Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 16, 2025
But the credit of using letters as a main constituent of biography of originating the "Life-and-Letters" class of books which fills so large a part of modern library-shelves has been given, as far as English is concerned, to Mason in his dealings with Gray.
Whether it has ever reappeared he cannot say. 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. In his Essay mentioned in Preface. The "Answer to the Introductory Epistle" of The Monastery.
At the same time it must be admitted that this "Life-and-Letters" scheme, like every kind of art, requires care: and like most human things, is exposed to dangers and difficulties in addition to some previously noticed. To begin with, the quality of the letters has to be considered. It so happened that Mason, the originator by courtesy, had unusually good material to work with.
Some of the most distinguished of Carlyle's contemporaries, the great men of letters of the mid-nineteenth century, have left letters more or less copious and more or less valuable from one or both of the two sides, biographical and literary, but not eminently so. Macaulay's letters and diaries suit biography excellently, and have been excellently used in his. They lighten and sweeten the rather boisterous "cocksureness" of the published writings: and help his few but very remarkable poems other than the Lays (which are excellent but in a different kind) to show the soul and heart of the man as apart from his mere intellect. But they are not perhaps intrinsically very capital. So also in Dickens's case the "Life-and-Letters" system is excellently justified, but one does not know that the letters in themselves would always deserve a first class in this particular school of Literae Humaniores. Letter-writing admits if it may not even require a certain kind of egotism. But it must be what the French call an Egoisme
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.
In not a few cases they may be said to have been deliberately unprepared intended though not labelled as "private and confidential." In which, be it remembered, the "Life-and-Letters" system only came in quite late. At the very moment when this is being written a considerable new body of them is announced for sale.
Matthew Arnold's were very severely censored; and, while readily believing this and acquiescing in its probable propriety, the old Adam in some readers may be unable to refrain from regret. Again, there is something to be said about the less good effects of that "Life-and-Letters" system which has been quite rightly welcomed and praised for its better ones.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking