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A LETTER BOOK
A LETTER BOOK
SELECTED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
ON THE HISTORY AND ART OF
LETTER-WRITING
BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND CO.
1922
PREFACE
When my publishers were good enough to propose that I should undertake
this book, they were also good enough to suggest that the Introduction
should be of a character somewhat different from that of a
school-anthology, and should attempt to deal with the Art of
Letter-writing, and the nature of the Letter, as such. I formed a plan
accordingly, by which the letters, and their separate Prefatory Notes,
might be as it were illustrations to the Introduction, which was
intended in turn to be a guide to them. Having done this with a proper
_Pourvu que Dieu lui prete vie_ referring to both book and author, I
thought it well to look up next what had been done in the way before me,
at least to the extent of what the London Library could provide me in
circumstances of enforced abstinence from the Museum and from "Bodley."
From its catalogue I selected a curious eighteenth-century _Art of
Letter Writing_, and four nineteenth and earliest twentieth century
books--Roberts's _History of Letter Writing_ (1843) with Pickering's
ever-beloved title-page and his beautiful clear print; the _Litterature
Epistolaire_ of Barbey d'Aurevilly--a critic never to be neglected
though always to be consulted with eyes wide open and brain alert;
finally, two Essays in Dr. Jessopp's _Studies by a Recluse_ and in the
_Men and Letters_ of Mr. Herbert Paul, once a very frequent associate of
mine. The title of the first mentioned book speaks it pretty
thoroughly. "The Art of Letter Writing: Divided into Two Parts. The
First: Containing Rules and Directions for writing letters on all sorts
of subjects [_this line as well as several others is Rubricked_] with a
variety of examples equally elegant and instructive. The Second: a
Collection of Letters on the Most interesting occasions of life in which
are inserted--The proper method of Addressing Persons of all ranks; some
necessary orthographical directions, the right forms of message for
cards; and thoughts upon a multiplicity of subjects; the whole composed
upon an entirely new plan--chiefly calculated for the instruction of
youth, but may be [_sic_] of singular service to Gentlemen, Ladies and
all others who are desirous to attain the true style and manner of a
polite epistolary intercourse." May our own little book have no worse
fortune! Mr. Roberts's avowedly restricts itself to the fifth century as
a _terminus ad quem_, though it professes to start "from the earliest
times," and its seven hundred pages deal very honestly and fully with
their subjects. The essays of Dr. Jessopp and Mr. Paul are of course
merely Essays, of a score or two of pages: though the first is pretty
wide in its scope. There would be nothing but good to be said of either,
if both had not been, not perhaps blasphemous but parsimonious of
praise, towards "Our Lady of the Rocks." It cannot be too often or too
solemnly laid down that an adoration of Madame de Sevigne as a
letter-writer is not crotchet or fashion or affectation--is no result of
merely taking authority on trust. The more one reads her, and the more
one reads others, the more convinced should one be of her absolute
non-pareility in almost every kind of genuine letter (as apart from
letters that are really pamphlets or speeches or sermons) except pure
love-letters, of which we have none from her. As for _Litterature
Epistolaire_, it is a collection of some two dozen reviews of various
modern reprints of letters by distinguished writers--mostly but not all
French. The author has throughout used the letters he is considering
almost wholly as tell-tales of character, not as examples of art: and
therefore he does not, except in possible glances, require further
attention, though the book is full of interesting things. Its judgment
of one of our greatest, and one of the greatest of all,
letter-writers--Horace Walpole--is too severe, but not, like Macaulay's,
superficially insistent on superficial defects, and ought not to be
neglected by anyone who studies the subject.
If, however, there was no need to rely on any of these books, they did
nothing to hinder in the peculiar way in which I had feared some
hindrance. For it is a nuisance to find that somebody else has done
something in the precise way in which you have planned doing it. I have
not yet encountered that nuisance here. Dr. Jessopp's general plan is
most like mine--indeed some similarity was unavoidable: but the two are
not identical, and I had planned mine before I knew anything about his.
So with this prelude let us go to business, only premising further that
the object, unlike that of the anonymous Augustan, is not to "give rules
and instructions for writing good letters," except in the way (which far
excels all rules and instructions) of showing how good letters have been
written. Let us also modestly trust that the collection may deal with
some "interesting occasions of life" and contain "thoughts on a [fair]
multiplicity of subjects." Having been, as above observed, unable during
the composition of this book to visit London or Oxford, I have had to
rely occasionally on friendly assistance. I owe particular thanks (as
indeed I have owed them at almost any time these forty years) to the
Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford:
and I am also indebted to Miss Elsie Hitchcock for some kind aid at the
Museum given me through the intermediation of Professor Ker.
Besides the thanks given to Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, Mr. Kipling and Dr.
Williamson in the text in reference to certain new or almost new
letters, we owe very sincere gratitude for permission to reprint the
following important matters:
_His Honour Judge Parry._ Two letters from "Letters from
Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple."
_Messrs. Douglas & Foulis._ A letter to Joanna Baillie, from
"Familiar Letters of Sir Walter Scott."
_Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co._ Two letters from Mrs.
Carlyle's "Letters and Memorials," and one letter from Sir
G. O. Trevelyan's "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay."
_Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._ Three letters from "The
Letters of Charles Dickens"; one letter by FitzGerald and
one by Thomas Carlyle, from "Letters and Literary Remains of
Edward FitzGerald"; one letter from "Charles Kingsley: his
Letters and Memories of his Life"; and two extracts from
"Further Records, 1848-1883," by Frances Anne Kemble.
_Mr. John Murray._ One letter from "The Letters of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning."
GEORGE SAINTSBURY.
1 ROYAL CRESCENT, BATH,
_October, 1921_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION ON THE HISTORY AND ART OF LETTER-WRITING 1
I. Ancient History. II. Letters in English--before
1700. III. The Eighteenth Century. IV. Nineteenth
Century Letters--Early. V. Nineteenth
Century Letters--Later. VI. Some Special Kinds
of Letter. VII. Conclusion.
APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION:
GREEK LETTERS--SYNESIUS 100
(i) To his Brother--Preparations to meet Raiders.
(ii) To Hypatia--Longing but unable to come
to her.
LATIN LETTERS--PLINY 102
Accepts a Brief for a Lady.
LETTERS OF THE "DARK" AGES--SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS 105
The exploits of Ecdicius.
EARLY MEDIAEVAL (TWELFTH CENTURY) LETTER 108
Duchess of Burgundy to King Louis VII.--Matchmaking.
ENGLISH LETTERS
THE "PASTON" LETTERS 111
1. A Channel Fight.
2. Margery is Willing.
ROGER ASCHAM 116
3. "Up the Rhine."
4. Nostalgia for Cambridge.
LADY MARY SIDNEY 122
5. Have you no room at Court?
GEORGE CLIFFORD, EARL OF CUMBERLAND 125
6. A Death-bed letter.
JOHN DONNE 129
7-10. Letters to Magdalen Lady Herbert.
JAMES HOWELL 135
11. "Long Melford for Ever."
12. The White Bird.
JOHN EVELYN 139
13. How to take care of ears, eyes and brains.
DOROTHY OSBORNE 146
14. A discourse of Flying, and several other things.
15. Some testimonies of kindness.
JONATHAN SWIFT 154
16. Letter-hunger.
LADY MARY WORTLEY-MONTAGU 159
17. Directions for running away with her.
PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD 164
18. Some manners that make a gentleman.
GEORGE BALLARD 173
19. The wickedness of Reviewers.
THOMAS GRAY 180
20. Romanities and Plain English.
21. Kent, Rousseau, Lord Chatham, etc.
HORACE WALPOLE (AND W. M. THACKERAY) 187
22. What Horace wrote.
23. What Horace might have written.
TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 195
24. Of Johnson, and Johnson's Frank--To Wilkes.
WILLIAM COWPER 197
25. About a Greenhouse.
SYDNEY SMITH 201
26. Vegetation, stagnation, and assassination.
27. His "hotel." Hasty judgments deprecated.
SIR WALTER SCOTT 206
28. Authors and Morals.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 212
29. From Spinosa to Go_b_win through things in general.
ROBERT SOUTHEY 217
30-33. The _Lingo Grande_.
CHARLES LAMB 221
34. A Sigh for Solitude.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 228
35. Of Pictures, and Sepulture, and his Daughters.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 233
36. Of Pictures only.
JOHN KEATS 239
37. A Voyage, and the _Quarterly_ and Charmian.
THE CARLYLES 244
38. Thomas on _Latrappism_.
39. Jane Welsh on her Travels.
40. Jane Welsh on the blessings of Photography.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 253
41. Outfits, and Election Dinners. Miss Berry and
Lady Holland.
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 258
42. Stage-coach tricks, and stage-play ghosts.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 263
43. An extended Honey-moon.
EDWARD FITZGERALD 270
44. Of Bath, and Oxford, and some Immortals.
FRANCIS ANNE KEMBLE 275
45. A Ghost in Flannel.
46. Bakespearism.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 279
47. As himself.
48. In character.
CHARLES DICKENS 286
49. Straight dealing with the personages of _Nicholas
Nickleby_.
50. Advice to an Innocent in London.
51. Mr. and Mrs. Harris.
CHARLES KINGSLEY 292
52. _Tom Brown's Schooldays_; Pike fishing; and a
pretty thing with Garth's.
JOHN RUSKIN 296
53. The Servant question.
ROBERT LOUIS BALFOUR STEVENSON 303
54. John Gibson Lockhart, and an Umbrella.
INTRODUCTION
THE HISTORY AND ART OF LETTER
WRITING
I
ANCIENT HISTORY
On letter-writing, as on most things that can themselves be written and
talked about, there are current many _cliches_--stock and banal sayings
that express, or have at some time expressed, a certain amount of truth.
The most familiar of these for a good many years past has been that the
penny post has killed it. Whether revival of the twopenny has caused it
to exhibit any kind of corresponding resurrectionary symptoms is a
matter which cannot yet be pronounced upon. But it may be possible to
avoid these _cliches_, or at any rate to make no more than necessary
glances at them, in composing this little paper, which aims at being a
discussion of the Letter as a branch of Literature, no less than an
introduction to the specimens of the kind which follow.
If, according to a famous dictum, "Everything has been said," it follows
that every definition must have been already made. Therefore, no doubt,
somebody has, or many bodies have, before now defined or at least
described the Letter as that kind of communication of thought or fact to
another person which most immediately succeeds the oral, and supplies
the claims of absence. You want to tell somebody something; but he or
she is not, as they used to say "by," or perhaps there are circumstances
(and circum_standers_) which or who make speech undesirable; so you
"write." At first no doubt, you used signs or symbols like the feather
with which Wildrake let Cromwell's advent be known in _Woodstock_--a
most ingenious device for which, by the way, the recipients were scantly
grateful. But when reading and writing came by nature, you availed
yourself of these Nature's gifts, not always, it is to be feared,
regarding the interconnection of the two sufficiently. There is probably
more than one person living who has received a reply beginning "Dear
So-and-So, Thanks for your interesting and _partially legible_ epistle,"
or words to that effect. But that is a part of the matter which lies
outside our range.
On the probable general fact, however, some observations may be less
frivolously based. If this were a sentimental age, as some ages in the
past have been, one might assume that, as the first portrait is supposed
to have been a silhouette of the present beloved, drawn on her shadow
with a charcoaled stick, so the same, or another implement may have
served (on what substitute for paper anybody pleases) to communicate
with her when absent. But the silliness of this age--though far be it
from us to dispute its possession of so prevailing a quality--does not
take the form--at least _this_ form--of sentiment.
[Sidenote: THE BEGINNINGS]
There is, moreover, nothing silly or sentimental, though of course there
is something that may be controverted, in saying that except for purely
"business" purposes (which are as such alien from Art and have nothing
to do with any but a part, and a rather sophisticated part, of Nature)
the less the letter-writer forgets that he is merely substituting pen
for tongue the better. Of course, the instruments and the circumstances
being different, the methods and canons of the proceedings will be
different too. In the letter there is no interlocutor; and there is no
possibility of what we may call accompanying it with personal
illustrations[1] and demonstrations, if necessary or agreeable. But
still it may be laid down, with some confidence, that the more the
spoken word is heard in a letter the better, and the less that word is
heard--the more it gives way to "book"-talk--the worse. Indeed this is
not likely to be denied, though there remain as usual almost infinite
possibilities of differences in personal opinion as to what constitutes
the desirable mixture of variation and similarity between a conversation
and a letter. Let us, before discussing this or saying anything more
about the principles, say something about the history of this, at best
so delightful, at worst so undelightful art. For if History, in the
transferred sense of particular books called "histories," is rather apt
to be false: nothing but History in the wider and higher sense will ever
lead us to truth. The Future is unknown and unknowable. The Present is
turning to Past even as we are trying to know it. Only the Past itself
abides our knowledge.
[Sidenote: BIBLICAL EXAMPLES]
Of the oldest existing examples of epistolary correspondence, except
those contained in the Bible, the present writer knows little or
nothing. For, except a vanished smattering of Hebrew, he "has" no
Oriental tongue; he has never been much addicted to reading
translations, and even if he had been so has had little occasion to draw
him to such studies, and much to draw him away from them. There
certainly appear to be some beautiful specimens of the more passionate
letter writing in ancient if not exactly pre-Christian Chinese, and
probably in other tongues--but it is ill talking of what one does not
know. In the Scriptures themselves letters do not come early, and the
"token" period probably lasted long. Isaac does not even send a token
with Jacob to validate his suit for a daughter of Laban. But one would
have enjoyed a letter from Ishmael to his half-brother, when his
daughter was married to Esau, who was so much more like a son of Ishmael
himself than of the amiable husband of Rebekah. She, by the way, had
herself been fetched in an equally unlettered transaction. It would of
course be impossible, and might be regarded as improper, to devote much
space here to the sacred epistolographers. But one may wonder whether
many people have appreciated the humour of the two epistles of the great
King Ahasuerus-Artaxerxes, the first commanding and the second
countermanding the massacre of the Jews--epistles contained in the
Septuagint "Rest of the Book of Esther" (see our Apocrypha), instead of
the mere dry summaries which had sufficed for "the Hebrew and the
Chaldee." The exact authenticity of these fuller texts is a matter of no
importance, but their substance, whether it was the work of a Persian
civil servant or of a Greek-Jew rhetorician, is most curious. Whosoever
it was, he knew King's Speeches and communications from "My lords" and
such like things, very well indeed; and the contrast of the mention in
the first letter of "Aman who excelled in wisdom among us and was
approved for his constant good will and steadfast fidelity" with "the
wicked wretch Aman--a stranger received of us ... his falsehood and
cunning"--the whole of both letters being carefully attuned to the
respective key-notes--is worthy of any one of the best ironists from
Aristophanes to the late Mr. Traill.
Between these two extremes of the Pentateuch and the Apocrypha there is,
as has been remarked by divers commentators, not much about letters in
the Bible. It is not auspicious that among the exceptions come David's
letter commanding the betrayal of Uriah, and a little later Jezebel's
similar prescription for the judicial murder of Naboth. There is,
however, some hint of that curious attractiveness which some have seen
in "the King's daughter all glorious within--" and without (as the
Higher Criticism interprets the Forty-Fifth Psalm) in the bland way with
which she herself stipulates that the false witnesses shall be "sons of
Belial."
There is a book (once much utilised as a school prize) entitled _The
History of Inventions_. I do not know whether there is a "Dictionary of
Attributed Inventors." If there were it would contain some queer
examples. One of the queerest is fathered (for we only have it at second
hand) on Hellanicus, a Greek writer of respectable antiquity--the
Peloponnesian war-time--and respectable repute for book-making in
history, chronology, etc. It attributes the invention of letters--_i.e._
"epistolary correspondence"--to Atossa--not Mr. Matthew Arnold's Persian
cat but--the Persian Queen, daughter of Cyrus, wife of Cambyses and
Darius, mother of Xerxes, and in more than her queenly status a sister
to Jezebel. Atossa had not a wholly amiable reputation, but she was
assuredly no fool: and if, to borrow a famous phrase, it had been
necessary to invent letters, there is no known reason why she might not
have done it. But it is perfectly certain that she did not, and no one
who combines, as all true scholars should endeavour to combine, an
unquenchable curiosity to know what can be known and is worth knowing
with a placid resignation to ignorance of what cannot be known and would
not be worth knowing--need in the least regret the fact that we do not
know who did.
There are said to be Egyptian letters of immense antiquity and high
development; but once more, I do not profess direct knowledge of them,
and once more I hold that of what a man does not possess direct
knowledge, of that he should not write. Besides, for practical purposes,
all our literature begins with Greek: so to Greek let us turn. We have a
fair bulk of letters in that language. Hercher's _Epistolographi Graeci_
is a big volume, and would not be a small one, if you cut out the Latin
translations. But it is unfortunate that nearly the whole, like the
majority of later Greek literature, is the work of that special class
called rhetoricians--a class for which, though our term "book-makers"
may be a little too derogatory, "men of letters" is rarely (it is
sometimes) applicable, as we use it when we mean to be complimentary.
These letters are still close to "speech," thus meeting in a fashion our
initial requirement, but they are close to the speech of the
"orator"--of the sophisticated speaker to the public--not to that of
genuine conversation. In fact in some cases it would require only the
very slightest change to make those exercitations of the rhetors which
are not called "epistles" definite letters in form, while some of the
best known and characteristic of their works are so entitled.
[Sidenote: THE RHETORICIANS]
It was unfortunate for the Greeks, as it would seem, and for us more
certainly, that letter-writing was so much affected by these
"rhetoricians." This curious class of persons has perhaps been too much
abused: and there is no doubt that very great writers came out of
them--to mention one only in each division--Lucian among the extremely
profane, and St. Augustine among the greatest and most intellectual of
divines. But though their habitual defects are to be found abundantly
enough in modern society, these defects are, with us, as a rule
distributed among different classes; while anciently they were united in
this one. We have our journalists, our book-makers (literary, not
sporting), our platform and parliamentary palaverers, our popular
entertainers; and we also have our pedagogues, scholastic and
collegiate, our scientific and other lecturers, etc. But the Rhetorician
of old was a Jack of all these trades; and he too frequently combined
the triviality, unreality, sophistry and catch-pennyism of the one
division with the priggishness, the lack of tact and humour, and above
all the pseudo-scientific tendency to generalisation, classification
and, to use a familiar word, "pottering" of the other. In particular he
had a mania in his more serious moods for defining and sub-defining
things and putting them into pigeon-holes under the sub-definitions.
Thus the so-called Demetrius Phalereus, who (or a false namesake of his)
has left us a capital _general_ remark (to be given presently) on
letter-writing, elaborately divides its kinds, with prescriptions for
writing each, into "friendly," "commendatory," "reproving,"
"objurgatory," "consolatory," "castigatory," "admonishing,"
"threatening," "vituperatory," "laudatory," "persuasive," "begging,"
"questioning," "answering," "allegorical," "explanatory," "accusing,"
"defending," "congratulatory," "ironic" and "thankful," while the
neo-Platonist, Proclus, is responsible for, or at least has attributed
to him, a list of nearly double the length, including most of those
given above and adding many. Of these last, "love-letters" is the most
important, and "mixed" the _canniest_, for it practically lets in
everything.
This way, of course, except for purely business purposes--where
established forms save time, trouble and possible litigation--no
possible good lies; and indeed the impossibility thereof is clearly
enough indicated in the above-glanced-at general remark of Demetrius (or
whoever it was) himself. In fact the principle of this remark and its
context in the work called "Of Interpretation," which it is more usual
now to call, perhaps a little rashly, "Of Style," is so different from
the catalogue of types that they can hardly come from the same author.
"You _can_ from this, as well as from all other kinds of writing,
discern the character of the writer; indeed from none other can you
discern it so well." Those who know a little of the history of Criticism
will see how this anticipates the most famous and best definitions of
Style itself, as being "the very man," and they may perhaps also think
worthy of notice another passage in the same context where the author
finds fault with a rather "fine" piece of an epistle as "not the way a
man would talk to his friend," and even goes on to use the most familiar
Greek word for talking--[Greek: lalein]--in the same connection.
[Sidenote: ALCIPHRON. JULIAN]
Of such "talking with a friend" we have unfortunately very few
examples--hardly any at all--from older Greek. The greater
collections--not much used in schools or colleges now but well enough
known to those who really know Greek Literature--of Alciphron,
Aristaenetus, Philostratus and (once most famous of all) Phalaris
are--one must not perhaps say obvious, since men of no little worth were
once taken in by them but--pretty easily discoverable counterfeits. They
are sometimes, more particularly those of Philostratus, interesting and
even beautiful;[2] they have been again sometimes at least supposed,
particularly those of Alciphron, to give us, from the fact that they
were largely based upon lost comedies, etc., information which we should
otherwise lack; and in many instances (Aristaenetus is perhaps here the
chief) they must have helped towards that late Greek creation of the
Romance to which we owe so much. Nor have we here much if anything to do
with such questions as the morality of personating dead authors, or that
of laying traps for historians. It is enough that they do not give us,
except very rarely, good letters: and that even these exceptions are not
in any probability _real_ letters, real written "confabulations of
friends" at all. Almost the first we have deserving such a description
are those of the Emperor Julian in the fourth century of that Christ for
whom he had such an unfortunate hatred; the most copious and thoroughly
genuine perhaps those of Bishop Synesius a little later. Of these
Julian's are a good deal affected by the influence of Rhetoric, of which
he was a great cultivator: and the peculiar later Platonism of Synesius
fills a larger proportion of his than some frivolous persons might
wish. Julian is even thought to have "written for publication," as Latin
epistolers of distinction had undoubtedly done before him. Nevertheless
it is pleasant to read the Apostate when he is not talking Imperial or
anti-Christian "shop," but writing to his tutor, the famous sophist and
rhetorician Libanius, about his travels and his books and what not, in a
fashion by no means very unlike that in which a young Oxford graduate
might write to an undonnish don. It is still pleasanter to find Synesius
telling his friends about the very thin wine and very thick honey of
Cyrenaica; making love ("camouflaged," as they say to-day, under
philosophy) to Hypatia, and condescending to mention dogs, horses and
hunting now and then. But it is unfortunately undeniable that the bulk
of this department of Greek literature is spurious to begin with, and
uninteresting, even if spuriousness be permitted to pass. The Letters of
Phalaris--once famous in themselves, again so as furnishing one of the
chief battle-grounds in the "Ancient and Modern" quarrel, and never to
be forgotten because of their connection with Swift's _Battle of the
Books_--are as dull as ditchwater in matter, and utterly destitute of
literary distinction in style.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ROMAN LETTER-WRITING]
It is a rule, general and almost universal, that every branch of Latin
literature is founded on, and more or less directly imitative of Greek.
Even the Satire, which the Romans relied upon to prove that they could
originate, is more apparently than really an invention. Also, though
this may be more disputable, because much more a matter of personal
taste, there were very few such branches in which the pupils equalled,
much fewer in which they surpassed, their masters. But in both respects
letter-writing may be said to be an exception. Unless we have been
singularly unlucky in losing better Greek letters than we have, and
extraordinarily fortunate in Fate's selection of the Latin letters that
have come down to us, the Romans, though they were eager students of
Rhetoric, and almost outwent their teachers in composing the empty
things called Declamations, seem to have allowed this very practice to
drain off mere verbosity, and to have written letters about matters
which were worth pen, ink, paper and (as we should say) postage. We have
in Greek absolutely no such letters from the flourishing time of the
literature as those of Cicero, of Pliny[3] and even of Seneca--while as
we approach the "Dark" Ages Julian and Synesius in the older language
cannot touch Sidonius Apollinaris or perhaps Cassiodorus[4] in the
younger. Of course all these are beyond reasonable doubt genuine, while
the Greek letters attributed to Plato, Socrates and other great men are
almost without doubt and without exception spurious. But there is very
little likelihood that the Greeks of the great times wrote many
"matter-ful" letters at all. They lived in small communities, where they
saw each other daily and almost hourly; they took little interest in the
affairs of other communities unless they were at war with them, and
when they did travel there were very few means of international
communication.
Women write the best letters, and get the best letters written to them:
but it is doubtful whether Greek women, save persons of a certain class
and other exceptions in different ways like Sappho and Diotima,[5] ever
wrote at all. The Romans, after their early period, were not merely a
larger and ever larger community full of the most various business, and
constantly extending their presence and their sway; but, by their unique
faculty of organisation, they put every part of their huge world in
communication with every other part. Here also we lack women's letters;
but we are, as above remarked, by no means badly off for those of men.
There have even been some audacious heretics who have preferred Cicero's
letters to his speeches and treatises; Seneca, the least attractive of
those before mentioned, put well what the poet Wordsworth called in his
own poems "extremely va_loo_able thoughts"; one of the keenest of
mathematicians and best of academic and general business men known to
the present writer, the late Professor Chrystal of Edinburgh, made a
special favourite of Pliny; and if people can find nothing worse to say
against Sidonius than that he wrote in contemporary, and not in what was
for his time archaic, Latin, his case will not look bad in the eyes of
sensible men.
[Sidenote: SIDONIUS]
Sidonius, like Synesius, was a Christian, and, though the observation
may seem no more logical than Fluellen's about Macedon and Monmouth,
besides being in more doubtful taste, there would seem to be some
connection between the spread of Christianity and that of
letter-writing. At any rate they synchronise, despite or perhaps because
of the deficiency of formal literature during the "Dark" Ages. It is not
really futile to point out that a very large part of the New Testament
consists of "Epistles," and that by no means the whole of these epistles
is occupied by doctrinal or hortatory matter. Even that which is so,
often if not always, partakes of the character of a "live" letter to an
extent which makes the so-called letters of the Greek Rhetoricians mere
school exercises. And St. Paul's allusions to his journeys, his
salutations, his acknowledgment of presents, his reference to the cloak
and the books with its anxious "but especially the parchments," and his
excellent advice to Timothy about beverages, are all the purest and most
genuine matter for mail-bags. So is St. Peter's very gentleman-like (as
it has been termed) retort to his brother Apostle; and so are both the
Second and the Third of St. John. Indeed it is not fanciful to suggest
that the account of the voyage which finishes the "Acts," and other
parts of that very delightful book, are narratives much more of the kind
one finds in letters than of the formally historical sort.
However this may be, it is worth pointing out that the distrust of other
pagan kinds of literature which the Fathers manifested so strongly, and
which was inherited from them by the clergy of the "Dark," and to some
extent the Middle Ages, clearly could not extend to the practice of the
Apostles. If from the Dark Ages themselves we have not very many, it
must be remembered that from them we have little literature at all:
while from the close of that period and the beginning of the next we
have one of the most famous of all correspondences, the Letters of
Abelard and Heloise. Of the intrinsic merit of these long-and far-famed
compositions, as displaying character, there have been different
opinions--one of the most damaging attacks on them may be found in
Barbey d'Aurevilly's already mentioned book. But their influence has
been lasting and enormous: and even if it were to turn out that they are
forgeries, they are certainly early forgeries, and the person who forged
them knew extremely well what he was about. There is no room here to
survey, even in selection, the letter-crop of the Middle Ages; and from
henceforward we must speak mainly, if not wholly (for some glances
abroad may be permitted), of _English_ letters.[6] But the
ever-increasing bonds of union--even of such union in disunion as
war--between different European nations, and the developments of more
complex civilisation, of more general education and the like--all tended
and wrought in the same direction.
II
LETTERS IN ENGLISH--BEFORE 1700
Exceptions have sometimes been taken to the earliest collection of
genuine private letters, not official communications written in or
inspired by Latin--which we possess in English. "The Paston Letters"
have been, from opposite sides, accused of want of literary form and of
not giving us interesting enough details in substance. The objections in
either case[7] are untenable, and in both rather silly. In the first
place "literary form" in the fifteenth century was exceedingly likely to
be bad literary form, and we are much better off without it. Unless Sir
Thomas Malory had happened to be chaplain at Oxnead, or Sir John
Fortescue had occupied there something like the position of Mr.
Tulkinghorn in _Bleak House_, we should not have got much "literature"
from any known prose-writer of the period. Nor was it wanted. As for
interestingness of matter, the people who expect newspaper-correspondent
fine writing about the Wars of the Roses may be disappointed; but some
of us who have had experience of that dialect from the Russells of the
Crimea through the Forbeses of 1870 to the chroniclers of Armageddon the
other day will probably not be very unhappy. The Paston Letters are
simply genuine family correspondence--of a genuineness all the more
certain because of their commonplaceness. It is impossible to conceive
anything further from the initial type of the Greek rhetorical "letter"
of which we have just been saying something. They are not, to any but an
excessively "high-browed" and high-flying person, uninteresting: but the
chief point about them is their solidity and their satisfaction, in
their own straightforward unvarnished way, of the test we started with.
When Margaret Paston and the rest write, it is because they have
something to say to somebody who cannot be actually spoken to. And that
something is said.
[Sidenote: ASCHAM]
The next body of letters--Ascham's--which seems to call for notice here
is of the next century. It has not a few points of appeal, more than one
of which concern us very nearly. Most of the writers of the Paston
Letters were, though in some cases of good rank and fairly educated,
persons entirely unacademic in character, and their society was that of
the last trouble and convulsion through which the Early Middle Ages
struggled into the Renaissance, so long delayed with us. Ascham was one
of our chief representatives of the Renaissance itself--that is to say,
of a type at once scholarly and man-of-the-worldly, a courtier and a
diplomatist as well as a "don" and a man of letters; a sportsman as well
as a schoolmaster. And while from all these points of view his letters
have interest, there is one thing about them which is perhaps more
interesting to us than any other: and that is the fact that while he
begins to write in Latin--the all but mother-tongue of all scholars of
the time, and the universal language of the educated, even when not
definitely scholarly, throughout Europe--he exchanges this for English
latterly, in the same spirit which prompted his famous expression of
reasons for writing the _Toxophilus_ in our own and his own tongue.
There is indeed a double attraction, which has not been always or often
noticed, in this change of practice. Everybody has seen how important it
is, not merely as resisting the general delusion of contemporary
scholars that the vernaculars were things unsafe, "like to play the
bankrupt with books," but as protesting by anticipation against the
continuance of this error which affected Bacon and Hobbes, and was not
entirely without hold even on such a magician in English as Browne. But
perhaps everybody has not seen how by implication it acknowledges the
peculiar character of the genuine letter--that, though it may be a work
of art, it should not be one of artifice--that it is a matter of
"business _or_ bosoms," not of study or display.
Contemporary with these letters of Ascham, and going on to the end of
the century and the closely coincident end of the reign of Elizabeth, we
have a considerable bulk of letter-writing of more or less varied kinds.
The greatest men of letters of the time--to the disgust of one, but not
wholly so to that of another, class of "scholar"--give us little.
Spenser is the most considerable exception: and his correspondence with
Gabriel Harvey, though it is personal to a certain extent and on
Gabriel's side sufficiently character-revealing, is really of the hybrid
kind, partaking rather more of pamphlet or essay than of letter proper.
Indeed a good part of that very remarkable pamphlet-literature of this
time, which has perhaps scarcely yet received its due share of
attention, takes the letter-form: but is mostly even farther from
genuine letter-writing than the correspondence of "Immerito" and
"Master G. H." We have of course more of Harvey's; we have laments from
others, such as Lyly and Googe, about their disappointments as
courtiers; we have a good deal of State correspondence. There are some,
not very many, agreeable letters of strictly private character in whole
or part, the pleasantest of all perhaps being some of Sir Philip
Sydney's mother, Lady Mary Dudley. Others are from time to time being
made public, such as those in Dr. Williamson's recent book on the
Admiral-Earl of Cumberland. As far as mere bulk goes, Elizabethan
epistolography would take no small place, just as it would claim no mean
one in point of interest. But in an even greater degree than its
successor (_v. inf._) this _corpus_ would expose itself to the criticism
that the time for perfect letter-writing was not quite yet, in this day
of so much that was perfect, that the style was not quite the right
style, the knack not yet quite achieved. And if the present writer--who
swore fealty to Elizabethan literature a full third of a century ago
after informal allegiance for nearly as long a time earlier--admits some
truth in this, there probably is some. The letters included in it
attract us more for the matter they contain than for the manner in which
they contain it: and when this is the case no branch of literature has
perfected itself in art.
[Sidenote: THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY]
The position of the seventeenth century in England with regard to
letter-writing has been the subject of rather different opinions. The
bulk of its contributions is of course very considerable: and some of
the groups are of prominent importance, the most singular, if not the
most excellent, being Cromwell's, again to be mentioned. As in other
cases and departments this century offers a curious "split" between its
earlier part which declines--not in goodness but like human life in
vitality--from, but still preserves the character of, the pure
Elizabethan, and its later, which grows up again--not in goodness but
simply in the same vitality--towards the Augustan. This relationship is
sufficiently illustrated in the actual letters. The great political
importance of the Civil War of course reflects itself in them. Indeed it
may almost be said that for some time letters are wholly concerned with
such things, though of course there are partial exceptions, such as
those of Dorothy Osborne--"mild Dorothea" as she afterwards became,
though there is no mere mildness of the contemptuous meaning in her
correspondence. In most remarkable contrast to these stand the somewhat
earlier letters of James Howell--our first examples perhaps of letters
"written for publication" in the fullest sense, very agreeably varied in
subject and great favourites with a good many people, notably
Thackeray--but only in part (if at all) genuine private correspondence.
Not a few men otherwise distinguished in literature wrote
letters--sometimes in curious contrast with other productions of theirs.
The most remarkable instance of this, but an instance easily
comprehensible, is that of Samuel Pepys. Only a part of Pepys' immense
correspondence has ever been printed, but there is no reason to expect
from the remainder--whether actually extant, mislaid or lost--anything
better than the examples which are now accessible, and which are for the
most part the very opposite in every respect of the famous and
delectable Diary. They are perfectly "proper," and for the most part
extremely dull; while propriety is certainly not the most salient
characteristic of the Diary; and the diarist manages, in the most
eccentric manner, to communicate interest not merely to things more
specially regarded as "interesting," but to his accounts and his
ailments, his business and his political history. His contemporary and
rather patronising friend Evelyn keeps his performances less far apart
from each other: but is certainly, though a representative, not a great
letter-writer, and the few that we have of Pepys' patronised
fellow-Cantabrigian Dryden are of no great mark, though not superfluous.
In the earlier part of the century Latin had not wholly shaken off its
control as the epistolary language; and it was not till quite the other
end that English itself became supple and docile enough for the purposes
of the letter-writer proper. It was excellent for such things as formal
Dedications, semi-historical narratives, and the like. And it could, as
in Sir Thomas Browne's, supply another contrast, much more pleasing than
that referred to above, of domestic familiarity with a most poetical
transcendence of style in published work. Yet, as was the case with the
novel, the letter, to gain perfection, still wanted something easier
than the grand style of the seventeenth century and more polished than
its familiar style.
III
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY]
But whatever may be the position of the seventeenth in respect of
letter-writing it is impossible for anything but sheer ignorance,
hopeless want of critical discernment, or idle paradox to mistake, in
the direction of belittlement, that of the eighteenth. By common consent
of all opinion worth attention that century was, in the two European
literatures which were equally free from crudity and decadence--French
and English--the very palmiest day of the art. Everybody wrote letters:
and a surprising number of people wrote letters well. Our own three most
famous epistolers of the male sex, Horace Walpole, Gray and
Cowper--belong wholly to it; and "Lady Mary"--our most famous
she-ditto--belongs to it by all but her childhood; as does Chesterfield,
whom some not bad judges would put not far if at all below the three men
just mentioned. The rise of the novel in this century is hardly more
remarkable than the way in which that novel almost wedded
itself--certainly joined itself in the most frequent friendship--to the
letter-form. But perhaps the excellence of the choicer examples in this
time is not really more important than the abundance, variety and
popularity of its letters, whether good, indifferent, or bad. To use one
of the informal superlatives sanctioned by familiar custom it was the
"letterwritingest" of ages from almost every point of view. In its least
as in its most dignified moods it even overflowed into verse if not into
poetry as a medium. Serious epistles had--of course on classical
models--been written in verse for a long time. But now in England more
modern patterns, and especially Anstey's _New Bath Guide_, started the
fashion of actual correspondence in doggerel verse with no thought of
print--a practice in which persons as different as Madame d'Arblay's
good-natured but rather foolish father, and a poet and historian like
Southey indulged; and which did not become obsolete till Victorian
times, if then. At the present moment one does not remember an exact
equivalent in England to the story of two good writers in French if not
French writers[8] living in the same house, meeting constantly during
the day, yet exchanging letters, and not short ones, before breakfast.
But very likely there is or was one, and more than one.