together too closely in that great collision to know that they wrote rough copies of their permit Englishmen, at the head of any class letters. When we open a well-edited volume so important as the literary, to be thereafter of Pope's Correspondence, we find appended the abject dependants of the great. Some- as a running commentary the first draft of the thing of the spirit of liberty imperceptibly composition. Words were inserted or erased, pervaded all the relations of society. Gradu- sentences compressed or expanded, the limo ally a kind of coalition was formed, and the labor was as severe, as when a poem or an ode result in its perfect form was seen in the days was to be polished. If this toil had been a of Pope, to whose exertions it was indeed sacrifice on the altar of friendship, the offering greatly owing. The literary class sent a few would have been one unrivalled since the representatives into the assembly of the beau days of Pylades and Orestes. But it was nomonde, but the representatives when elected, thing of the sort. It was a sacrifice of the or rather promoted, were cut off from the body kind made by Court beauties in the days to which they belonged. They had too to when they would sit for hours with their conform to the standard, to adopt the lan- hair built into pyramids, waiting till night guage, and breathe the sentiments of the cir- brought the season of display. It was a cle to which they were raised. Being men of means to a great end, a means of astongenius, they of course themselves affected in ishing and delighting others, and of gratiturn those who thus colored their own minds fying the author's vanity, a means, too, we and expressions; but certainly the influence ought in justice to add, of satisfying his own of society on literature in the early part of the artistic fastidiousness. Pope bestowed this eighteenth century is more observable than the kind of compliment more freely on Lady Mary influence of literature on society; and it is more Wortley Montagu than on any other of his observable in Pope than in any other writer.correspondents. She had every claim upon We have already said that Pope used the his epistolary powers. She was the daughter art of letter-writing as a powerful engine in of a duke; was a beauty, a wit, an excellent binding together this intercourse between the letter-writer herself, and the object of that gifted and the great; and in proportion as he thinks the full force of this engine ought to be brought into play does he aim at the greater artistic excellence in his letters. It is true that what is meant to be most excellent is often less so than that which is more simple and unpremeditated. But the presence of the effort is very apparent, according as the demand for it is greater, and we may trace in Pope's let- Pope's show-letters were modelled on the ters three styles, or rather three distinct points writings of Addison in the Spectator. He did to which the style is wound up. The lowest is not contribute to a periodical collection printed that in which he writes to ordinary acquaintan- and laid before the public, but he had private ces, on business, and for a direct purpose. There correspondents who were very happy to reis of course nothing remarkable in such of his ceive descriptions and essays such as those letters couched in this style as have been pre- which have made Addison immortal, and were served. The wording has the neatness of a sure to let others enjoy the pleasure they practised pen, but that is all. We need take themselves received. Elaborate and careful no further notice of it. But two styles re-sketches of great houses and country resimain in the one, the inferior, he does justice dences were the specimens which Pope most to himself and his pretensions when writing delighted to give of his power to walk in the to those of his own class, to the great wits of path of Addison. Sometimes the whole interhis acquaintance, and to those in the world of est is intended to be centred in the fidelity, fashion with whom he was on too familiar a minuteness, and liveliness of the delineations; footing to talk long in his supreme and Olym-sometimes little touches of Addisonian humor, pian mode. This mode was reserved for very irony, and satire are added. The Duke of great people, for ladies of rank, and for what Buckingham, to take a conspicuous instance, may be termed "show-letters," letters, that is, which were written on a theme or particular subject, and with great care and study, and which were evidently intended to be passed from hand to hand through a large circle of admirers. We will bestow a little attention on each of these styles separately, beginning with the last.

It places us at an immeasurable distance from the letter-writers of the last century, to

vague kind of devotion on the part of Pope, which is frequently excited towards a person of different sex and rank by a community of tastes and studies. To her, therefore, he always writes his best. He never starts the subjects which he intends to make the ground work of his letter without the most carefully turned flourishes and preludes.

had sent Pope a longwinded account of Buckingham House; and Pope, in return, gave a picture of a house where, he tells the Duke, he was then living, but which the critics rightly conjecture to have existed only in his own mind. He diverts himself with the ingenuity of construction which had built up such beautiful edifices in the Spectator. Everything is touched so as to be seemingly consistent, and yet the result of a scarcely concealed whim.

You must excuse me (he begins) if I say no- afterwards as a model letter-writer. But he thing of the front; indeed I do not know which was not a man ever really to dislike publicity, it is. A stranger would be grievously disap- where he could be as sure that the public pointed who endeavored to get into this house the would not find him off his guard as in his letright way. One would reasonably expect after ters to his distinguished friends. These letters the entry through the porch to be let into the abound with the fruits of his painstaking vigilhall; alas! nothing less! you find yourself in an office. From the parlor you think to step into ance, and are replete with passages which, the drawing-room, but upon opening the iron- even detached from their context, and brought nailed door you are convinced by a flight of forward as unconnected quotations, must be birds about your ears, and a cloud of dust in allowed to contain much that is graceful and your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house. If you charming. come into the chapel, you find its altars, like those of the ancients, continually smoking, but it is with the steams of the adjoining kitchen.

And the description of every part of the house is given in the same style, and is crowned with the portrait of an old steward, who is in fact the very counterpart of an old steward painted by Addison; and we might fancy we had the Spectator in our hands as we read

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has left behind her a collection of letters too remarkable for excellences of the most varied kind to allow us to pass her over in silence. Yet many of her letters have so unstudied and unpremeditated an air, and seem to shine, not from the care that has been bestowed upon them, but because they have emanated from a bright and humorous mind, that it may seem unnatural to treat her as belonging to, and representing an epoch when letter-writing was an art. A closer examination of her correspondence will, He entertained us, as we passed from room to room, with several relations of the family; but however, considerably modify the impression his observations were particularly curious when which a first perusal conveys. The writer is he came to the cellar: he informed us where almost violent in her denunciations of the stood the triple row of butts of sack, and where smooth and florid style of Pope and Bolingwere ranged the bottles of Tent for toasts in a broke; but she very carefully cultivates the morning; then, stepping to a corner, he tugged style to which she herself gives the preference, out the tattered fragments of an unframed pic-and even hints that she moulds it on that of tureThis," says he, with tears, was poor Sir Thomas, once master of all this drink."

that

Addison. In her letters to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, she speaks much more freely of herself and of her own opinions and tastes, than in the letters she addressed to her friends; and when she is writing to her daughter, and the subject of her letter is, as is very often the case, the education of her granddaughters, she honestly discloses the pains she had herself taken to gain the pen of a ready

When Pope descended to the regions of ordinary letter-writing, and addressed his brother wits in the terms of familiar intercourse, he naturally adopted a style much more simple and unaffected, and one that, in our opinion, is a far better specimen of his skill. Still the habit and love of seeming elegant, polished, writer. and refined could not forsake him; and although It is often the surest method of estimating he felt himself at ease and unconstrained, yet taste to notice antipathies, especially where he had his literary reputation to maintain we find a strong judgment pronounced against among those who were his most discerning and something which, beforehand, we should have critical admirers. If we compare Swift's let- thought would be as probably liked as disliked. ters with his, we cannot but be struck with After her quarrel with Pope, Lady Mary was the differences of thought, manners, and mode most severe in her criticisms on the wits. of living they betray. Swift writes in a vigor- She was affronted at their arrogance, and reous, manly, and rather caustic style; while fused to accede to the standard of merit they Pope cannot feel quite comfortable without one upheld. Well-turned periods," she says, or two fine sentences at the beginning, a few "or smooth lines, are not the perfection of sentences of telling description, and a due pro- either prose or verse; they may serve to adorn, portion of general remarks, mildly hinting the but can never stand in the place of good sense." depravity of the world, and illustrating the And laughing at the way in which Pope and his calm and serene philosophy of the writer him- friends played into each other's hands, she reself. The letters of Pope and Swift were pub-marks that the confederacy of Bolingbroke lished in their lifetime, certainly against the with Swift and Pope, puts her in mind of that inclination of Swift, but perhaps not contrary of Bessus and his swordsmen in the King and to the real wishes of Pope. Not that Pope con- no King, who endeavored to support themsciously wrote for posterity and the public. selves by giving certificates of each other's He would have taken as much pains to main- merit. "Pope," she continues, has triumphanttain what he thought his proper position in the ly declared that they may do and say whateyes of Swift, as to be studied a hundred years ever silly things they please, they will still be

the greatest geniuses nature ever exhibited." minuteness; and her genius and assiduity enThere was undoubtedly something of pique in abled her to attain a style which leaves us her sentiments on the subject; and she was a hardly anything to wish for. She makes the good hater, and, hating the wits for Pope's communication of facts personal to herself, sake, loved to sting them when she could. and yet of a general interest, the ground-work There was also a feeling of apprehension not of her writing. By doing so, she gained a unnatural to one born within an exclusive cir- great aid towards preserving herself from the cle, lest the barrier of that circle should give labored nothings that disfigure the letters of way if the intrusion of literary eminence were Pope; and the varied course of her life suppermitted. "It is pleasant," she tells her plied her with a succession of personal addaughter, "to consider that, had it not been ventures, the recital of which gave ample for the good nature of those very mortals they scope for her powers of lively narration. contemn, these two superior beings (Pope and She intersperses remarks abounding in sterlSwift) were entitled by their birth and heredi-ing good sense, and allusions to individuals tary fortune to be only a couple of link-boys." always pointed and sometimes severe. But we must also add that, though she derived only defect that we have to notice is a certain more than she was pleased to own from the hardness and dryness of thought and feeling, men she thus sneered at, she was perfectly though never of language. Even in the first right in protesting against the enervating influ- letters she wrote on her way to Constantinoence of Pope and Bolingbroke upon those who used their style as a means not of conveying thought, but of concealing the absence of it. "Smooth lines," she protests, in indignation at the court paid by Lord Orrery to Pope's circle, "have as much influence over some people as the authority of the church in those countries where it can not only excuse, but sanctify any absurdity or villany whatever."

The

ple, when her marriage was still a recent event, we feel that, exquisite as is both the matter and the manner, there is something which betrays the coolness and waywardness of disposition that led her to separate from her husband and her daughter, and spend the last twenty years of her life in the solitude of an Italian villa. But her letters are so perfect, they are so shrewd, so easy, so entertainLady Mary was equally determined in her ing and graceful, that it seems almost captious disapproval of another model of easy writing, to find fault with anything in them; and it is and one whose charms have hitherto defied not only the great success which she attained time and a complete change of manners and in letter writing, but the position she holds in tastes. She could not endure Madame de the series of great letter writers, that deserves Sevigné. She even carries her adverse opin- to be remarked. On the one hand she acted ion so far as to assert that Madame de Se- as a stimulant, as a check, and, to some extent, vigné only gives in a lively manner and fash- an example to those in the literary world with ionable phrases, "mean sentiments, vulgar whom she corresponded. Pope, for instance, prejudices, and endless repetitions; sometimes wrote what he considered his very best for the tittle tattle of a fine lady, sometimes her; and she elicited all that he was capable that of an old nurse, always tittle-tattle, yet of in the particular line he considered most well gilt over by airy expressions and a glow- excellent." On the other hand, she coning style." She seems to have been insensible tributed largely to diffuse through the aristoto that which constitutes the great fascination cratic circles the notion that elegance in letter of Madame de Sevigne's letters, the faithful- writing was a desirable accomplishment. She ness and simplicity, and at the same time the may thus be looked on as the precursor of truth with which home scenes are painted, and those who represent the next great stage of the manner in which the reader is transported the art of letter writing when it became the to the interior life of a family, and made as study, and received the impression of the exit were an inmate of the house. Lady Mary clusive circles. We must say before parting treated this as a violation of the rules of good from her, that she far outshone, in our opintaste; there was not sufficient reserve, suffi-ion, those whom she thus preceded, and that cient consciousness of the necessity so often neither Horace Walpole nor Lord Chesterfield felt and acted on in society, of preserving a ever produced a letter to be compared with distance even between those most intimately the best of those which she sent from Conconnected. There was a want of force in stantinople and Italy.

the artless communications of the French lady, Horace Walpole has, perhaps, a greater and she felt a desire for something of the vig-name as a letter writer than any other Eng or and point that characterized her own mode lishman. His letters are a valuable source of of writing. historical information for a time with respect We may gather then that it was Lady to which information is scanty; and their Mary's aim to escape, in her letters, equally liveliness, their point, wit, malice, gossip, and from all that was conventional and artificial store of anecdote make them pleasant reading as from what she thought paltry and twaddling for those who have no relish for history. His

wit does not seek to conceal itself, or if it a small and exclusive circle, however it may throws a veil over the means employed, it af- dazzle and fascinate, must eventually tire us. fects no disguise as to the end desired. He There is nothing to like, and, apart from his laid himself out honestly, indefatigably, and skill in reflecting the feelings and wishes of openly to be the letter writer of his day. He his associates, nothing to admire in Horace has no real self to which he need pay the trib- Walpole. He had not even a genuine love ute of occasional recognition beneath the self of good company, and an unaffected delight which he paraded in court dress before the in the pleasures of society. He was but the world. Pope and he both wrote letters as a caterer for the tastes of those whom he serious business, in the effective discharge of thought it worth his while to please; and havwhich their reputation was involved; but they ing provided a great variety of smart sentences, viewed their business in a very different light. and piquant stories, and having served them Pope, as we have said, sought to establish a up with much taste and discretion, he sends neutral ground on which the man of letters in his little account, and expects immediate and the man of fashion might meet. Horace payment in flattery and social applause. Walpole aimed only at delighting, amusing Examples serve but very feebly to illustrate and satisfying the portion of the fashionable his peculiar manner, as it is by a combination world with which he was acquainted. He of little things well put together, and not by writes from within the circle which bounds his the excellence of detached passages, that his ambition. He perceived that a style of com- letters impress us. He dovetails his mosaic so position which should be on paper what the skilfully, that we are struck with admiration conversation of their circle was, if taken at at the work when completed, but each compoits best, in spoken words, would be closely nent fragment is nearly worthless by itself. akin to the aspirations of those with whom he All that we can arrive at by the most careful lived, and whom he sought most anxiously to examination of his style, is the more accurate please. Letter writing in his hands was the perception of the labor and the success with written voice of the gay world, and of the which he aimed 'at writing as fine folks talk. most educated and witty of its members. It is true that French letter-writing has so far He embraced all that the world approved, and furnished him with an example, that his style nothing it shunned. He did not, like Pope, has in some measure the appearance of being ask it to make concessions; he did not em- borrowed and not original. But he borrowed ploy its polished language to express inde- because what he thus acquired was the most pendent thought, keen observation, and origi- ready aid he could have in the task he set nal reflection, like Lady Mary Wortley Mon- himself. Paris gave the laws of society to the tagu. He wished to think as his world thought, circle in which he moved, and he was too wise to write as it wrote, but to give his thoughts a to neglect the obvious aid to be derived from scope, and his language a grace which that cultivating the acquaintance of the lawgiver, world could permit and appreciate. He felt that he could make a new toy for his playmates, and he knew how society pets and rewards its toymakers; and to make the pretty, gilded structure, he racked a fertile brain, and labored long and hard. He made foul copies of his gossiping letters, he studied the French models, he collected stories, he stored up bon mots, he noted the whims, he treasured the oddities, and made a harvest of the follies of his contemporaries.

That his success was great no one can pretend to deny. Looking at the art of letter writing from the point of view from which he regarded it, we must pronounce his letters masterpieces of skill and ingenuity. But we suspect that few readers could sincerely avow that they have not found them wearisome. We have the sensation after reading a few dozen pages as if we had been at a ball all night and were not allowed to go home to bed. All is unimpeachable in its elegance, gayety and effectiveness. But the music will keep jingling in our ears, and the lamps glaring in our eyes, when we long for a backroom and a rushlight. All writing that is produced and adapted for

but it is exaggeration to speak of him as a copyist. He did but faithfully reflect the current language, manners, and thoughts of a society which was colored by the influence of a near neighbor, and if he had not been the favorite of Madame du Deffand, and an ardent reader of French literature, he would not have been an adequate exponent of English society in the circles of the beau monde. He never was, and never wished to be, an exponent of English society at large. The society which included all the educated, the wealthy, and the noble, society in its wider sense, the society of Chatham, of Lord Chesterfield, Johnson, Churchill, of the better bishops, and of the country gentlemen who could write and read and keep sober once or twice a week, this society was caviare to the dapper little antiquarian of Twickenham, who had, however, sense enough to feel there was something in the world above him, though he had vanity enough to believe there was a great deal beneath him. He was the Hierophant of the few, the spokesman of the initiated, and eschewed all who spoke the vulgar tongue, and who had other interests and acquaintances than his own.

The decade from 1755 to 1765 may perhaps | hardly too much to say that we pass from the be taken as the period in which his powers littleness of the great world to its greatness. were at their best, although long afterwards he Both writers cultivated the art of letter-writwrote with scarcely any diminution of vivacity ing as one properly belonging to the station and neatness. Taking up the volumes of his of a gentleman. Both wrote for a limited circorrespondence which contain the letters writ-cle; both loved to impress upon their correten during these ten years, we find amid the spondents and the world at large that their greatest diversity of matter the utmost uni- literary success was a mere accident of, and formity of manner. Every letter is conceived accessory to, their advantages of birth. But in the same spirit and is planned to produce Chesterfield always wrote as if he were above the same effect. His style never or seldom al- the world to which he bowed, and could conters. He was remarkably fond of short sen- template the splendid crowd he strove to tences and rapid transitions from one subject eclipse with a complacent indifference. He to another, the cunning of his art being dis- was, in reality, of a mind and character far played in the skill with which abruptness was above the level of those to whose opinions and avoided in the passage. Not to fatigue, not to pursuits he lent the sanction of his approval. bore, to be various, smart, and short, is the ac- He plays with the world as with a gilded toy, me of the kind of conversational success which proud of his right to take the plaything in his he admired, and it was the success that he familiar grasp, but still contriving to let specsought to rival on paper. He inserted touches tators know that he could pull it to pieces if of malice and irony, he insinuated, guessed, he had a mind. He worked out for himself a supposed, invented, and related so that no let-theory of living, determined

power of writing letters that should combine elegance, worldly wisdom, and good sense, was among the most prominent; and that the art of letter-writing formed a distinguishing 'barrier to separate his microcosm from the larger and more vulgar world without.

the end he ter he wrote could possibly be thought dull. thought it worth while to pursue, ascertained He possessed in perfection the secret of pleas- by keen observation the most appropriate ing a correspondent by speaking of men and means, and applied them with happy natural things as if he were superior to all except the tact and unflinching resolution and perseverperson he addresses. He knew how men were ance. Of these means he perceived that the tickled by this tacit compliment, and how obliged they felt to the writer who placed them on this imaginary elevation. He always writes as if he were an observer from the outside of the subjects of his comments. He lets the pageant pass and notes its various scenes, admitting his correspondent to the spectacle. It is manner, and not matter, that places Sometimes he speaks as if he were moved by a Rubicon between the provinces of the elepublic events and felt indignation, interest,gant and the inelegant; it is not that the sympathy, and other emotions of honest men; urbanus does different things from the rustiand indeed he was in all sincerity possessed of cus, but he does them in a different way. It a few good feelings, being a pious son and a is said that in an examination for vacant felstanch friend. But his political and public lowships at an Oxford College, where good cares sat very lightly on him. When he writes breeding is the test of excellence, the crucial of foreign affairs, of the war, and of the meas- experiment is made by cunningly contriving ures of ministers, he uses the strongest lan- that the candidates, being asked to dinner by guage, and fires and blazes with indignant the electors, shall eat cherry or damson pie. virtue; for good society expects that a party Amidst the flow of pleasant small-talk, the man should talk like his party. But when he electors secretly watch with the keenest accuhas to speak of the proceedings of the House racy how the candidates severally dispose of of Commons, of which he was a member, he is the stones; and he who drops them like pearls again the careless observer, amusing and from his mouth, or still better, makes them amused; for if he wrote more warmly he might seem like the world in the system of the be expected to act more energetically, and Eleatics, at once to be and not to be, is regood society is timid, and distrusts energy un-warded with £100 a year.

up

less overpoweringly triumphant. In short, he Letter-writing was the cherry-pie of Lord lived and wrote for the narrow society he Chesterfield; or at any rate, one of his cherrymoved in, and any one who thus limits him- pies. All the world eats cherry-pies, but only self must be what Bishop Warburton termed a few can manage the stones; all the world him, "a coxcomb." Warburton indeed said, "an insufferable coxcomb;" but we who cannot be annoyed by him, and are amused and entertained with his writings, must allow him at least to be "sufferable."

writes letters, but only a few can write letters that satisfy the rules of art. And if we may pursue the comparison, as in the case of the college of which we have spoken, this stonedisposing skill gives the admission into a corWhen we turn from the letters of Horace porate society, the members of which are atWalpole to those of Lord Chesterfield, it is tached and bound to each other by the con