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.

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 naÏf, 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.

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."

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 À 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 MÉrimÉe) 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.

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]

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.