Part 2 (2/2)

But the bulk of interesting matter is still very large and the quality of the presentation is excellent. If anyone fears to plunge into some dozen volumes let him look at the ”Cats” and the ”Statues” of Greta Hall, printed at the end of the _Doctor_, but both in form and nature letters. He will not hesitate much longer, if he knows good letter-stuff when he sees it.[25]

[Sidenote: LANDOR]

Most of the second group wrote letters worth reading, but only one of them reaches the first rank in the art; it is true that he is among the first _of_ the first. The letters of Landor supply not the least part of that curious problem which is presented by his whole work. They naturally give less room than the _apices_ of his regular prose and of his poetry for that marvellous perfection of style and phrase which is allowed even by those who complain of a want of substance in him. And another complaint of his ”aloofness” affects them in two ways rather damagingly. When it is present it cuts at the root of one of the chief interests of letters, which is intimacy. When it is absent, and Landor presents himself in his well-known character of an angry baby (as for instance when he remarked of the Bishop who did not do something he wanted, that ”G.o.d alone is great enough for him [Walter Savage Landor]

to ask anything of _twice_”) he becomes merely--or perhaps to very amiable folk rather painfully--ridiculous. De Quincey and Hazlitt diverted a good deal of what might have been utilised as mere letter-writing faculty into their very miscellaneous work for publication. Moore could write very good letters himself: but is perhaps most noted and notable in connection with the subject as being one of the earliest and best ”Life-and-Letters” craftsmen in regard to Byron.

But none of these restrictions or provisos is requisite, or could for a moment be thought of, in reference to Charles Lamb. Of him, as of hardly any other writer of great excellence (perhaps Thackeray is most like him in this way) it can be said that if we had nothing but his letters we should almost be able to detect the qualities which he shows in his regular works. Some of the _Essays of Elia_ and his other miscellanies are or pretend to be actual letters. Certainly not a few of his letters would seem not at all strange and by no means unable to hold up their heads, if they had appeared as Essays of that singularly fortunate Italian who had his name taken, _not_ in vain but in order to be t.i.tular author of some of the choicest things in literature.

Indeed that unique combination of bookishness and native fancy which makes the ”Eliesque” quality is obviously as well suited to the letter as to the essay, and would require but a stroke or two of the pen, in addition or deletion, to produce examples of either. One often feels as if it must have been, as the saying goes, a toss-up whether the _London Magazine_ or some personal friend got a particular composition; whether it was issued to the public direct or waited for Serjeant Talfourd to collect and edit it. The two English writers whom, on very different sides of course, Lamb most resembles, and whom he may be said to have copied (of course as genius copies) most, are Sterne and Sir Thomas Browne. But between the actual letters and the actual works of these two, themselves, there is a great difference, while (as has just been noted) in Lamb's case there is none. The reason of course is that though Sir Thomas is one of our very greatest authors and the Reverend Yorick not by any means unplaced in the running for greatness, both are in the highest degree artificial: while Lamb's way of writing, complex as it is, necessitating as it must have done not a little reading and (as would seem almost necessary) not a little practice, seems to run as naturally as a child's babble. The very tricks--mechanical dots, dashes, aposiopeses--which offend us now and then in Sterne; the unfamiliar Latinisms which frighten some and disgust others in Browne, drop from Lamb's lips or pen like the pearls of the Fairy story. Unless you are born out of sympathy with Elia, you never think about them as tricks at all. Now this naturalness--it can hardly be said too often here--is the one thing needful in letters. The different forms of it may be as various and as far apart from each other as those of the other Nature in flora or fauna, on mountain and sea, in field and town. But if it is there, all is right.

[Sidenote: BYRON]

There are few more interesting groups in the population of our subject than that formed by the three poets whom we mentioned last when cla.s.sifying the epistolers of the early nineteenth century. There is hardly one of them who has not been ranked by some far from contemptible judgments among our greatest as poets; and merely as letter-writers they have been put correspondingly high by others or the same. It is rather curious that the most contested as to his place as a poet has been, as a rule, allowed it most easily as a letter-writer. The enormous vogue which Byron's verse at once attained both at home and abroad--has at home if not abroad (where reputations of poets often depend upon extra-poetical causes) long ceased to be undisputed: indeed has chiefly been sustained by spasmodic and not too successful exertions of individuals. It was never, of course, paralleled in regard to his letters. But these letters early obtained high repute and have never, in the general estimate, lost it. Some good judges even among those who do not care very much for the poems, have gone so far as to put him among our very best epistolers; and few have put him very much lower.

Acceptance of the former estimate certainly--perhaps even of the latter--depends however upon the extent to which people can also accept recognition in Byron of the qualities of ”Sincerity and Strength.” That he was always a great though often a careless craftsman, and sometimes a great artist in literature, n.o.body possessed of the slightest critical ability can deny or doubt. But there are some who shake their heads over the attribution of anything like ”sincerity” to him, except very occasionally: and who if they had to translate his ”strength” into Greek would select the word _Bia_ (”violence”) and not the word _Kratos_ (simple ”strength”) from the _dramatis personae_ of the _Prometheus Vinctus_. Now ”sincerity” of a kind--even of that kind which we found in Walpole and did not find in Pope--has been contended for here as a necessity in the best, if not in all good, letters; and ”violence” is almost fatal to them. Of a certain kind of letter Byron was no doubt a skilful pract.i.tioner.[26] But to some it will or may always seem that the vital principle of his correspondence is to that of the real ”Best”

as stage life to life off the stage. These two can sometimes approach each other marvellously: but they are never the same thing.

[Sidenote: Sh.e.l.lEY]

When Mr. Matthew Arnold expressed the opinion that Sh.e.l.ley's letters were more valuable than his poetry it was, of course, as Lamb said of Coleridge ”only his fun.” In the words of another cla.s.sic, he ”did it to annoy, because he knew it teased” some people. The absurdity is perhaps best antagonised by the perfectly true remark that it only shows that Mr. Arnold understood the letters and did not understand the poetry. But it was a little unfortunate, not for the poetry but for the letters, against which it might create a prejudice. They are so good that they ought not to have been made victims of what in another person the same judge would have called, and rightly, a _saugrenu_[27] judgment. Like all good letters--perhaps all without exception according to Demetrius and Newman--they carry with them much of their author's idiosyncrasy, but in a fas.h.i.+on which should help to correct certain misjudgments of that idiosyncrasy itself. Sh.e.l.ley _is_ ”unearthly,” but it is an entire mistake to suppose that his unearthliness can never become earthly to such an extent as is required. The beginning of _The Recollection_ (”We wandered to the pine forest”) is as vivid a picture of actual scenery as ever appeared on the walls of any Academy: and _The Witch of Atlas_ itself, not to mention the portrait-frescoes in _Adonais_, is quite a _waking_ dream. The quality of liveness is naturally still more prominent in the letters, because poetical transcendence of fact is not there required to accompany it. But it _does_ accompany now and then; and the result is a blend or brand of letter-writing almost as unlike anything else as the writer's poetry, and in its own (doubtless lower) kind hardly less perfect. To prefer the letters to the poems is merely foolish, and to say that they are as good as the poems is perhaps excessive. But they comment and complete the Sh.e.l.ley of the Poems themselves in a manner for which we cannot be too thankful.

[Sidenote: KEATS]

The letters of Keats did not attract much notice till long after those of Byron, and no short time after those of Sh.e.l.ley, had secured it. This was by no means wholly, though it may have been to some extent indirectly, due to the partly stupid and partly malevolent attempts to smother his poetical reputation in its cradle. The letters were inaccessible till the late Lord Houghton practically resuscitated Keats; and till other persons--rather in the ”Codlin not Short” manner--rushed in to correct and supplement Mr. Milnes as he then was. And it was even much later still before two very different editors, Sir Sidney Colvin and the late Mr. Buxton Forman, completed, or nearly so, the publication. Something must be said and may be touched on later in connection with a very important division of our subject in general, as to the publication by the last-named, of the letters to f.a.n.n.y Brawne: but nothing in detail need be written, and it is almost needless to say that none of these letters will appear here. No one but a brute who is also something of a fool will think any the worse of Keats for writing them. A thought of _sunt lacrimae rerum_ is all the price that need be paid by any one who chooses to read them, nor is it our business to characterise at length the taste and wits of the person who could publish them.[28]

But putting this question aside, it is unquestionable that for some years past there has been a tendency to value the Letters as a whole very highly. Not only has unusual critical power been claimed for Keats on the strength of them, but general epistolary merit; and though n.o.body, so far as one knows, has yet paralleled the absurdity above mentioned in the case of Sh.e.l.ley, Keats has been taken by some credit-worthy judges as an unusually strong witness to the truth of the proposition already adopted here, that poets are good letter-writers.

He certainly is no exception to the rule; but to what exact extent he exemplifies it may not be a matter to be settled quite off hand. There is no doubt that at his best Keats is excellent in this way, and that best is perhaps to be found with greatest certainty, by anyone who wants to dip before plunging, in the letters to his brother and sister-in-law, George and Georgiana. Those to his little sister f.a.n.n.y are also charming in their way, though the peculiar and very happy mixture of life and literature to be found in the others does not, of course, occur in them. His letters of description, to whomsoever written, are, as one might expect, first-rate; and the very late specimen--one of his very last to anyone--to _Mrs._ not Miss Brawne is as brave as it is touching. As for the criticism, there are undoubtedly (as again we should expect from the author of the wonderful preface to _Endymion_) invaluable remarks--the inspiration of poetical practice turned into formulas of poetical theory. On the other hand, the famous advice to Sh.e.l.ley to ”be more of an artist and load every rift with ore”--Sh.e.l.ley whose art transcends artistry and whose substance is as the unbroken nugget gold, so that there are no rifts in it to load--is, even when one remembers how often poets misunderstand each other,[29]

rather ”cold water to the back” of admiration.

It may, however, not unfairly introduce a very few considerations on the side of Keats's letters which is not so good. All but idolaters acknowledge a certain boyishness in him--a boyishness which is in fact no mean source contributary of his charm in verse. It is perhaps not always quite so charming in prose, and especially in letters. You do not want self-criticism of an obviously second-thought kind in them. But you do want that less obtrusive variety which prevents them from appearing unkempt, ”down-at-heel” etc. Perhaps there is, at any rate in the earlier letters, something of this unkemptness in Keats as an epistoler.

A hasty person may say ”What! do you venture to quarrel with letters where, side by side with agreeable miscellaneous details, you may suddenly come upon the original and virgin text of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'?” Most certainly not. Such a find, or one ten times less precious, would make one put up with accompaniments much more than ten times worse than the worst of Keats's letters. But it may be observed that the objection is only a fresh example of the unfortunate tendency[30] of mankind to ”ignore elenchs” as the logicians say, or, as less pedantic phraseology has it, to talk beside the question. A man might put a thousand pound note (and you might spend many thousand pound notes without buying anything like the poem just mentioned) in a coa.r.s.e, vulgar, trivial or in other ways objectionable letter. The note would be most welcome in itself, but it would not improve the quality of its covering epistle. Not, of course, that Keats's letters are coa.r.s.e or vulgar, though they are sometimes rather trivial. But the point is that their excellency, _as_ letters, does not depend on their enclosures (as we may call them) or even directly on their importance as biography which is certainly consummate. Are they good letters as such, and of how much goodness? Have they been presented as letters should be presented for reading? These are points on which, considering the t.i.tle and range of this Introduction, it may not be improper to offer a few observations. We have already ventured to suggest that, if not the ”be all and end all,” at any rate the quality to be first enquired into as to its presence or its absence in letters, is ”naturalness.” And we have said something as to the propriety or impropriety of different modes of editing and publis.h.i.+ng them. The present division of the subject seems to afford a specially good text for adding something more on both these matters.

As to the first point, the text is specially good because of the position of Keats in the most remarkable group in which we have rather found than placed him. To the present writer, as a reader, it seems, as has been already said whether justly or unjustly, that the element of ”naturalness”--it is an ugly word, and French has no better, in fact none at all: though German is a little luckier with _naturlichkeit_ and Spanish much with _naturaleza_--is rather conspicuously deficient in Byron. In Sh.e.l.ley it is pre-eminent, and can only be missed by those who have no kindred touch of the nature which it reflects. Sh.e.l.ley could be vague, unpractical, mystical; he could sometimes be just a little silly; but it was no more possible for him to be affected, or to make those slips of taste which are a sort of _minus_ corresponding to the _plus_ of affectation, than it was (after _Queen Mab_ at least) to write anything that was not poetry. Thus in addition to the literary perfection of his letters, they have the _sine qua non_ of naturalness in perfection also.

But with Keats things are different. Opinions differ as to whether he ever quite reached maturity even in poetry to the extent into which Sh.e.l.ley struck straight with _Alastor_, never losing it afterwards, and leaving us only to wonder what conceivable accomplishment might have even transcended _Adonais_ and its successors. That with all his marvellous promise and hardly less marvellous achievement, Keats was only reaching maturity when he died has been generally allowed by the saner judgments.[31] Now _im_maturity has perhaps its own naturalness which is sometimes, and in a way, very charming, but is not the naturalness pure and simple of maturity. Children are sometimes, nay often, very pretty, agreeable and amusing things: but there comes a time when we rather wish they would go to the nursery. Perhaps the ”sometimes” occurs with Keats's earlier letters if not with his later.

[Sidenote: EDITING OF LETTERS]

He is thus also a text for the second part of our sermon--the duty of editors and publishers of correspondence. There is much to be said for the view that publication, as it has been put, ”is an unpardonable sin,”

that is to say, that no author (or rather no author's ghost) can justly complain if what he once deliberately published is, when all but the control of the dead hand is off, republished. _Il l'a voulu_, as the famous tag from Moliere has it. But letters in the stricter sense--that is to say, pieces of private correspondence--are in very different case.

Not only were they, save in very few instances, never _meant_ for publication: but, which is of even more importance, they were never _prepared_ for publication.[32] Not only, again, did the writer never see them in ”proof,” much less in ”revise,” as the technical terms go, but he never, so far as we know, exercised on them even the revision which all but the most careless authors give before sending their ma.n.u.scripts to the printer. Some people of course do read over their letters before sending them: but it must be very rarely and in special, not to say dubious, cases that they do this with a view to the thing being seen by any other eyes than those of the intended recipient. It is therefore to the last degree unfair to plump letters on the market unselected and uncastigated. To what length the castigation should proceed is of course matter for individual taste and judgment. Nothing must be put in--that is clear; but as to what may or should be left out, ”there's the rub.” Perhaps the best criterion, though it may be admitted to be not very easy of application, is ”Would the author, in publis.h.i.+ng, have left it out or not?” Sometimes this will pa.s.s very violent expressions of opinion and even sentiments of doubtful morality and wisdom. But that it should invariably exclude mere trivialities, faults of taste, slovenlinesses of expression, etc., is at least the opinion of the present writer. And a ”safety razor” of such things might perhaps with advantage have been used on Keats's, though he has written nothing which is in the least discreditable to him.

V

NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS. LATER

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