XXII.

LETTERS.

NEXT to the essay, the letter is the most agreeable form of the minor literature. It is the most familiar species of writing, and approaches the nearest to ordinary converation. Letters are the opuscula of great authors, but they form the opera of lesser writers. We weekly critics and magazinists may be proud of a volume of clever epistles, fearful of essaying a higher flight. Authors of the first class, and with the highest pretensions, affect to look down upon letters as the mere entertainment of a scholar; and hence, from want of sympathy, no less than from want of nicety of apprehension and subtle delicacy of taste, have almost uniformly failed in this department of composition. A professed orator, a great divine, poet or philosopher, cannot easily descend from the heights of speculation and eloquence and imagination, to the plain ground of commonplace reality. Raillery is the most delightful talent in epistolary composition (a delicate talent); and next to that, refined sentiment. These are minute excellences, however agreeable, in the great character, and the incidental ornaments of a strong intellect. Women uniformly write the best letters, both of the narrative kind and lively description. Lady Montague and Madame D'Arblay are yet unsurpassed. The female intellect is allowed to possess a finer tact and a minuter (instinctive) observation of things and characters, than the manly understanding. It is better pleased with the details of a subject, and paints the manners with a lighter hand. Boarding school girls, and young ladies, who have just "come out," are readier with their pens in recounting family history, and current fashion

able news; in giving a relation of the incidents at a ball or dinner-party, at sketching portraits of the beaux and their admirers; and, in a word, at all the arts of gossiping and scandal, than boys or young men, much older. Richardson has shown this very conclusively in his novels. His letters are the very counterparts of those of young ladies in the same situation, and such as they would naturally write.

Letters are valuable for many reasons. As a test of character, and affording an unconscious autobiography-as materials for literary and political history-as pictures of the times-as the repositories of individual opinions and peculiar sentiments. As a test of character, letters are worth much more than the more ordinary (supposed) keys to that sort of knowledge. A man's autograph may be very far from characteristic. I know a generous man, who writes a mean, cramped scrawl, and an undecided one, whose chirography is firm and regular. Physiognomy may belie the brightness of the head and the goodness of the heart. Phrenology may regard as an indifferent specimen the casket that contains a golden brain. But a number of confidential letters addressed to familiar friends, and written in all the warmth of confidence, afford the fairest means of getting at the real character of the writer. Yet insincerity may occur here. Letters are often written for the public eye, though on the most confidential subjects. Pope and Walpole wrote for posterity. They wrote at, rather than to, their correspondents. So, also, of the French wits. We confine ourselves entirely to English authors, however, in the present paper. Some authors have told their history in letters, as Howell, Gray, Cowper, Burns, and Lamb,-dwelling on petty occurrences and comparatively slight traits, with an unction and gusto that would not be allowed in a formal biography. Of the historical value of

letters, no complete student can doubt, and none but he can appreciate it adequately.

English literature is rich in letters from Howell to Lamb. Intermediately, we have Pope and his friends, Cowper, Burns, Gray, Walpole, Lady Montague; a sufficient variety, surely, both of talent and character. We had intended to have drawn up a classification of, and criticism upon, the different sorts of letters, but find the whole matter so handsomely handled in the very first letter of Howell, (Epistolæ-Hoelianæ.) that we insert it instead: "It was a quaint difference the ancients did put betwixt a letter and an oration; that the one should be attired like a woman, the other like a man. The latter of the two is allowed large siderobes, as long periods, parentheses, similes, examples, and other parts of rhetorical flourishes: but a letter or epistle should be shortcoated and closely couched; a hungerskin becomes a letter more handsomely than a gown. Indeed we should write as we speak, and that is a true and familiar letter which expresseth one's mind, as if he were discoursing with the party to whom he writes in succinct and short terms. The tongue and the pen are both of them interpreters of the mind; but I hold the pen to be the more faithful of the two. The tongue in udo posita, being seated in a most slippery place, may fail and falter in her sudden extemporal expressions, but the pen, having a greater advantage of premeditation, is not so subject to error, and leaves things behind it upon firm and authentic record. Now letters (here comes the division), though they be capable of any subject, yet commonly they are either narratory, objurgatory, consolatory, monitory, or congratulatory. The first consists of relations, the second of reprehensions, the third of comfort, the two last of counsel and joy." Then follows some very just and severe criticism:

"There are some who, in lieu of letters, write homilies; they preach when they should epistolize (and it is easier to do the former than the latter); there are others that turn them to tedious tractates." Howell, himself, the earliest of our letter writers, is a capital fellow in his way; but he has not mentioned all the varieties of letters. There are the precise letters of business, and the ardent love letters; to a third and disinterested person, both of these are not only indifferent, but even tiresome. The purely literary letter is not mentioned, i. e., that in which topics of literature and the characters of authors are discussed; mere letters of compliment, or formal civility, are not recognised, nor lively, gay epistles, that turn upon nothing.

Some persons keep no letters by them. Hazlitt destroyed all he received: a very poor compliment, we think, to a clever correspondent, to say nothing of the letters of a valued friend. Others hoard up every scrap of a note; this is as wrong in a different way. Many indifferent communications are received, but the choice correspondence is of another character. Shenstone speaks somewhere of the melancholy pleasure he took of a rainy day when his spirits were low, in reading over the old letters of a dear friend.

This retrospective pleasure is truly a melancholy one. Turning over the precious file, we encounter the affectionate protestations of one who has cruelly deceived us, of the generous praises of a now bitter enemy. We read the prophecies of those who early loved and appreciated us, and who can now confirm their past predictions. Time returns anew; the present is merged in the past, and scenes long gone by revive to memory's view! Ah! could we but recall those feelings to which we received such a sympathetic reponse, those "hopes and fears, an undistinguishable throng;" could

but the veil of years be removed, and youth and hope and innocence be revealed, then indeed might an Arcadian age commence, and the whole world look green and happy. It is well and profitable to the observer of human nature, and the self-student, to re-peruse his collection of letters, and if he can procure them, to study his own. Viewed in connection with passing events, they form an unbroken narrative, and manifest the progress of tastes and sympathies, improvement in virtue, and accessions of knowledge. The didactic letters, the letters of business, of contention, of mere scandal, may be safely burned; but the memorials of affection, the evidences of friendship, are not to be lightly treated, but, dear as the apple of the eye, to be held among the richest treasures of the author, the thinker, and the man.

XXIII.

POPE AND HIS FRIENDS.

THE character and habits of mind of the poet, par excellence "of Anna's reign," are vividly depicted in his correspondence. Writing to his nearest friends, and on the most solemn themes, Pope never forgot his authorship. His fame was too much in his eye, and the opinion of the public, in his mind. His characteristic refinement, delicacy of judgment, his nicety of expression and neat turns of style, appear on every page. The virtues of the man, too, admirable and as real as the merits of the wit, satirist, and moral-painter, in spite of his