Four Centuries of English Letters.
Edited and arranged by W. Baptiste Scoones.
New York: Harper & Brothers.
It is hard to decide what may not be done by a clever littérateur with tolerable success in these days of hasty condensations and picturesque generalizations. An age of materialism has its advantages. If it cannot enjoy the inspiration of a distinct and vital idea to shape its own consciousness and give life and originality to its own achievements, it has a good chance to study with curious pains the methods and processes of all preceding epochs. There is, to be sure, something pathetic in our wealth of opportunity—something defeating, even impoverishing, in the very facility with which we set to work to extract the juices and essences from the dry bones of history.
Mr. Scoones must have enjoyed the labors which have their result in the book now before us. It has always seemed to us a pleasant task—worth the carrying out by a man of wealth and leisure—to select a library which should contain all the published letters of the world. The editor of this collection is no doubt familiar with such a library, and his aim has been to help others to his own sources of pleasure. He has given a fair selection of English letters, not attempting to classify them except by historical periods, which do not, however, always present them in regular sequence. This sort of book is supposed to suit the modern mind, which is understood to aim at the mastery of a little of everything. It is an attractive notion that since nobody now-a-days has time to read all the letters of a single writer, it is a capital thing to read a single letter of every writer. Yet the true significance of a book like this can only be felt by one who has studied the literature of letters familiarly and lovingly. To the student of history the mere turning of its pages brings an influx of thoughts and memories, half of pain, half of delight. In the confused medley the keynote of many a strange, melancholy strain is struck. The history of the world is a very sad one, and never seems more sad than when the relics of all the ages are thus jumbled together. Even what was in itself light-hearted and joyous becomes half tragical, because it belongs to the strange old story. Such a book, to be understood and cared about, must be read more through the imagination than through the eyes. John Dudley's letter from the Tower on the eve of his execution calls up all the passionate, painful, terrible history of one of the world's cruelest times and mirrors it anew for us. Yet it is not the duke of Northumberland's fate which makes our hearts shudder and our eyes moisten, but something that comes more nearly home to us.
Regarding the discrimination shown in the selection of the letters, there must be naturally as many opinions as there are lovers of letters. The reader turns to find the epistles he likes best, and missing them decides that much of what was most worthy has been omitted. It would seem as if Horace Walpole's letters might have been more carefully selected; Charles Lamb's have apparently been taken haphazard, without any accurate idea of their true valuation; and as for Keats's, those everybody ought to know and love him for have been left out altogether.
But unsubstantial things like letters, of which the charm is so delicate and elusive, stand less for what they are absolutely than for what they have come to mean for us. Sharply contrasted as now when bound up in a single volume, it becomes an interesting literary study to compare the style of one writer with that of another. Some of the "elegant letter-writers" seem barren pretenders enough when their vague, imposing, but patchwork sets of phrases are set side by side with the genuine outcome of real thought and feeling. Some very famous names are appended to tolerably indifferent effusions. It is very easy to decide whom we should have chosen for familiar correspondents. They are, after all, few, and first of all our choice would have been Cowper.
Pencilled Fly-Leaves:
A Book of Essays in Town and Country.
By John James Piatt.
Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.
Mr. Piatt has written a pleasant series of essays on a capital list of subjects. He makes a sort of confession in the title of his book, and in his preface besides, of their being inspired by his favorite authors. They may originally have filled a particular column in some journal, and in such a case were certain to have been turned to by its readers with an expectation of pleasure which they never failed to answer. It is the fashion with critics to make mention more or less slightingly of detached pieces bound up in book-form. But, after all, how else should we have had Lamb and Hazlitt? And such essays, from their enforced brevity, are apt to contain a freshness and spirit often lacking in more ambitious papers, where, with the same amount of actual material, three times the space must be filled. Mr. Piatt is a poet, and sees the poetic side of every-day things. He is, besides, a genial optimist, and finds in the disagreeables of life—for instance, going to bed in a cold room—a delightful experience: "But blessed and thrice blessed is he for whom hardy choice or a most beneficent—even when least smiling—Fortune has made his bed and smoothed his pillow in a cold room! He sleeps in Abraham's bosom all the year, indeed. To him are given, night by night, such new sensations as those for which kings might throw away their foolish kingdoms. He conquers his Paradise at one shuddering although faithful leap, and the gentle tropics over the feathers and under the coverlets breathe their tenderest influences to confirm its enjoyments."
The last paper, "How the Bishop Built his College in the Woods," is the most interesting in the book, giving the history of Kenyon College. It is not probably generally known through what privations and struggles Bishop Chase carried his hope and his resolution to found a college in Ohio, nor how he gained his victory at last. Both the seminary and its site were named after munificent English patrons who came to the good bishop's aid when American friends turned from him. The episode of his runaway slave, Jack, the effect his emancipation had upon the fortunes of his master's beloved enterprise, is a curious one. We may add that Bishop Bedell, who now presides over the diocese of Ohio, has made Kenyon College one of the most interesting religious institutions in the United States.