A few more general remarks may close this Introduction. Something on the Art of Letter-writing and also something on its history, especially in English, was promised. It is hoped that the promise has not been too much falsified, at least to the extent necessary for illustration and understanding of the specimens which should follow, and which in their turn should illustrate it and make it more intelligible. The History part requires little or no postscript; whether ill or well done it should pretty well speak for itself. What touches the Art may require certain cautions and provisos.

This is especially the case with regard to the stress laid above on "naturalness." It is (as the present writer at least believes) the very passport of admission to the company of good letter-writers. But it must not be misconstrued. It is quite possible that too little care may be taken with the matter and style of letters. After all they correspond—in a certain, if in the most limited degree—to appearance "in company," and require as that does a certain etiquette of observance. Complete deshabille[57] on paper is not attractive: and there are letters (it is unnecessary to specify any particular examples) which somewhat exaggerate "simplicity."

Cowper is perhaps the accepted classic in this style who has the least of apparatus: but even Cowper bestows a certain amount of care—indeed, a very considerable amount—on the dress of his letter's body, on the cookery of its provender. If you have only small beer to chronicle you can at the worst draw it and froth it and pour it out with some gesture. In this respect as in others, while letter-writing has not been inaccurately defined or described as the closest to conversation of literary forms that do not actually reproduce conversation itself, it remains apart from conversation and subject to an additional degree of discipline.

Enough should have been said earlier of the opposite fault by excess of dressing, which has, however, for a sort of solace the fact that it may pass as literature though not exactly as letter-writing. Actually beautiful style—not machine-made "fine writing," but that embodiment of thought which is a special incarnation of it—is the one thing secure of success and survival, whatever literary form it takes. And even short of this supreme beauty accomplished literary manner can never be quite unwelcome. The highest place in letter-writing has been refused here to Pope: and unfortunately there is hardly a division of his work which, when you know a little more about it and him, excites more disgust at the man's nature. But, at the same time, hardly even his verse convinces one more of that extraordinary power of expression as he wished to express things which this Alexander, in some ways the infinitely Little, possessed. Yet it gives in the first place a rather sophisticated enjoyment, open only to those whom the gods have made, or who have made themselves, critical. And in the second, whether sophisticated or not, what it gives is the enjoyment of literature not of life:[58] whereas the direct satisfaction which genuine letters afford is almost identical with that given by actual intercourse with other human beings. However, it is unnecessary to "go on refining."

Perhaps indeed, after all, the artificial letters may be permitted if only in an "utmost, last, provincial band," to add to the muster of pleasure-giving things which epistolary literature so amply provides. Even fiction itself, which, as has been said often, draws on this source, cannot supply anything more "pastimeous"; even drama anything more arresting to the attention. Indeed good letters may be said to be constantly presenting little stories, little dramas, little pictures—all of them sometimes not so very little—which are now practically complete; now easily filled up by any reasonable intelligence; now perhaps tantalizingly, but all the more interestingly enigmatic. For those people (one may or may not sympathise with them, but they are certainly pretty numerous) who cannot take interest or can only take a reduced interest in things that "did not really happen"; letters may be even more interesting than novels. Only to very wayward or very unimaginative ones can they be less so, if they are in any respect good of their kind.

One of their main attractions is, with the same caution, their remarkable variety. It has been complained with a certain amount of truth that fiction, whether in prose or verse, is a little apt to fall into grooves: that all the histories are told, all the plays acted. This is undoubtedly the curse of Art, and every now and then we see it acknowledged in the most convincing manner by the frantic efforts made to be "different." But that real things and persons are never quite identical is not merely a philosophical doctrine but a practical fact. The "two peas" of one saying are never so much "alike" as the "two blades of grass" of another are unlike.

Now as letters—that is to say letters that deserve to exist at all—are bound to reproduce the personality of their writers, it will follow that a refreshing diversity must also belong to them. And as a matter of fact this will be found to be the case. Even the eighteenth century—the century of rule and class, of objection to "the streaks of the tulip," of machine-made verse, etc.,—has, except in the case of letters artificially made to pattern, shown this signally.

One last recommendation. A bad letter-writer is sure to betray himself almost everywhere, and letters are as a rule short. Most people must have attempted books of other classes, especially novels, and hoping against hope turned them over, and dipped and peeped till repeated disappointment compelled the traditional flinging to the other end of the room, or simply dropping the thing in less explosive weariness. You never need do that with letters. If a man's letters are not worth reading you will "have a confessing criminal" at once; if they are he will hardly be able to keep the quality latent whenever he goes beyond the shortest business note. The man of one book, in the sense of having read it, is proverbially formidable but in fact too frequently a bore. The man of one letter, in the sense of having written a good one and no more, probably never existed.[59]