A Letter Book Part 6

[34] At the very moment when this is being written a considerable new body of them is announced for sale.

[35] The word "restraint" may be misunderstood: but it is intended to indicate something of the general difference between "cla.s.sical" ages on the one side and "romantic" or "realist" on the other.

[36] Chesterfield's deafness might, without frivolity, be brought in. It is a hindrance to conversation, but none to letter-writing.

[37] Or at least expression of themselves.

[38] Idly: because he himself expressly and repeatedly disclaims _mere_ "translation."

[39] Dryden, in reference to Shadwell.

[40] "The Great G.o.d Pan" piece ("A Musical Instrument"), one of the last, was perhaps her _very_ best. But he may have been thinking of _Poems before Congress_, which are poor enough.

[41] Lucy, daughter of that curious Quaker banker's clerk Bernard Barton, whose poetry is negligible, but who must have had some strong personal attraction. For he was a favourite correspondent of two of the greatest of contemporary letter-writers, Lamb and FitzGerald, though he constantly misunderstood their letters; he received from Byron--on an occasion likely to provoke one of the "n.o.ble poet's" outbursts of pseudo-aristocratic insolence--a singularly wise and kindly answer; and having as a perfect stranger lectured Sir Robert Peel he was--invited to dinner!

[42] Some have attempted to make a distinction, alleging that there are Franceses who can be called "f.a.n.n.y" and others who can not. But it is doubtful whether this holds. Of two great proficients of "letter-stuff"

in overlapping generations f.a.n.n.y Burney was eminently a "f.a.n.n.y." f.a.n.n.y Kemble, though always called so, was not.

[43] She was the niece of Mrs. Siddons and of John Kemble, generally considered the greatest tragic actor and actress we have had; the daughter of Charles Kemble, a player and manager of long practice and great ability; while she had yet another uncle and any number of more distant relations in the profession.

[44] See Prefatory Note on her letters _infra_, for an ill.u.s.tration of what is said of her here and of Mrs. Carlyle a little further.

[45] Gray may not produce this effect of slight repulsion on everyone: but on the other hand it is pretty generally admitted that the more you read Walpole the more does the prejudice, which Macaulay and others have helped to create against him, crumble and melt.

[46] They grow more and more numerous; a fresh batch having been announced while this Introduction was being written.

[47] I see that Mr. Paul also has made special reference to this letter and no wonder. From the time of its first publication I have regarded it as matchless. But it seems to me that while it is lawful to mention it, it should not have been published and that to republish it here would be at least questionable.

[48] The present writer remembers as a boy reading (he supposes in the newspaper to which it was addressed but is not sure) this very remarkable epistle of Reade's to an editor: "Sir, you have brains of your own and good ones. Do not echo the bray of such a very small a.s.s as the...." There was more, but this was the gist of it. Whether it has ever reappeared he cannot say.

[49] Anthony Trollope did not choose to make his Autobiography a "Life-and-Letters." But he has used the inserted letter very freely and sometimes with great effect in his novels, for instance Mr. Slope's to Eleanor Harding in _Barchester Towers_.

[50] In his Essay mentioned in Preface.

[51] The "Answer to the Introductory Epistle" of _The Monastery_.

[52] This plan was older than the "novel _by_ letters," and had, as noticed above, been largely used in the sixteenth and seventeenth century "heroic" romance.

[53] There is of course a cla.s.s exactly opposite to the love-letter--that of more or less modified hate or at least dislike.

Johnson's epistle to Chesterfield is an example of the dignified form of this; Hazlitt's to Gifford of the undignified. But considering our deserved reputation for humour we are less strong than might be expected in letters which make the supposed writer make _himself_ ridiculous.

Sydney Smith's "Noodle's Oration" is the sort of thing in another kind: and some of the letters in the _Spectator_ cla.s.s of periodical are fun in the kind itself. Defoe's _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_ comes near. But we have nothing like the famous _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_, which are the very triumph of the style.

[54] See the extensive cla.s.sification of the Greeks, as noticed and reproduced before.

[55] The "Letter to Sir W. Windham" of the one and the "Letter to a n.o.ble Lord" of the other, have ample justification. _Letters on a Regicide Peace_, great as they are in themselves, have less claim to their t.i.tle. But it was a favourite with both writers.

[56] The King was William and the Queen Mary, which limits considerably the otherwise rather illimitable "concerning the kingdom."

[57] This word is of course a _vox nihili_, being neither French nor English. But it has usage in its favour, and I do not see that it is improved by writing it "_dis_habille." If anyone prefers the actual French form he can add the accents.

[58] The account of the journey with Lintot the publisher is sometimes quoted in disproof of this. It is amusing, but has still to some tastes Pope's fact.i.tiousness without the technical charm of his verse to carry it off.

[59] There is one small but rather famous cla.s.s of letters which perhaps should receive separate though brief notice. It is that of laconic and either intentionally or unintentionally humorous utilisations of the letter-form. Of one sort Captain Walton's "Spanish fleet taken and destroyed as per margin" is probably the most noted type: of another the equally famous rejoinder of the Highland magnate to his rival "Dear Glengarry, When you have proved yourself to be my chief, I shall be happy to admit your claim. Meanwhile I am Yours, Macdonald." In pure farce of an irreverent kind, the possibly apocryphal interchange between a Royal Duke and a Right Reverend Bishop, "Dear Cork, Please ordain Stanhope, Yours, York," and "Dear York, Stanhope's ordained. Yours, Cork," has the palm as a recognised "chestnut." But these things are only the frills if not even the froth of the subject; and those who imitate them should exercise caution in the imitation. The police-courts, and even more exalted, but still more unwholesome abodes of Justice, have sometimes been the consequences of misguided satire in letters. Even in Captain Walton's case the Spaniards are said to have endeavoured to show that his ironical laconism (which, moreover, tradition has perhaps exaggerated in form) was not strictly in accordance with fact.

[60] Wild olive, with more peaceful uses, was also the usual material for the _un_peaceful club, or quarter-staff, often iron-shod, of the ancients. It was probably like the _lathi_ which the mild Hindoo takes with him to political meetings. The [Greek: pelekys] of the ancients was generally double-bladed, hence the limitation here. This would be lighter and more convenient to carry in the belt.

[61] Of course "the enemies'."

[62] Synesius addresses his letters to Hypatia [Greek: te philosopho]--"To _the_ Philosophess." This contains at least two of the unapproachable "portmanteau" words in which Greek, and especially late Greek abounds--[Greek: philochoron], "loving one's country," and [Greek: metanasteuein], a rare and complicated compound in which I have ventured to see a hint of ironic intention. He feels that he will be a sort of s.h.i.+rker or deserter ([Greek: meta] often imparts this meaning) but he will be coming to _her_.

[63] This necessity of annotating beyond suitable limits was what prevented me, after due re-reading for the purpose, from giving any letter of Cicero's.

[64] _Admoneo_ in Latin not unfrequently has our commercial sense of "advise" = inform, or remind of a fact. It will be remembered that in Elizabethan English this sense was not limited to business, as in "Art thou avised of that."

[65] The younger Pliny's full name was C. Plinius _Secundus_.

[66] Among other natives of course.

[67] Doubtless the game still played in Italy (_pallone_) and the South of France, with a wooden hand-guard strapped to the arm.

[68] _Pyrgus_ is not exactly backgammon. The Romans had a sort of combined dice-box and board--the latter having a kind of tower fixed on the side with interior steps or stops, among which the dice tumbled and twisted before they fell out.

[69] _Universitas_: but though the context seems tempting, it is too early for "university" as a translation.

[70] _I.e._ in citizens.h.i.+p.

[71] _I.e._ in speech.

[72] Why _livescentibus_ I am not sure. "Bruised by the rough mail"? But Lucretius has _digiti livesc.u.n.t_: and Sidonius, like other poets of other decadences, is apt to borrow the phrases of his great predecessors.

[73] Sidonius has nearly as much more of this curious story: but the picture of the excitable Celts mobbing their heroes is vivid enough to make a good stopping-place. If things really went as described, one must suppose that a sudden panic came on the Goths, and that they took Ecdicius and his handful of troopers as merely _eclaireurs_ of a sally in force, and drew back to the higher ground to resist it.

[74] His own experience of marriage cannot have made the subject wholly agreeable to him: for he was, it may not be quite impertinent to remind the reader, the first husband of Eleanor of Guienne.

ENGLISH LETTERS

THE PASTONS. FIFTEENTH CENTURY

Few families in England have achieved a permanent "place i'

the story" after such a curious fas.h.i.+on as the Pastons of Paston (Pastons "of that ilk") in Norfolk. They were not exactly "great people" and no member of the family was of very eminent distinction in any walk of life, though they had judges, soldiers, and sailors etc. among them, and though, some time before the house became extinct, its representative attained the peerage with the t.i.tle of Earl of Yarmouth. But they were busy people in the troublesome times of the Roses, and they obtained a good deal of property, partly by the death of Sir John Fastolf, noted in the French wars and muddled by posterity (there seems to have been no real resemblance between them except an accusation of cowardice, probably false in both cases, and an imperfectly anagrammatised relation of names) with Shakespeare's "Falstaff." But they produced, received, and kept a great ma.s.s of letters which, despite the extinction of the family in 1732 survived, were partially printed later in the century by Fenn, and more fully a hundred years after by the late Mr. Gairdner. Although (see Introduction) of no particular literary merit they are singularly varied in subject and authors.h.i.+p, and they give us perhaps a more complete view of the domestic experiences of a single family (not dissociated from public affairs) than we have from any period of English history till quite modern times. Indeed, it would not be easy to put the finger on an exact parallel to them at _any_ time. I have selected from a great ma.s.s of doc.u.ments two--one of love and one of war according to the good old division. John Jernyngan's letter to Margaret Mauteby--wife of John Paston, and one of the most notable and businesslike, though not the least affectionate of wives and mothers--is interesting for its combination of the two motives (were there also _two_ "Mistress Blanches"?) and for the delightfully English frankness of its confession that "we were well and truly beat." On the other hand, that of Miss Margery Brews to John Paston the youngest (the John named above had two sons of his own name) is one of the most agreeable pieces of "plain and holy innocence," as Miranda calls it, on record. It is immediately preceded in the collection by another in which she is equally loving, and quotes some of the shockingly bad fifteenth century verse.

One regrets to say that her "Valentine" had, apparently, more than one string to his bow at the moment. However, after vicissitudes in the "matter," as she delicately calls it, John and Margery did marry, and from them proceeded the later stages of the family. Whether things went equally well with Mr. Jernyngan and his Blanche (or either of his Blanches) does not seem to be recorded. (It has been thought better, though the taste of the moment seems to go rather the other way, not to enc.u.mber the reader with the original spelling, but there is no further modernisation.)