of a
sarcastic division of mankind into "those who write to the papers and
those who do not read the letters," or to discuss what men have been
heard to say--that the people who write _to_ papers are people who have
not written _in_ them. It is quite certain that, for many years past,
the less frivolous kind of newspaper-correspondence has been of admitted
interest and importance; indeed a paper might conceivably maintain its
position after its repute has sunk in other ways, simply because more
letters of importance appear in it than in others. As a source of
illustrations of how to write and how not to write letters this modern
development of the art could hardly be quite neglected; and it offers a
curious study of various kinds. Except with very guileless writers the
character-index quality is of course less certainly present than in
letters written _not_ for publication. A man must be, in the old Greek
phrase, "either a God or a beast," if he does not prepare for print--if
not exactly with a touch of "stage-fright," at any rate with the
premeditation with which even stage-fright-free actors go on the stage.
But it requires a great master or mistress of dissimulation to write
even these letters at all frequently without a certain amount of
self-revelation. And there is perhaps no more curious and interesting
part of that most curious and interesting business of editing than
(when it is not merely tedious), the reading of offered correspondence.
There is the pure lunatic, such as the man who for years sends
despatches in a sort of cuneiform cipher, probably quite meaningless and
certainly not likely to meet with a decipherer; there is the abusive
person who (less piquantly than Reade in the letter quoted above) gives
his opinion of your paper; the volunteer-corrector of obvious misprints;
the innocent who merely wants to see his own signature in print, and who
generally tries to bribe his way into it by references to "your powerful
journal," etc. They are all there--waiting for the waste-paper basket.

VII

CONCLUSION

A few more general remarks may close this Introduction. Something on the
Art of Letter-writing and also something on its history, especially in
English, was promised. It is hoped that the promise has not been too
much falsified, at least to the extent necessary for illustration and
understanding of the specimens which should follow, and which in their
turn should illustrate it and make it more