GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 343 



letters. These were usually very disappointing. This 

 did not arise from lack, but from excess of care ; the 

 consequence being that his letters, even to the members of 

 his own family, were often so stiff and sesquipedalian as 

 to produce a repellent effect, which was the very last thing 

 that he intended. Letters, to be delightful, must be 

 chatty, artless, irregular ; anything of obvious design in 

 their composition is fatal to their charm. My father had a 

 theory of correspondence. He arranged the materials of 

 which he wished to compose his letter according to a 

 precise system, and he clothed them in language which 

 reminded one of The Rambler. Hence it was rarely indeed 

 that any one received from him one of those chatty, con- 

 fidential epistles which reveal the soul, and touch the very 

 springs of human nature. Letters should seem to have 

 been written in dressing-gown and slippers ; my father's 

 brought up a vision of black kid gloves and a close-fitting 

 frock-coat. The absence of anything like picturesque detail 

 in them is very extraordinary when it is contrasted with 

 the easy and romantic style of his best books. In his 

 public works he takes his readers into his familiarity ; in 

 his private letters he seemed to hold them at arm's length. 

 The fullest expression of Philip Gosse's mind, indeed, is 

 to be found in his books, and some general estimate of 

 the character of these may at this point be attempted. 

 Viewed as a whole, his abundant literary work is of very 

 irregular character. Much of it bears the stamp of having 

 been produced, against the grain, by the pressure of pro- 

 fessional requirements. A great many of his numerous 

 volumes may be dismissed as entirely ephemeral, as con- 

 scientious and capable pieces of occasional work, effective 

 enough at the time of their publication, but no longer 

 of any real importance. Another considerable section of 

 his popular work consists of hand-books, which are not to 



