelist, of high rank for a time, to scribble her novels as she was actually receiving and talking to morning callers, the production of three or four novels a year—and those not the cock-boats we often see now but attempts at least at "the old three-decker" in its fullest dimensions—could leave little time or inclination for extensive letter-writing. There were, however, some exceptions. Charles Kingsley—who, though his novels were not very numerous, supplemented them with all sorts of miscellaneous writing for publication, was a diligent sportsman, an active cleric, and a busy man in many kinds and ways—wrote certainly good and probably many letters. The two brighter stars in the Bronte constellation, especially Charlotte, were scarcely less remarkable with the pen in this way than in others: and Mrs. Gaskell, Charlotte's biographer, has been put high by some. The unconquerable personality of Charles Reade showed itself here as elsewhere[48]: and others might be mentioned.[49] But perhaps the most distinguished novelist next to Thackeray of the nineteenth century, who was also a most distinguished letter-writer, was one who died in middle age not long before its end—Robert Louis Stevenson.

[Sidenote: STEVENSON]

Stevenson had in fact practically all the qualifications necessary for a good practitioner of our art. He had, eminently, that gift which the Romans called facundia and the French can translate, if with a slight degradation of meaning, by faconde; but for which we, though the adjective "facund" has, one believes, been tried, possess no noun, "Eloquence" being too much specified to "fine" writing or speaking. "Facility of expression" perhaps comes nearest. Whether he corrected or corrupted this native gift by his famous "sedulous aping" of stylists before him is a debated question: but one quite unnecessary to touch here. It is sufficient to say that he never aped anyone in his letters, unless playfully and in a sort of concert with his correspondent. Indeed he possessed, quintessentially, that "naturalness" of matter and form on which so much stress has been laid. He had a disposition equally favourable to the business—if business we may call it. A person who is habitually gloomy may write capital letters of an impressive character now and then: but is likely to produce little but boredom if he extends his practice. Louis Stevenson did not habitually "regard the world through a horse collar" (as it was once put), but he certainly did not pass through it gnashing his teeth or holding his handkerchief to his eyes. Although he did a good deal of work, sometimes under no small difficulties, he had very little if any of that collar-work—that grinding "in Gaza at the mill with slaves" which takes the spring out of all but the springsomest of men. He had widely varied experience of scene, occupation, personal society. He knew plenty of books without being in the least bookish; had, as the old saying goes, "wit at will," and, though he never made deliberate and affected efforts to get out of ruts, kept out of them without the least trouble. He was as little of a "poser" or of a "rotter" as he was of a prig, and there was not a drop of bad blood in his veins. If these things could not make a good letter-writer nothing could; and there is little doubt that he will hold his place as such as long as English literature lasts. It is a great pleasure to me to give, as I hope to do, one unpublished letter of his to myself as a sort of bonus to the reader of this little book—a letter of rather unusual interest in literary as in other respects.

At this point, perhaps, actual survey may, and indeed had best, stop: not merely because space is closing in. Lovers of letters will of course detect what seem to them omissions in what has gone before and what comes after. Some of these, no doubt, will have been real oversights. Others, for this or that reason deliberate, such as Gibbon and Newman—the latter not merely for his re-statement of the character-value of correspondence, but for his exemplifications of it—might certainly have been more fully noticed. But in regard to later writers there are several obstacles in the path. Of some it would not be easy to speak on account of their own lives being too recent: in regard of nearly all the same fact must have occasioned exercise of "censorship" to a degree which makes absolute judgment of their competence as epistolers rash, and comparative judgment almost impossible. To take up once more one example of men who were born a full or almost a full century ago, Mr. Paul,[50] speaking apparently with intimate knowledge of the originals, speaks also of the "severe process of excision and retrenchment to which these [the letters of Mr. Matthew Arnold] have been exposed." And he thinks that very few letters "could have endured" it. Those who remember the appearance of these letters will also remember that some critics doubted whether even "these" had exactly "endured it"—that is to say, whether the expected salt of the author of so much published persiflage had not been left out or had singularly lost its savour. To take another from the next generation, it is pretty certain that Mr. Swinburne's letters, though we have judicious selections from them, must have needed much more excision or retrenchment than Mr. Arnold's, unless he wrote them in a manner remarkably different both from his conversation and from his published works. In such cases it is best, the evidence being not fully before us, not to anticipate either the privileges or the decisions of posterity.



VI

SOME SPECIAL KINDS OF LETTER

A few more general remarks, however, on kinds of letter-writing—as distinguished from personality and accomplishment of letter-writers—may not improperly be added.

[Sidenote: LETTERS AND THE NOVEL]

One extremely curious application of the Letter has not yet been noticed, except by a glance or two: and that is the way in which—when after birth-struggles for some two thousand years the novel at last got itself born—letter-writing was pressed into its service. Historically, as was briefly indicated near the beginning of this, one may connect Greek Rhetoric and Greek Romance, and suggest the connection as the origin of the "novel-in-letters." In the romance proper—that is to say that of the Middle Ages—letters do not play any very important part, just as they played none in life. But in the "Heroic" variety of the late sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries they play a much larger—partly no doubt because of the influence (here noted) of the Greek Romance itself, but more because of the increased frequency and importance of actual correspondence in life and society. We need not, however, attribute too much to this influence of imitation in seeking for the cause or causes which made Richardson adopt the form: nor need we even put down to Richardson's own popularity, abroad as well as at home, the very general further adoption and continuance of a form which has perhaps more to be said against it than for it. Most serious students of the history of prose fiction must have noticed, and some of them have already pointed out, the curious, rather naif, but quite obvious feeling on the part of the earlier practitioners of such fiction that somebody might ask them, in more polite language than that in which Cardinal Ippolito d'Este asked Ariosto a similar question, "Where they got their stories from?" The feeling seems sometimes to have affected poets, but much more rarely: the Muse being allowed to possess and confer a certain immunity from such cross-examination. Of the unnecessary and sometimes unnatural devices invented to answer this inconvenient question Scott in one well-known passage,[51] and others elsewhere, have made ironic lists: and not the least characteristic of Miss Austen's satiric touches is the passage where Catherine Morland expects palpitating interest from a bundle of washing-bills in a wardrobe-cupboard. But the anticipation of such a question, though perhaps it became conventional before it disappeared altogether, was certainly at one time real.

At any rate, helped by the example of Richardson—Father of English novels as he is with whatever justice called—and by that overmastering fancy for letter-writing itself, which, as should have been already made clear, affected the century in which English novels were born—the practice spread and held its ground. Fielding was too perfect an artist in the higher and purer kind of fiction to favour it: and though Sterne himself was a sufficiently characteristic letter-writer, the form would not have suited the peculiar eccentricity of his two novels. But Smollett's best, Humphrey Clinker, adopts the method, and is perhaps one of its most successful examples. It suited the author's preference for a succession of scenes rather than a connected plot; for the sharp presentation of "humours" in character and incident. And it continued to be practised both early in the nineteenth century—examples had swarmed at the end of the eighteenth—and later. Redgauntlet (which some have thought one of the best of Scott's novels and which few good judges would put much lower) is written in it to a great extent, but not wholly. And it may be noticed that this combination of Letters and narrative, which came in pretty early, is rather tell-tale. It is a sort of confession of what certainly is the fact—that the novel entirely by letters is a clumsy device, constantly getting in the way of the "story." Indeed the method of Redgauntlet is a kind of retreat to the elder and more modern—one may say the more artistic and rational—plan of introducing letters, but only occasionally as auxiliaries to, and as it were illustrations of, the actual narrative, not as substitutes for, or at any rate main constituents of, it.[52] Indeed, in order to make a novel wholly composed of letters thoroughly and absorbingly attractive, either charm of style such as to make the kind of literature in which it appears, more or less indifferent; or passion which is more suitable to poetry or drama than to prose; or both, may seem unnecessary.

[Sidenote: LETTERS AND BIOGRAPHY]

It was also in the eighteenth century—the century once more of letter-writing—that letters, this time genuine not fictitious, began to play, to an important extent, a subsidiary part in yet another department of literature—biography. They had always done so, of course, to an extent less important in History, of which Biography is really a subdivision. The truth expressed in that dictum of the pseudo-Demetrius quoted above as to the illuminative power of letters on character could be missed by no historian and by no biographer who had his wits about him—even if he had less striking examples at hand than that letter of the Emperor Tiberius to the Senate which is one of the Tacitean flashes of lightning through the dark of history. But the credit of using letters as a main constituent of biography—of originating the "Life-and-Letters" class of books which fills so large a part of modern library-shelves—has been given, as far as English is concerned, to Mason in his dealings with Gray. There is so little to be said in favour of Mason, that we need not enquire too narrowly into his right to this commendation: though critical conscience must be appeased by adding that he abused his privilege as an editor and "literary executor" by garbling unblushingly. Boswell did Mason honour by acknowledging his example, and much more also by following it; and this practically settled the matter. Except in short pieces, which had need be of special excellence like Carlyle's Sterling, the plan has always been followed since: and there can here at least be no question that with a little favour of circumstances, it is the best plan possible. You get, as has been said, your character at first hand; if the letters include epistles to as well as from him or her, you get invaluable side-lights; you get, except in cases of wilful deception or great carelessness, the most trustworthy accounts of fact; and you can, or ought to be able to, hear the man talking.

At the same time it must be admitted that this "Life-and-Letters" scheme, like every kind of art, requires care: and like most human things, is exposed to dangers and difficulties in addition to some previously noticed. To begin with, the quality of the letters has to be considered. It so happened that Mason, the originator by courtesy, had unusually good material to work with. Gray, as is above pointed out and as is also, with some provisos already made or very soon to be made, universally admitted, is one of our best letter-writers. But not everybody—not every considerable man or woman of letters even—can write good letters.

And besides this—besides the temptation to rely on the letters and merely to print them whether they deserve it or not—there is the further difficulty—to judge by the scarcity of good biographies a very great and insistent one—of composing the framework of the biography itself so as to suit the letters—to give the apples of gold in a picture not too obviously composed of some metal baser than silver. Unless this is done it would be better simply to "calendar" the letters themselves, with the barest schedule of dates and facts to assist the comprehension of them. But to consider the different methods of doing this—still more of presenting letters apart from deliberate biographical intention—would lead us too far. Carlyle's Cromwell—the presentation of an extraordinarily difficult set of documents not merely with connecting narrative, but with a complete explanatory commentary including paraphrase, is as remarkable an achievement as, and a far more elaborate one than, his Sterling in the way of biography pure and simple. It is perhaps, though less delectable, not less admirable in its style than the other in its own. But it has, of course, the drawback of carrying with it a distinctly controversial character and, indeed, intention. We have more recently had at least two examples of the fullest possible comment with the least possible controversy in Mr. Tovey's "Gray," and of less voluminous but excellently adequate editing in Mrs. Toynbee's "Walpole."

[Sidenote: "LETTERS FROM UNKNOWNS"]

One not very large, but extremely curious division of letter-writing closely connected with those most recently mentioned, invites if it does not insist upon a word or two. Many people—almost all who have happened to be at any time "in the lime-light" as a modern phrase goes—that is to say in positions of publicity—must have had experience of the strange appetite of their fellow-creatures for writing them letters without previous acquaintance, without excuse of introduction, and on the most flimsy pretexts of occasion. The present writer once received from Australia a long list of queries on a book of his—most if not all of which could have been answered from the ordinary reference-bookshelf in the writing-room of such a club as that—never mind whether it was in Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide—from which the querist dated his epistle. Indeed, on another occasion somebody demanded a catalogue of "the important references to the medical profession in French literature"! This tendency of humanity sometimes exercises and magnifies itself into really remarkable correspondences. There is perhaps none such in English quite to match those Lettres a une Inconnue which (after standing the brunt of not a little unfavourable criticism, provoked not so much by their contents as by the personal, political, and above all religious or anti-religious idiosyncrasy of their author, Prosper Merimee) have taken their place, for good and all, among the classics of the art. Our most curious example perhaps is to be found in the Letters of the Duke of Wellington to Miss J., the genuineness of which has been a matter of some controversy, but which are rather more inexplicable as forgeries than as authentic documents. Authors, from Richardson onwards, have been the special targets of such correspondents: and romance reports some, perhaps even history might accept a few, instances of the closest relations resulting. On the other hand, one of the very best of Miss Edgeworth's too much neglected stories, "L'Amie Inconnue" not only may be useful as a warning to the too open-hearted but has probably had not a few parallels in fact. Generally, of course, the uninvited correspondent is merely a passing phenomenon—rarely perhaps welcome except to persons of very much self-centred temperament with a good deal of time on their hands; tolerated and choked off placably by the good-natured and well-mannered; answered snappishly or not answered at all by moroser victims.

[Sidenote: LOVE LETTERS]

There is yet a kind of letter, fictitious or real examples whereof are not usually given in books which (as the Articles say of the Apocrypha) are to be read "for example of life and instruction of manners," though it is in a way the most interesting of all; and that is the love-letter. It is, however, so varied in kind and not so very seldom so pre-eminent as an illustration of the epistolary ideal—"writing as you would talk"—that it would be absurd to say nothing about it in this Introduction, and that it may even be possible to give some examples of it—one such of Swift's must be given—in the text. Of those which, as it was said of one famous group (those of Mlle. de Lespinasse) "burn the paper," those of which the Abelard and Heloise collection, with those of "The Portuguese Nun," Maria Alcoforado, and Julie de Lespinasse herself are the most universally famous—we have two pretty recent collections in English from two of the greatest poets and one of the greatest poetesses in English of the nineteenth century. They are the letters, referred to above, of Keats to Fanny Brawne, and those of the Brownings to each other.

There are, it is to be hoped, few people who read such letters (unless they are of such a date that Time has exercised his strange power of resanctifying desecration and making private property public) without an unpleasant consciousness of eavesdropping. But there is another class which is not exposed to any such disagreeable liability: and that is the very large proportion of love-letters where the amativeness is, so to speak, more or less concealed, or where, though scarcely covered with the thinnest veil, it is mixed with jest sometimes, jest rather on the wrong side of the mouth, perhaps, but jest exercising its usual power of embalming. (Salt and sugar both preserve: but in this particular instance the danger is of oversweetness already.) There can—or perhaps we should say there could, but for some differences of opinion worth attending to—be no doubt that Swift owes much to this mixture: and if anybody ever undertook a large collection of the best private love-letters he would probably find the same seasoning in the best of them. For examples in which the actual amatory element is present but as it were under-current, like blood that flushes a cheek but does not show outside it, some of the best examples are those of Scott to Lady Abercorn. Those recently published, and already glanced at, of Disraeli to various ladies would seem to be more demonstrative and more histrionic. But the section as admitted lies, for us, on the extreme border of our province. It is too important to be wholly omitted and therefore these paragraphs have been given to it. And it may require future touching in reference to some particular writers, especially that greatest and most unhappy of all Deans of Saint Patrick, the greatest perhaps of all Deans that ever were with the exception of John Donne—himself no small epistoler, but greatest in those verse-letters which are denied us.[53]

It is perhaps superfluous, but for completeness' sake may be permissible, to say a very little about the use of letters for purposes other than that of genuine personal communication. Indeed in doing so we are only executing the time-honoured manoeuvre of returning to the point whence we set out, and bringing the wheel full circle.[54] The strictly "business" letter—which is, of course, a personal communication in a way—and the "despatch" which is a form of it intended sooner or later for more general information, require no notice or at best mere mention. But in times past if not also in those present, "Letters" have been used—specially perhaps in that century of letters, the eighteenth—for purposes of definite instruction, argument, propaganda and so forth. There are obvious advantages in the form for certain of the lighter of these purposes as it is used in Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes or Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. But why Bishop Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (really valuable as they are) should have been "Letters" at all, except for fashion's sake, it is difficult to say. There is perhaps more excuse for the pamphlet, especially the political pamphlet, assuming the title of letter as it has so often done in instances from the great example of Bolingbroke and Burke downwards.[55] You have, with less unreality, the advantage of the classical "speech" addressed often to a single person, who is supposed to be specially aware of the facts or specially to need instruction and encouragement, or modified remonstrance, as to them. It was probably from these great exemplars—perhaps also aided by the custom of eighteenth century periodicals, that pamphlets of all kinds became titular epistles such as "A Letter to the deputy-manager of a Theatre Royal, London, on his lately acquired notoriety in contriving and arranging the 'Hair Powder Act'" (but this was satire), or "A letter writ by a clergyman to his neighbour concerning the kingdom and the allegiance due to the King and Queen."[56]

[Sidenote: LETTERS TO THE PAPERS]

For a last class may be taken the ever increasing body of things "written to the papers." It is unnecessary to consider the justice of a sarcastic division of mankind into "those who write to the papers and those who do not read the letters," or to discuss what men have been heard to say—that the people who write to papers are people who have not written in them. It is quite certain that, for many years past, the less frivolous kind of newspaper-correspondence has been of admitted interest and importance; indeed a paper might conceivably maintain its position after its repute has sunk in other ways, simply because more letters of importance appear in it than in others. As a source of illustrations of how to write and how not to write letters this modern development of the art could hardly be quite neglected; and it offers a curious study of various kinds. Except with very guileless writers the character-index quality is of course less certainly present than in letters written not for publication. A man must be, in the old Greek phrase, "either a God or a beast," if he does not prepare for print—if not exactly with a touch of "stage-fright," at any rate with the premeditation with which even stage-fright-free actors go on the stage. But it requires a great master or mistress of dissimulation to write even these letters at all frequently without a certain amount of self-revelation. And there is perhaps no more curious and interesting part of that most curious and interesting business of editing than (when it is not merely tedious), the reading of offered correspondence. There is the pure lunatic, such as the man who for years sends despatches in a sort of cuneiform cipher, probably quite meaningless and certainly not likely to meet with a decipherer; there is the abusive person who (less piquantly than Reade in the letter quoted above) gives his opinion of your paper; the volunteer-corrector of obvious misprints; the innocent who merely wants to see his own signature in print, and who generally tries to bribe his way into it by references to "your powerful journal," etc. They are all there—waiting for the waste-paper basket.



VII

CONCLUSION

A few more general remarks may close this Introduction. Something on the Art of Letter-writing and also something on its history, especially in English, was promised. It is hoped that the promise has not been too much falsified, at least to the extent necessary for illustration and understanding of the specimens which should follow, and which in their turn should illustrate it and make it more intelligible. The History part requires little or no postscript; whether ill or well done it should pretty well speak for itself. What touches the Art may require certain cautions and provisos.

This is especially the case with regard to the stress laid above on "naturalness." It is (as the present writer at least believes) the very passport of admission to the company of good letter-writers. But it must not be misconstrued. It is quite possible that too little care may be taken with the matter and style of letters. After all they correspond—in a certain, if in the most limited degree—to appearance "in company," and require as that does a certain etiquette of observance. Complete deshabille[57] on paper is not attractive: and there are letters (it is unnecessary to specify any particular examples) which somewhat exaggerate "simplicity."

Cowper is perhaps the accepted classic in this style who has the least of apparatus: but even Cowper bestows a certain amount of care—indeed, a very considerable amount—on the dress of his letter's body, on the cookery of its provender. If you have only small beer to chronicle you can at the worst draw it and froth it and pour it out with some gesture. In this respect as in others, while letter-writing has not been inaccurately defined or described as the closest to conversation of literary forms that do not actually reproduce conversation itself, it remains apart from conversation and subject to an additional degree of discipline.

[Sidenote: CONCLUSION]

Enough should have been said earlier of the opposite fault by excess of dressing, which has, however, for a sort of solace the fact that it may pass as literature though not exactly as letter-writing. Actually beautiful style—not machine-made "fine writing," but that embodiment of thought which is a special incarnation of it—is the one thing secure of success and survival, whatever literary form it takes. And even short of this supreme beauty accomplished literary manner can never be quite unwelcome. The highest place in letter-writing has been refused here to Pope: and unfortunately there is hardly a division of his work which, when you know a little more about it and him, excites more disgust at the man's nature. But, at the same time, hardly even his verse convinces one more of that extraordinary power of expression as he wished to express things which this Alexander, in some ways the infinitely Little, possessed. Yet it gives in the first place a rather sophisticated enjoyment, open only to those whom the gods have made, or who have made themselves, critical. And in the second, whether sophisticated or not, what it gives is the enjoyment of literature not of life:[58] whereas the direct satisfaction which genuine letters afford is almost identical with that given by actual intercourse with other human beings. However, it is unnecessary to "go on refining."

Perhaps indeed, after all, the artificial letters may be permitted if only in an "utmost, last, provincial band," to add to the muster of pleasure-giving things which epistolary literature so amply provides. Even fiction itself, which, as has been said often, draws on this source, cannot supply anything more "pastimeous"; even drama anything more arresting to the attention. Indeed good letters may be said to be constantly presenting little stories, little dramas, little pictures—all of them sometimes not so very little—which are now practically complete; now easily filled up by any reasonable intelligence; now perhaps tantalizingly, but all the more interestingly enigmatic. For those people (one may or may not sympathise with them, but they are certainly pretty numerous) who cannot take interest or can only take a reduced interest in things that "did not really happen"; letters may be even more interesting than novels. Only to very wayward or very unimaginative ones can they be less so, if they are in any respect good of their kind.

One of their main attractions is, with the same caution, their remarkable variety. It has been complained with a certain amount of truth that fiction, whether in prose or verse, is a little apt to fall into grooves: that all the histories are told, all the plays acted. This is undoubtedly the curse of Art, and every now and then we see it acknowledged in the most convincing manner by the frantic efforts made to be "different." But that real things and persons are never quite identical is not merely a philosophical doctrine but a practical fact. The "two peas" of one saying are never so much "alike" as the "two blades of grass" of another are unlike.

Now as letters—that is to say letters that deserve to exist at all—are bound to reproduce the personality of their writers, it will follow that a refreshing diversity must also belong to them. And as a matter of fact this will be found to be the case. Even the eighteenth century—the century of rule and class, of objection to "the streaks of the tulip," of machine-made verse, etc.,—has, except in the case of letters artificially made to pattern, shown this signally.

One last recommendation. A bad letter-writer is sure to betray himself almost everywhere, and letters are as a rule short. Most people must have attempted books of other classes, especially novels, and hoping against hope turned them over, and dipped and peeped till repeated disappointment compelled the traditional flinging to the other end of the room, or simply dropping the thing in less explosive weariness. You never need do that with letters. If a man's letters are not worth reading you will "have a confessing criminal" at once; if they are he will hardly be able to keep the quality latent whenever he goes beyond the shortest business note. The man of one book, in the sense of having read it, is proverbially formidable but in fact too frequently a bore. The man of one letter, in the sense of having written a good one and no more, probably never existed.[59]



APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION

I

GREEK LETTERS.—SYNESIUS (c. 375-430)

English readers may know something, from Kingsley's Hypatia, of the excellent bishop of Ptolemais who, at the meeting of the fourth and fifth centuries, combined the functions of neo-Platonist philosopher, Christian prelate, country gentleman, and most efficient yeomanry officer against the ancestors, or at least forerunners, of the present Senussi, who were constantly raiding his diocese and its neighbourhood. These two letters—to Hypatia herself and to his brother—show him in different, but in each case favourable lights.

LETTER CVIII. (TO HIS BROTHER)

I have already got 300 spears and as many cutlasses, though I had, even before, only half a score two-edged swords: and these long flat blades are not forged with us. But I think the cutlasses can be struck more vigorously into the enemies' bodies, and so we shall use them. And at need we shall have bludgeons—for the wild olive trees are good with us.[60] Some of our men have single-bladed axes at their belts with which those of us who have no defensive armour shall chop their[61] shields and make them fight on equal terms. The fight will, at a guess, come off to-morrow: for when some of the foe had fallen in with scouts of ours and pursuing them at their best speed had found them too good to catch, they bade them tell us what pleased us mightily—if indeed we may no more have to wander in the footsteps of those fellows who made off into the wastes of the interior. For they said they were going to stay where they were and wanted to find out what sort of fellows we were, who dared to separate ourselves so many days' journey from our own place that we might fight with men of war, nomads in way of life, and whose civil polity was like our discipline in war-time. Therefore, as one who by God's help shall to-morrow conquer—nay, conquer again if needful (for I would say nothing of bad omen) I commit to thee the care of my children: for it is fitting that thou, their uncle, shouldest carry over thine affection to them.

LETTER CXXIV

"But if oblivion be the lot of the dead in Hades yet will I, even there, remember" my dear Hypatia. Beset as I am by the sufferings of my country, and sick, as I see daily weapons of war about me and men slaughtered like altar-victims; drawing as I do breath infected by rotting corpses; expecting myself a similar fate, (for who can be hopeful when the very atmosphere is weighed down and dusky with the shadow of carnivorous birds?) yet do I cling to my country. For what else would my feeling be, born and bred as I am, and with the not ignoble tombs of my fathers before my eyes? For thee alone does it seem to me that I could neglect my country, and if I could get leisure, force myself to run away.[62]

LATIN LETTERS.—PLINY (62-114)

The most famous letters of the younger Pliny are those which describe his country houses, that which gives account of his uncle's death in the great eruption of Vesuvius, and his correspondence with Trajan. But the first mentioned are rather long and require a good deal of technical annotation;[63] the second is to be found in many books; and the letters which make up the third (except those concerning Christianity, which are again to be found in many places) are mostly short and on points of business merely. The one I have chosen is extremely characteristic, in two respects, of the author and of Roman ways generally. It shows Pliny's good-nature and right feeling, but it shows also a certain "priggishness" with which he has been specially and personally charged, but which, to speak frankly, he shared with a great many of his famous countrymen. Priggishness was almost unknown among the Greeks—though one may suspect its presence among those Spartans who have told so few tales of themselves. But it flourished at Rome, and was one of Rome's many—and one of her worst—legacies to us moderns. Secondly, the letter is amusing because one thinks what an English judge would surely think and would probably say, if counsel for a lady were to inform the court uberius et latius what an extremely good opinion that lady's father had of him, the learned speaker. A minor but still interesting difference is in Pliny's slight hesitation about taking a brief against a consul-elect. The subtleties of Roman etiquette are endless.

PLINIUS TO HIS ASINIUS GALLUS—HEALTH

You both advise[64] and ask me to take up the cause of Corellia in her absence against C. Caecilius, Consul elect. I am obliged to you for advising me but I complain of your asking. I ought to be advised that I may know the fact, but not asked to do what it would be most disgraceful for me not to do. Could I doubt about protecting the daughter of Corellius? True, there is between me and him against whom you call on me, not exactly close friendship but still some friendship. There is also to be taken into account the man's worth and the honour to which he is destined, a thing which I ought to hold in the greater respect that I have myself already enjoyed it. For it is natural that things which one has oneself attained, one should wish to be regarded with the greatest respect. But when I think that I am to help Corellius' daughter, all this appears idle and empty. I seem to see the man than whom our age had no one more dignified, more pious, of an acuter mind; the man whom, when I had begun to like him out of admiration I admired more, contrary to what usually happens, the more thoroughly I knew him. For I did know him thoroughly; he kept nothing hid from me, neither jocular nor serious, neither sad nor glad. I was quite a young man: but already he held me in honour and I will dare to say respect—as if I were his contemporary. He gave me his vote and interest in my standings for honours; he, when I entered upon them, was my introducer and companion; when I carried them out, my adviser and guide. In fact, in every business of mine, though he was an old man and in weak health, he was as forward as if he were young and strong. How much he furthered my reputation, privately, publicly, and even with the Chief of the State! For when by chance, in the presence of the Emperor Nerva, the conversation had turned on young men of worth, and several persons spoke in praise of me, he kept silence for a little, which gave him the more authority. Then in the weighty manner you know, "I must needs," he said, "say all the less about Secundus[65] because he never does anything but by my advice." By saying this he gave me the credit (which it would have been extravagant in me to hope for) of never doing anything in other than the wisest way, seeing that I always acted on the advice of the wisest man. Moreover, when dying, he said to his daughter, as she is wont to declare, "I have provided you, as if I were myself to live longer, many friends: but for the chief of them Secundus and Cornutus." Now when I remember this, I see I must take care not in any way to disappoint the trust in me of this most fore-thoughtful man. Therefore I will come to Corellia's help without the least delay and will not refuse to undergo inconveniences: though I think I shall secure not merely pardon but even praise from the very person who as you say is bringing a new action as against a woman, if it should happen to me to say these same things in court more amply and fully than the narrow room of a letter permits, either to excuse or indeed commend myself. Farewell.

LETTER OF THE "DARK" AGES

SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS (431?-482-4)

Caius Sollius Sidonius Apollinaris is one of the most interesting figures of the troubled and obscure period intervening between the fall of the Roman Empire proper and the rise of mediaeval Europe. He was born at Lyons, married Papianilla, daughter of Flavius Avitus, who was to be one of the ephemeral "Emperors" of the West and the Decadence, but was not injured by his father-in-law's dethronement, and enjoyed various civil honours and posts. In 471, though a married layman, he was peremptorily made a bishop, and accordingly took orders, put away his wife, and discharged his sacred duties as creditably as he had discharged his profane ones. Sidonius was a not contemptible poet, and an interesting letter-writer. Like most literary men of his class he was given to what we call flattery; and this Ecdicius, of whom he made a sort of Dark Age Admirable Crichton, was his brother-in-law, an Emperor's son, and Count or Duke (the titles were often interchangeable) of the district. But it is fair to say that Gregory of Tours, the accepted historian of the period, and living only in the next century, makes the exploit over the Goths even more signal—for he reduces the troopers to ten. The Arverni (inhabitants of Auvergne and its neighbourhood) were the strongest tribe in Southern Gaul when the Romans first came into contact with them, retained much prominence in Caesar's time, and had not lost individuality, if they had lost independence, by this (5th) century. The mixture of "Arms" and the "Gown" is noteworthy.