The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-06-15
LOST ART OF LETTER WHITING.
Peculiarities of Some of the Masters of
Epistolary Style.


letters are extant in our generation,
they probably pass between men and
women who, for some other reason
than Intervening space, cannot meet
Fitzgerald was the last letter writer
because he hated locomotion. 'Soci-
ETY. journals do. roughly, the work
of Walpole and of Lady Mary Wort
ley Montagu. A recently published
volume contains letters from Gray,
Lady Mary, Swift, Johnson, Gibbon,
Charles Lamb, Fitzgerald and Cow
per- OF these Mr.. Bailey, perhaps,
thinks Cowper the chief, an opinion
held by excellent judges, but not cas-
lily accepted. Cowper may, in his day,
write like Miss Austen, but he mas
little but trivialties to write about
His description of a canvassing pom
tician is worthy of Miss Austen, al
most. He is easy, unaffected, gently
witty: unlike Pope, he has not the
printers devil in his eye, but he is
rather tame. Gray is letter writer
for the scholar the lover of nature and
the recluse, the moralist and the crit
ic. But Lady Mary is for the lover
be more entertaining than the letters
of this born whig to her sister, the eX-
lied duchess of Mar. To her she gives
all the gossip about Sophia the
witty worthless duke of Wharton;
about her own unfeeling ballads on
ldQleS OIL Quality Juicy say lltLlS III 49,
heart or her decency), about maids or
honor and their FRANKS; about 40 as
the fashionable age" for women;
about her awful scrape with the
Frenchman and the South sea invest
ment. Here we find LAZY Mary frank
ly exhibiting herself in a real natural
fright Then there are her relations
with Pope and her travels and every
thought of a woman who was toast
among wits and wit among toasts
She left her mantle to her granddaugh-
ter, Lady Louisa Stuart, who knew
the secret tattle about Marlborough
and Congreve from a sure hand and
lived to see the exhibition of 1851.
When, If ever, the choice of Lady
Louisas letters are published Ga thing
| probably we shall have a. treat N
| deed A woman of masculine 1ntell1-
| gence and courage witness her intro
| duction of inoculation), an observant,
| affectionatte, highly Independent lady
| of wit and of reading, Lady Mary is
| the paragon of her sex in letter writ
| ing, but Lady Louisa comes near her
| The endless charm of Swift's letters
lies in his mystery. What manner OF
man, au fond, was Swift? The apos-
tate politician" Che ceased to be OH
| cially whig), 1.-The ribald priest, the
| periured lover, a heart burning with
| hatred against the whole human race,
a mind stored with images from the
dunghll and the lazar Eouse' tahd
| other houses of slender repute)-such
is Macaulays Swift. His estimate is
true, but not the whole truth AS for
| changed sides. We believe, however.
that Swift was ready to go all
| lengths. Jonathan knows nothing of
this (the restoratiom, but he sus-
poets it, and, by George, Webb will
take an archbishopric, and Jonathan
haf will
archbishopric from James, l warrant
me. gladly enough So says ST. John,
| after dinner, in "Esmund;" but a let
ter of Swift's to Bolingbroke, just after
the fatal death of Queen Anne (Which
he later used as date), persuades
us that Jonathan did know: he would
| have been archbishop of York; After
bury of Canterbury; and he would
have been wretched. AS to 'ribald
priest" look at the Tale of TUB,
the amusing essay on the expectation
of the last day, the awful poem on that
conclusion of human absurdltles. !.
damn such fools; go, go; you're DIT!
Swift's essays against freethinking are
the most amusing satire, and the best
| deserved in our language. But he was
"a ribald priest" AS for "a perjured
lover" think of Vanessal. But at
lovers perjuries. love laughs JoVe
has been there" while Swift's own re-
|
ed, made him, as the archbishop said.
1.-The most miserable man on earth; but
YOU must never ask him why Mankind
turns away from that unspeakable
wretchedness, the root of Swift's mis-
anthropy For it is not only Macaulay,
but Swift himself, who declares that
he has "a heart burning with hatred
against the whole human race. But
then Swift expressly adds not against
individuals. That saeva indignatio was
now a torment, now it aWoke laugh-
ter as of a soul in hell.
On the other hand, Swft's friendships
were ardent. He really loved Pope (not
an amiable person) and Stella, Harley
and Bolingbroke--he could be faithful
to both. Gay he protected with faith
erly affection. Himself a tyrant often
| every act of injustice not his own drove
Swift to redress it. His horror and
anger against Irish mistreatment is not
| affected, is not the mere wrath of the
man out of place-the mere search for
charges against his opponents He
stoops to solicit the interest Of the
Hanoverian queen, and that not merely
for the purpose of slipping back into
favor. We do not regard him, like Mr.
Bailey, as 1.-The most Independent who
ever lived" Rather, We fear, he was
of the species of the bullying, surly
snob. He bullied dukes and lectured
great ladies' that was one Way OIL Sc
curing his hold over them, and of per
suading himself that a snob he was not
A gentleman DULLES nobody; Swift
bullied everybody, till he was faced by
the man who said, Your uncle gave
: you the education of a dog? Then, sir
you have not the gratitude of dog
: Colonel Esmond used Swift as Swift de
served to be used. AS to his lazar
house images, who can deny, who car
fafa
: depth of misery, and out of nature moi
always, or not wholly, sane. As for his
parsimony, he was great and generous
giver, not on impulse, but on system
> yet the memory of his early depend.
: ence and poverty kept the subject o.
money on the surface of his mind. H
was economical without dignity He ii
so full of mystery, and of contradic
ton, his letters are so rich in every
| aspect of his dark kaleidoscopic char