A Letter Book

Johnson is again the chief and by no means trustworthy witness for this "insolence." But in the same breath he admitted that Chesterfield was "dignified." Now dignity is almost as doubtfully compatible with insolence as with impudence.

16

It is difficult to think of anyone who has combined statesmanship (Chesterfield's accomplishments in which are constantly forgotten), social gifts and literary skill in an equal degree.

17

Excluding of course purely historical and public things like the trials of the '45 and the riots of '80.

18

They were travelling together (always rather a test of friendship) in Italy, and Horace, as he confesses, no doubt gave himself airs. But it is pretty certain that Gray had not at this time, if he ever had, that fortunate combination of good (or at least well-commanded) temper and good breeding which enables a gentleman to meet such conduct with conduct on his own side as free from petulant "touchiness" as from ignoble parasitism.

19

Gray was not, like Walpole, a richly endowed sinecurist. But to use a familiar "bull" he seems never to have had anything to do, and never to have done it when he had. His poems are a mere handful; his excellent Metrum is a fragment; and as Professor of History at Cambridge he never did anything at all.

20

They do not seem to have known each other personally. But (for reasons not difficult to assign but here irrelevant) Johnson was on the whole, though not wholly, unjust to Gray, and Gray seems to have disliked and spoken rudely of Johnson.

21

The varieties of what may be called literary exercise which have been utilised for educational or recreative purposes, are almost innumerable. Has anyone ever tried "breaking up" a letter (such as those to be given hereafter) into a conversation by interlarded comment, questions, etc.?

22

As far as the accidents are concerned. The essentials vary not. Marianne is eternal, whether she faints and blushes, or jazzes and – does not blush.

23

One unfortunate exception, the ex-post facto references to the split with Lady Austin, may be urged by a relentless prosecutor. But when William has to choose between Mary and Anna it will go hard but he will have to be unfair to one of them.

24

This "swan's" utterances in poetry were quite unlike those of Tennyson's dying bird: and her taste in it was appalling. She tells Scott that the Border Ballads were totally destitute of any right to the name.

25

For a singular misjudgment on this point see Prefatory Note infra.

26

Particularly when he is able to apply the Don Juan mood of sarcastic if rather superficial life-criticism in which he was a real master.

27

I.e. "violently and vulgarly absurd."

28

It may, however, be suggested that the extraordinary bluntness (to use no stronger word) of both is almost sufficiently evidenced in the fact that in his last edition of Keats Mr. Forman committed the additional outrage of distributing these letters according to their dates among the rest. The isolation of the agony gives almost the only possible excuse for revealing it.

29

It is of course true that Shelley himself did not at first quite appreciate Keats. But Adonais cancels the deficit and leaves an almost infinite balance in favour. One can only hope that, had the circumstances been reversed, Keats would have set the account right as triumphantly.

30

This tendency makes it perhaps desirable to observe that in the particular context of the Belle Dame there is nothing whatever to cavil at.

31

The recent centenary saw, as usual, with much welcome appreciation some uncritical excesses.

32

In not a few cases they may be said to have been deliberately unprepared – intended though not labelled as "private and confidential."

33

In which, be it remembered, the "Life-and-Letters" system only came in quite late.

34

At the very moment when this is being written a considerable new body of them is announced for sale.

35

The word "restraint" may be misunderstood: but it is intended to indicate something of the general difference between "classical" ages on the one side and "romantic" or "realist" on the other.

36

Chesterfield's deafness might, without frivolity, be brought in. It is a hindrance to conversation, but none to letter-writing.

37

Or at least expression of themselves.

38

Idly: because he himself expressly and repeatedly disclaims mere "translation."

39

Dryden, in reference to Shadwell.

40