io6 MORE POT-POURRI 



unselfish, passionate, devoted letters — such as, for in- 

 stance, Mary Wollstonecraft's letters to Imlay (a per- 

 fectly unworthy object) — a better lesson to women than 

 all the articles, all the lectures, and all the sermons ever 

 preached? And why should we not, each of us, gain 

 strength through the publication of letters which show 

 the weakness of love in gifted beings like Keats and 

 Shelley? I cannot see any objection, and with pride 

 and joy would I have given, to those who cared to read 

 it, this interesting little bundle of papers, yellowed by 

 time, and written by my parents in the sunshine of their 

 youth, portraying that nothing really came between the 

 two but that old struggle — difference of opinion on relig- 

 ious subjects — and also showing the confident hope on 

 both sides that love ought to conquer. 



Time crystallises, to my mind, such material into bi- 

 ography ; and the more absolutely true biography is, the 

 more interesting it becomes to the public. I have noted 

 down from some book — perhaps Symonds' Life — that 'the 

 first cannon in the art of unsophisticated letter -writing 

 is that, just as a speech is intended for hearers rather 

 than for readers, so is a letter meant for the eye of a 

 friend and not for the world. The very essence of good 

 letter -writing is, in truth, the deliberate exclusion of 

 outsiders, and the full surrender of the writer to the 

 spirit of egotism — amicable, free, light-handed, unpre- 

 tending, harmless, but still egotism. The best letters 

 are always improvisations, directly or indirectly, about 

 yourself and your correspondent.' Letters of this kind 

 are, in my opinion, the very ones most worth giving to 

 the public. The man of the world says : ' Burn all let- 

 ters, and only write insignificant notes with little mean- 

 ing in them, so that there may be nothing for others to 

 keep.' Goethe says : 'Letters are among the most sig- 

 nificant memorials a man can leave behind him.' This 



