_Mar_. 4.
MY DEAR, AUDACIOUS MOORE,--Many thanks for the "Confessions" which I
have read with great interest, and admiration for your
originality--your delightful criticisms--your Aristophanic joy, or at
least enjoyment, in life--your unfailing liveliness. Of course, there
are many things in the book I don't agree with. But then, in the case
of so satiric a book, I suppose one is hardly expected to agree or
disagree. What I cannot doubt is the literary faculty displayed.
"Thou com'st in such a questionable shape!" I feel inclined to say on
finishing your book; "shape" morally, I mean; not in reference to
style.
You speak of my own work very pleasantly; but my enjoyment has been
independent of that. And still I wonder how much you may be losing,
both for yourself and for your writings, by what, in spite of its
gaiety and good-nature and genuine sense of the beauty of many
things, I must still call a cynical, and therefore exclusive, way of
looking at the world. You call it only "realistic." Still!
With sincere wishes for the future success of your most entertaining
pen.--Very sincerely yours,