"narrative."[12] To other
judges these are some of the most perfect letters in existence, some
of the most absolutely genuine and free from the slightest taint of
writing for publication; some of the most extraordinarily blended of
intense intimacy which is neither ridiculous nor productive of the
shame-faced feeling that you ought not to have heard it; and full of
that dealing with matters less intimate but still interesting to both
correspondents which displays the "narrative" excellence conceded by
this acute critic. It must of course be remembered that these
"Journal-letters" are by no means Swift's only proofs of his
epistolary expertness. The Vanessa ones perhaps display a little of
the hopelessly enigmatic character which spreads like a mist over the
whole of that ill-starred relationship: but they make all the more
useful contrast to the "wholeheartedness"--one may even use that word
in reference to the little bit of what we may call constructive
deception as to "the other person"--of those to her rival.[13] Those
to Pope (of which so shabby a use was made by their strangely
constituted recipient), to Bolingbroke and others are among the best
of friendly letters: and the curious batch to the Duchess of
Queensberry might be classed with those "court-paying" letters of man
to woman which are elsewhere more particularly noted. But the "Stella"
or "Stella-cum-Dingley" division (if that most singular of
value-completing zeros is to be brought in) is a thing by itself.
Perhaps appreciating or not appreciating the "little language" is a
matter very largely of personal constitution, and the failure to
appreciate is (like colour-blindness or other physical deficiencies) a
thing to be sorry for, not to condemn. But one might have thought that
even if what we may call "feeling" of this were absent there would be
an intellectual understanding of the way in which it completes the
whole-heartedness just mentioned--the manner in which the writer deals
with politics, society, letters, the common ways of life, and his own
passion--this last sometimes in the fore-sometimes in the background,
but never far off. Other letters, from Horace Walpole's downwards, may
contain a panorama of life as brilliant as these give, or more
brilliant. Yet it is too frequently a panorama or a puppet show, or at
the best a marvellously acted but somewhat bloodless drama. On the
other hand, the pure passion-letters lack as a rule this
many-sidedness