evident enough in almost all, a freedom on his part (which from some
things in his character and history we might not altogether have
expected) from a fault than which hardly any is more disagreeable in
letters. This is the manifestation of what is called, in various more or
less familiar terms, "giving oneself airs," "side," "patronising," etc.
He may sometimes come near this pitfall of "intellectuals," but he never
quite slips into it, being probably preserved by that sense of humour
which he certainly possessed, though he seldom gave vent to it in verse
and not very often in prose. Taking them altogether, Gray's letters may
be said to have few superiors in the combination of intellectual weight
and force with "pastime" interest. To some of course they may be chiefly
or additionally interesting because of such light as they throw or
withhold on a rather problematic character, but this, like the allegory
in Spenser according to Hazlitt, "won't bite" anyone who lets it alone.
They are extremely good letters to read: and the more points of interest
they provide for any reader the better for that reader himself. Once
more too, they illustrate the principle laid down at the beginning of
this paper. They are good letters because they are, with the usual
subtle difference necessary, like very good talk, recorded.[21]
[Sidenote: COWPER]
Nor is there any more doubt about the qualifications of the fifth of our
selected eighteenth-century letter-writers. Cowper's poetry has gone
through not very strongly marked but rather curious variations of
critical estimate. Like all transition writers he was a little too much
in front of the prevailing taste of his own time, and a little too much
behind that of the time immediately succeeding. There may have been a
very brief period, before the great romantic poets of the early
nineteenth century became known, when he "drove" young persons like
Marianne Dashwood "wild": but Marianne Dashwoods and their periods
succeed and do not resemble each other.[22] He had probably less hold on
this time--when he had the best chance of popularity--than Crabbe, one
of his own group, while he was destitute of the extraordinary
appeals--which might be altogether unrecognised for a time but when felt
are unmistakable--of the other two, Burns and Blake, of the poets of the
seventeen-eighties. His religiosity was a doubtful "asset" as people say
nowadays: and even his pathetic personal history had its awkward side.
But as to his letters there has hardly at any time, since they became
known, existed a difference of opinion among competent judges. There may
be some unfortunates for whom they are too "mild": but we hardly reckon
as arbiters of taste the people for whom even brandy is too mild unless
you empty the cayenne cruet into it. Moreover the "tea-pot pieties" (as
a poet-critic who ought to have known better once scornfully called
them) make no importunate appearance in the bulk of the correspondence:
while as regards the madness this supplies one of the most puzzling and
perhaps not the least disquieting of "human documents." A reader may
say--by no means in his haste, but after consideration--not merely
"Where is the slightest sign of insanity in these?" but "How on earth
did it happen that the writer of these _ever_ went mad?" even with the
assistance of Newton, and Teedon, and, one has to say, Mrs. Unwin.
For among the characteristics of Cowper's letters at their frequent and
pretty voluminous best, are some that seem not merely inconsistent with
insanity, but likely to be positive antidotes to and preservatives from
it. There is a quiet humour--not of the fantastic kind which, as in
Charles Lamb, forces us to admit the possibility of near alliance to
_over_-balance of mind--but _counter_-balancing, antiseptic, _salt_.
There is abundant if not exactly omnipresent common-sense; excellent
manners; an almost total absence in that part of the letters which we
are now considering of selfishness, and a total absence of
ill-nature.[23] It is no business of ours here to embark on the problem,
"What was the dram of eale" that ruined all this and more "noble
substance" in Cowper? though there is not much doubt about the agency
and little about the principal agents that effected the mischief. But it
is quite relevant to point out that all the good things noticed are
things distinctly and definitely good for letter-writing. And sometimes
one cannot help regretfully wondering whether, if he--who dealt so
admirably with such interests as were open to him--had had more and
wider ones to deal with, _we_ should not have had still more varied and
still more delightful letters, and _he_ would have escaped the terrible
fate that fell on him. For although Cowper was the reverse of selfish
in the ordinary sense, he was intensely self-centred, and his life gave
too much opportunity for that excessive self-concentration which is the
very hotbed of mental disease.
It is not a little surprising from this point of view, and it perhaps
shows how imperative the letter-writing faculty is when it is
possessed--that Cowper's letters are as good as they are: while that
point of view also helps us to understand why they are sometimes not so
good.
Of all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind,
as he himself very happily sums up the subjects of letter-writing, there
are few in his case which are of more unequal value than his criticisms.
Cowper had more than one of the makings of a critic, and a very
important critic. He was, or at any rate had been once, something of a
scholar; he helped to effect and (which is not always or perhaps even
often the case) helped _knowingly_ to effect, one of the most
epoch-making changes in English literature. But for the greater part of
his life he read very little; he had little chance of anything like
literary discussion with his peers; and accordingly his critical remarks
are random, uncoordinated, and mostly a record of what struck him at the
moment in the way of like and dislike, agreement or disagreement.
But then there is nothing that we go for to Cowper as a letter-writer so
little as for things of this kind: and even things of this kind take the
benefit of what Coleridge happily called--and what everybody has since
wisely followed Coleridge in calling--his "divine chit-chat." As with
Walpole--though with that difference of idiosyncrasy which all the best
things have from one another--it does not in the least matter what,
among mundane affairs at least, Cowper was talking about. If his
conversation--and some of the few _habitues_ of Olney say it was--was
anything like his letter-writing, it is no wonder that people sat over
even breakfast for an hour to "satisfy sentiment not appetite" as they
said with that slight touch of priggishness which has been visited upon
them heavily, but which perhaps had more to do with their merits than
more mannerless periods will allow.
And not even Walpole's show to quite the same degree, that extraordinary
power of making anything interesting--of entirely transcending the
subject--which belongs to the letter-writer in probably a greater
measure than to any man-of-letters in the other sense, except the poet.
The matter which these letters have to chronicle is often the very
smallest of small beer. The price, conveyance and condition of the fish
his correspondents buy for him or give him (Cowper was very fond of fish
and lived, before railways, in the heart of the Midlands); one of the
most uneventful of picnics; hares and hair (one of his most
characteristic pieces of quietly ironic humour is a brief descant on
wigs with a suggestion that fashion should decree the cutting off of
people's own legs and the substitution of artificial ones); the height
of chairs and candlesticks--anything will do. He remarks gravely
somewhere, "What nature expressly designed me for, I have never been
able to conjecture; I seem to myself so universally disqualified for the
common and customary occupations and amusements of mankind." Perhaps
poetry--at least poetry of the calibre of "Yardley Oak," and "The
Castaway," of "Boadicea" and the "Royal George" in one division; of
"John Gilpin" in the other, may not be quite properly classed among the
"common and customary occupations of mankind." But letter-writing might
without great impropriety be so classed: and there cannot be the
slightest doubt that Nature intended Cowper for a letter-writer. Whether
he writes "The passages and events of the day as well as of the night
are little better than dreams" or "An almost general cessation of
egg-laying among the hens has made it impossible for Mrs. Unwin to
enterprise a cake" one has (but perhaps a little more vividly) that
agreeable sensation which at one time visited Tennyson's Northern
Farmer. One "thinks he's said what he ought to 'a said" in the exact
manner in which he ought to have said it.
[Sidenote: MINORS]
It is however most important to remember that these Five are only, as it
were, commanding officers of the great Army, representative of the very
numerous constituents, who do the service and enjoy the franchise of
letter-writing in the eighteenth century. There is hardly a writer of
distinction in any other kind whose letters are not noteworthy; and
there are very numerous letter-writers of interest who are scarcely
distinguished in any other way. Perhaps Fielding disappoints us most in
this section by the absence of correspondence, all the more so that the
"Voyage to Lisbon" is practically letter-stuff of the best. From
Smollett also we might have more--especially more like his letter to
Wilkes on the subject of the supposed impressment of Johnson's negro
servant Frank, which we hope to give here. Sterne's character would
certainly be better if his astonishing daughter had suppressed some of
his epistles, but it would be much less distinct, and they are often, if
sometimes discreditably so, amusing if not edifying. The vast mass of
Richardson's correspondence would correspond in another sense to the
volume of his novels. We have letters from Berkeley at the beginning and
others from Gibbon at the end--these last peculiarly valuable, because,
as sometimes but not perhaps very often happens, they do not merely
illustrate but supplement and complete the published work. From ladies,
courtly, domestic, literary and others, we have shelves--and cases--and
almost libraries full; from the lively chat of the Lepels and Bellendens
and Howards of the early Georgian time to those copious and unstudied
but never dull, compositions which Fanny Burney poured forth to "Susan
and Fredy," to Maria Allen and to "Daddy Crisp" and a score of others;
those of the Montagu circle; the documents upon which some have based
aspersion and others defence of Mrs. Thrale; and the prose utterances of
the "Swan of Lichfield," otherwise Miss Seward.[24] There are
Shenstone's letters for samples of one kind and those of the Revd. Mr.
Warner (the supposed original of Thackeray's Parson Sampson) for another
and very different one. Even outside the proper and real "mail-bag"
letter all sorts of writings--travels, pamphlets, philosophical and
theological arguments, almost everything--throw themselves into the
letter form. To come back to that with which we began there is no doubt
that the eighteenth century is the century of the letter with us.
IV
NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS. EARLY
[Sidenote: EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY GROUPS]
There is, however, not the slightest intention of suggesting here that
the art of letter-writing died with the century in which it flourished
so greatly. In the first place, periods of literary art seldom or never
"die" in a moment like a tropical sunset; and, in the second, the notion
that centennial years necessarily divide such periods, as well as the
centuries in which they appear, is an unhistorical delusion. There have
been dates in our history--1400 was one of them--where something of the
kind seems to have happened: but they are very rare. Most ships of
literature at such times are fortunately what is called in actual ships
"clinker-built"--that is to say overlappingly--and except at 1600 this
has never been so much the case as two hundred years later and one
hundred ago. When the eighteenth century closed, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Scott and Southey were men approaching more or less closely, thirty
years of age. Landor, Hazlitt, Lamb and Moore were at least, and some of
them well, past the conventional "coming of age"; De Quincey, Byron and
Shelley were boys and even Keats was more than an infant. In the first
mentioned of these groups there was still very marked eighteenth-century
idiosyncrasy; in the second some; and it was by no means absent from
Byron though hardly present at all in most respects as regards Shelley
and Keats. Certainly in none of the groups, and only in one or two
individuals, is there much if any shortcoming as concerns
letter-writing. Wordsworth indeed makes no figure as a letter-writer,
and nobody who has appreciated his other work would expect him to do so.
The first requisite of the letter-writer is "freedom"--in a rather
peculiar sense of that word, closest to the way in which it has been
employed by some religious sects. Wordsworth could _preach_--nearly
always in a manner deserving respect and sometimes in one commanding
almost infinite admiration; but when the letter-writer begins to preach
he is in danger of the waste-paper basket or the fire. Coleridge's
letters are fairly numerous and sometimes very good: but more than one
of his weaknesses appears in them.
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]