"I am almost alarmed, as it were, at the
notion of receiving suggestions. I feel that hints from you might
be so valuable and so important, it might be madness to ask you
beforehand to abstain from giving me any; but I am anxious for you
to know what the dangers in the way of long delay might be, the
result of even a few slight and possibly most useful suggestions. .
. . You will perhaps (after what I have said) think it best not to
set my mind running in a new path, lest I should take to re-
writing." Note, by the way, the slovenliness of this epistle, as
coming from so great a master of style; that defect characterizes
all his correspondence. He wrote for the Press "with all his
singing robes about him"; his letters were unrevised and brief.
Mrs. Simpson, in her pleasant "Memories," ascribes to him the
eloquence du billet in a supreme degree. I must confess that of
more than five hundred letters from his pen which I have seen only
six cover more than a single sheet of note-paper, all are alike
careless and unstudied in style, though often in matter
characteristic and informing. "I am not by nature," he would say,
"a letter-writer, and habitually think of the uncertainty as to who
may be the reader of anything that I write.
Pages:
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61