SPECIMEN LETTERS SELECTED AND EDITED BY ALBERT S. COOK PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN AND ALLEN R. BENHAM FELLOW IN ENGLISH OF YALE UNIVERSITY GINN & COMPANY BOSTON · NEW YORK CHICAGO · LONDON COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY ALBERT S. COOK AND ALLEN R. BENHAM ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 56.7 5-8743 AIMBOTLIAD The Athenæum Press GINN & COMPANY. PRO- course PREFACE 'All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's disnot studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm.' Thus somewhere wrote Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple; and if it is familiar letters that we are speaking of, we shall hardly venture to differ with the fair Dorothy. And even as the frequenting of good society tends to impart an easy turn to one's discourse, so to see how men and women of wit and breeding converse with their intimates on paper ought to preserve us from the worst forms of clownishness, affectation, stiffness, or pedantry. As it is a rare pleasure to receive a well-written letter, so it is a rare accomplishment to write such as shall be at once piquant and natural, cheery but not boisterous, well bred but not unduly ceremonious. In the letters which follow, we have drawn freely upon writers who seem to be at home with their correspondents, and to be pouring out their thoughts, or indulging in their sallies, without other restraint than such as his own nature imposes upon a person of refinement. Some of these are letters of compliment, others of invitation; some are records of travel, others of a home-keeping and unadventurous life. But with all their variety, the letters of this class have a certain unpremeditated air by which they may easily be recognized. But our selection has a somewhat wider range. Some of the letters included strike a deeper note, being elicited by sympathy with sorrow, or serious concern, or indignation. Some are matter-of-fact, and others have a kind of stateliness; so that while those of lighter vein and more familiar temper 255362 predominate, there is no lack of such as spring from emotion, and even conviction. The period covered by our selection is approximately two hundred years, from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present; and the order is chronological. Most letters earlier than 1700 would have a somewhat stiff and archaic air; in the age of Anne a tincture of French courtliness and grace manifests itself in England - as in the Spectator, for example - and this is accordingly a convenient era from which to draw our earliest examples. In an appendix we have added, for purposes of comparison, translations of a few letters from other tongues: specimens chosen from Cicero and the younger Pliny, the best representatives of the species in antiquity; from Madame de Sévigné, perhaps the most famous letter-writer among the moderns; and from Voltaire, whose correspondence alone would have entitled him to no mean rank among the authors of his century. The reply of Trajan to Pliny's request for instructions is inserted, partly as a desirable complement to that of Pliny, partly because of its historical interest, and partly for its mingling of friendliness with imperial dignity — at once a state paper and an obliging note of reply. : Many of the letters we have included are of course out of copyright. For permission to use those more recently published we are under obligation to the courtesy of various proprietors to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for the letter by Huxley; to Mr. Aldis Wright for those by Fitzgerald; to the present Lord Tennyson for those by his father and that from Emerson to the poet; to the heirs of Matthew Arnold for those by him; to Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for their coöperation in securing permissions in the last three cases, and for their willingness to grant the right in the case of Shuckburgh's translation from Cicero; to Miss Helen Nicolay for the letters by Lincoln, as contained in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, edited by Nicolay and Hay; to Professor A. V. G. Allen and Mr. Wm. G. Brooks for those by Phillips Brooks; to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of Samuel Longfellow's Life of H. W. Longfellow, for those by the poet, and that from Hawthorne to him; to Messrs. Harper & Brothers for those by Lowell; to Charles Scribner's Sons for those by Stevenson; and to Mr. Fisher Unwin for those by 'Lewis Carroll.' How much the book has been enriched by these additions will be evident at a glance, and we desire to express our cordial thanks for the consideration with which our requests have been met. That through ignorance or inadvertence we have omitted some letters which we should have done well to include in our collection we are quite prepared to believe; and we should be grateful for suggestions concerning such letters from those who may use the book. YALE UNIVERSITY January 2, 1905 |