BOOKS.
CLASSICAL LETTER-WRITERS.*
Tins is the first instalment of a series of volumes which promises to be a welcome addition to our bookshelves, even where they are already crowded. Few libraries are without the classics included in Mr. Brimley Johnson's series, and few libraries are without selections from the correspondence of those classics, our epistolary anthologies being, indeed, almost as numerous as our poetical. But this series has special features. In the first place, it confines itself to what may be called the golden age of English letter-writing; and in the second place, it confines itself to the acknowledged masters of the art, or at all events to distinguished writers. Its aim is not to select what may be intrinsically interesting or excellent wherever it is to be found, but to give us, as it were, a picture of each of the classics of our epistolary literature. This is accomplished partly by a critical essay, and partly by selections from the letters themselves, so chosen and arranged as to illustrate as comprehensively as possible the characteristics of the author under review. The idea is a happy one. Nothing brings us so near to those who have passed away as their familiar correspondence, and to realise the personality of a great writer is, as Sainte-Beuve has told us, a necessary preliminary to a critical apprecia- tion of his work. But apart from considerations of this kind, there is no portion of our eighteenth - century literature of more intrinsic literary value than that portion which took the form of letters. Pope probably spent as much time in labouring his correspondence as he spent on polishing his poetry. Did the choice lie between the sacrifice of Swift's best pamphlets—nay, of the Talc of a Tub—and his letters, there is not one reader in a thousand who would not declare for the letters. All that is worth preserving in Bolingbroke took this form, and the greater part of what is best in that was addressed to personal friends. Chesterfield and Horace Walpole live only by their private letters, and those letters are as immortal as the novels of Fielding or as the history of Gibbon. In all that constitutes charm in such compositions—in grace, in vivacity, in purity of style—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu need fear no comparison with the most accomplished of her contemporaries in France. The loss of Gray's letters would be only less deplorable than that of his poetry. Johnson's correspondence is, from every point of view, of far greater value than his essays. What would be the loss of "The Task," and of very much of Cowper's poetry, compared with that of those letters which Macaulay placed beside Byron's as the best in our language?
We therefore wish well to Mr. Brimley Johnson's project ; but we cannot altogethercongratulate him on the judgment dis- played in his prospectus. The omission of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Gray is surely inexplicable. The inclusion of Addison is, no doubt, to be justified on historical grounds; but Addison apparently reserved himself for his essays, as nothing could be tamer or more devoid of any touch of dis- tinction than his letters. In any case, the best only should have been given, and among the best are undoubtedly the three addressed respectively to Chamberlaine Dashwood, Charles Montagu, from Blois, and Bishop Hough, which should have been substituted for the very pointless scribbles to Swift and to Mary Wortley Montagu. We think also that far too much space is assigned to Steele, and far too little to Boling- broke. With the selections from Swift we have no fault to find, as they illustrate very fairly his various sides and moods ; but his beautiful letter to Mrs. Moore, on the death of her daughter, ought certainly to have had a place. Mr. Lane Poole's introduction is all that such an introduction should be ; it is discriminating and to the point, the result evidently of a singularly extensive and minute knowledge of Swift's career and writings. His remarks on Swift as a letter-writer are so excellent that we cannot refrain from quoting them :—
" Apart from the light they throw on the writer's character, • Eighteenth Centurg Letters. Edited by E. Brimley Johnson. (With an Introduction by Stanley Lane Poole. London: A. D. Lines and Co. they are delightful examples of their kind. They possess the greatest charm letters can have, perfect sincerity and frankness : Swift writes as though he were talking face to face with his friends. But they have also the vigour, the terse directness, the finish of thought and expression, which were integral parts of Swift's composition, whether it were were correspondence or 21. classic like Gulliver. There is no one style in them ; they vary with the mood of the writer and the character of the cor- respondent. Writing to Bolingbroke he uses a dignified, almost formal, language polished to a brilliance which re- calls the political essay. The letters to his old chief Harley are the embodiment of affectionate regard, deferential without a trace of servility. To Pope he opens his mind freely, as equal to equal, with perfeet unaffected frankness. With Gay 110 is less open and a trifle patronising, but full of genial humour. Fun gets the upper hand when he writes to his Irish crony, unlucky Tom Sheridan, and pours out nonsense verses, or banters him on the shortcomings of his topsy-turvy household at Quilea. One feels in each case that he is writing just as he would have spoken, and his manner changes precisely as his conversa- tion adapted itself to his hearer."
It is curious to notice how slowly and how late the art of letter - writing developed and found expression in our
literature. Poetry and rhetoric had been carried to per- fection while this accomplishment was still in its infancy.
From the time of the Raton Letters to the appearance of
the " Ho-Eliante " in 1645, a period marked by such masters of prose composition, and of prose in so many styles, as Tyndale, Cranmer, Latimer, Sidney, Lyly, Hooker, Bacon,
Hobbes, Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor, there was not one who had discovered the secret of success in letter-writing. Ben Jonson laid down some excellent roles, but nearly half a century was to find the style of the familiar letter undistinguished from that of the essay and the treatise. The man who came nearest to being the father of epistolary literature was the man who was the father of modern Parliamentary oratory,—Edmund Waller. That honour belongs, however, to James Howell, not only because he was the first to discover the true canons of familiar epistolary composition, but because he was the first to claim for such compositions a place in literature. We should write, he said, as we converse, not as we preach and explain ; we should express our mind with the pen as naturally and easily as we do with the tongue, but with succinctness, happiness, and grace. The spoken word flies forth unstudied, but the written word may be carefully chosen. Howell was not always faithful to his own excellent precepts, but as a general rule his letters, and particularly the later ones, are as racy and lively as they are nervous and picturesque. The old letter, however, died hard. Rachel, Lady Russell's letters, popular as they have been, are in style uncouth and cumbrous ; so are those of the Duchess of Newcastle, so are Clarendon's, so are Cromwell's, so are Marvell's, Milton's,
Isaac Walton's, Algernon Sydney's ; so, without exception, are those of the theologians. Even Evelyn and Pepys, though they succeed so well in the diary, failed in the letter. Temple's are all dignity and elegance, Sir Thomas Browne's mere commonplace. Hobbes's and Locke's have no distinction.
The destruction of Cowley's is much to be regretted, for, judging from his essays, his style as a letter-writer must have been perfection. The correspondence of Dryden consists, un- fortunately, of little more than hurried scrawls, but his prefaces and dedications show what an incomparable master of this species of composition he might have been had he applied himself to it.
From the beginning of the eighteenth century the process towards perfection in this branch of literature was rapid. Writers like Cowley, Dryden, and Temple, on the one hand, and writers like L'Eetrange, Roger North, D'Urfey, and Tom Browne, on the other hand, had impressed a new character on our prose. It had become plastic and flexible, it had learned to combine grace with dignity, it had fully developed the colloquial as well as the rhetorical element, and had mastered the art of blending both. This revolution had been greatly aided by the influence of French prose on our own, and by the study of the letters of Cicero and the younger Pliny, which became about this time very popular, and were deliberately imitated. So arose the " classical " letter, at its best one of the most attrac- tive and delightful forms which prose composition can assume, at its worst the most insufferable fashion of writing which has ever existed. By the middle of the century letter- writing had taken its place beside essay-writing as a recog- nised branch of literature. It may be questioned whether there was any writer in fashionable literary circles who did not contemplate at least the posthumous publication of his correspondence; correspondence ; in fact, a detestable habit of writing not so mach to the person addressed as to posterity began sometimes to be affected. It is this which interferes so much with our enjoyment of Pope's letters, and in some degree of Boling- broke's, the insincerity and affectation of which are often so painfully apparent ; by that absurd person, Miss Seward, this particular form of affectation was carried to a grotesque extreme, and with her it happily died out.
At the head of the classics of English letter-writing are undoubtedly Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Bolingbroke, Swift, Horace Walpole, Chesterfield, Gray, "Junius," Cowper, and Byron. They are typical of whole schools ; each is a type of peculiar forms of excellence, and each has more than one respectable second. With this in common, that they have consummate mastery over style, over the art of appropriate and felicitous expression, they may perhaps be thus discrimi- nated. In Lady Mary Wortley Montagu we have our Madame de Sevign6. If in Bolingbroke the senatorius decor is at times a little oppressive, he has no rival in his happy adaptation of the grand style to colloquial purposes ; he is the rhetorician of letter-writing. Swift is the perfection of naturalness. Horace Walpole the perfection of affectation. Chesterfield is a prose Horace. Gray is the quintessence of all that is best and finest in the academic temper and genius. "Junius" stands alone, not in our own literature only, but in the literature of the world, as the master and model of what Howell calls "the objurgatory epistle." In the hands of Cowper and Byron the letter became a mirror, reflecting with impartial fidelity all that was serious and memorable, all that was trifling and frivolous, in the temper, experiences, surroundings, of the writers. And both had the power of investing nothings with interest and charm, which is after all the chief triumph of the letter.
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