These Letters were originally published in the _Independent_ of New York.
The idea of writing them occurred to the author after he had produced
"Letters to Dead Authors." That kind of Epistle was open to the
objection that nobody _would_ write so frankly to a correspondent about
his own work, and yet it seemed that the form of Letters might be
attempted again. The _Lettres a Emilie sur la Mythologie_ are a well-
known model, but Emilie was not an imaginary correspondent. The persons
addressed here, on the other hand, are all people of fancy--the name of
Lady Violet Lebas is an invention of Mr. Thackeray's: gifted Hopkins is
the minor poet in Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's "Guardian Angel." The
author's object has been to discuss a few literary topics with more
freedom and personal bias than might be permitted in a graver kind of
essay. The Letter on Samuel Richardson is by a lady more frequently the
author's critic than his collaborator.