intelligible. The History
part requires little or no postscript; whether ill or well done it
should pretty well speak for itself. What touches the Art may require
certain cautions and provisos.

This is especially the case with regard to the stress laid above on
"naturalness." It is (as the present writer at least believes) the very
passport of admission to the company of good letter-writers. But it must
not be misconstrued. It is quite possible that too little care may be
taken with the matter and style of letters. After all they
correspond--in a certain, if in the most limited degree--to appearance
"in company," and require as that does a certain etiquette of
observance. Complete deshabille[57] on paper is not attractive: and
there are letters (it is unnecessary to specify any particular
examples) which somewhat exaggerate "simplicity."

Cowper is perhaps the accepted classic in this style who has the least
of _apparatus_: but even Cowper bestows a certain amount of
care--indeed, a very considerable amount--on the dress of his letter's
body, on the cookery of its provender. If you have only small beer to
chronicle you can at the worst draw it and froth it and pour it out with
some gesture. In this respect as in others, while letter-writing has not
been inaccurately defined or described as the closest to conversation of
literary forms that do not actually reproduce conversation itself, it
remains apart from conversation and subject to an additional degree of
discipline.

[Sidenote: CONCLUSION]

Enough should have been said earlier of the opposite fault by excess of
dressing, which has, however, for a sort of solace the fact that it may
pass as literature though not exactly as letter-writing. Actually
beautiful style--not machine-made "fine writing," but that embodiment of
thought which is a special incarnation of it--is the one thing secure of
success and survival, whatever literary form it takes. And even short of
this supreme beauty accomplished literary manner can never be quite
unwelcome. The highest place in letter-writing has been refused here to
Pope: and unfortunately there is hardly a division of his work which,
when you know a little more about it and him, excites more disgust at
the man's nature. But, at the same time, hardly even his verse convinces
one more of that extraordinary power of expression as he wished to
express things which this Alexander, in some ways the infinitely
Little, possessed. Yet