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Updated: July 14, 2025
The true and permanent interest of this book is that it introduced the British and American public to some of the most brilliantly witty and amusing epistles that the language contains. Indeed, there are very few letter-writers in any language who can be compared with Mrs. Carlyle.
We learn from Yong's preface that portions of the romance had already been Englished by Edward Paston, a descendant of the famous Norfolk letter-writers, who had family relations with Spain and possessed an intimate knowledge of the language. Of this work nothing further is known.
Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self-abstraction! All the former letter-writers were still writing calmly, and many more letter-writers had broken out in my absence.
'For six months we are to be rather more than friends, and a good deal less than fiancés. I am to be allowed to write to her. You may imagine how seductive it is to one of the worst and laziest letter-writers in the three kingdoms, that his fortunes in love should be made to depend on his correspondence. I may scold her if she gives me occasion.
Nor is there any more doubt about the qualifications of the fifth of our selected eighteenth-century letter-writers. Cowper's poetry has gone through not very strongly marked but rather curious variations of critical estimate. Like all transition writers he was a little too much in front of the prevailing taste of his own time, and a little too much behind that of the time immediately succeeding.
By nature and habit the most procrastinating of letter-writers, he now inconsistently opened his desk and took up the pen without a moment's delay. His letter was long enough to occupy three pages of note-paper; it was written with a readiness of expression and a rapidity of hand which seldom characterized his proceedings when engaged over his ordinary correspondence.
Among letter-writers, Aretino unfortunately must be named as the first who has fully painted in words the splendid effect of light and shadow in an Italian sunset. We sometimes find the feeling of the poets, also, attaching itself with tenderness to graceful scenes of country life. Tito Strozza, about the year 1480, describes in a Latin elegy the dwelling of his mistress.
From that period onwards, however, Jews became very diligent letter-writers, and sometimes, for instance in the case of the "Guide of the Perplexed" of Maimonides, whole works were transmitted in the form of letters. The scattering of Israel, too, rendered it important to Jews to obtain information of the fortunes of their brethren in different parts of the world.
The word chara does not mean always a spy. The ancient kings of India had their spies it is true, but they had a regular intelligence department. It was the business of these men to send correct reports to the king of every important occurrence. The news letter-writers of the Mussalman time, or Harkaras, were the successors of the charas of Hindu times.
Cicero had now done all that was useful in his public life. The great monuments of his literature are to come. None of these had as yet been written except a small portion of his letters about a tenth and of these he thought no more in regard to the public than do any ordinary letter-writers of to-day.
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