[Chat No. 14.]
"The welcome news is in the letter found,
The carrier's not commissioned to expound:
It speaks itself."
—Dryden.
A pleasant hour may perhaps be passed in searching through the family autograph-box in the book-room. Its contents are varied and far-fetched. A capital series of letters from that best and most genial of correspondents, James Payn, are there to puzzle, by their very difficult calligraphy, the would-be reader. Mr. Payn, a dear friend to Foxwold, is now a great invalid, and a brave sufferer, keeping, despite his pain, the same bright spirit, the same brilliant wit, and delighting with the same enchanting conversation. Out of all his work, there is nothing so beautiful as his lay-sermons, published in a small volume called "Some Private Views;" and but a little while since he wrote, on his invalid couch, a most affecting study, called "The Backwater of Life;" it has only up to the present time appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, but will doubtless be soon collected with other work in a more permanent form. It is a pathetic picture of how suffering may be relieved by wit, wisdom, and courage.
As Mr. Leslie Stephen well says in his brother's life, "For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, it really loves a sermon, and is glad to hear preachers who are not bound by the proprieties of the religious pulpit. Some essayists, like Johnson, have been as solemn as the true clerical performer, and some have diverged into the humorous with Charles Lamb, or the cynical with Hazlitt." [2]
In Mr. Payn's lay-sermons we have the humour and the pathos, the tears being very close to the laughter; and they reflect in a peculiarly strong manner the tender wit and delicate fancy of their author.