it gives in the first place a rather
sophisticated enjoyment, open only to those whom the gods have made, or
who have made themselves, critical. And in the second, whether
sophisticated or not, what it gives is the enjoyment of literature not
of life:[58] whereas the direct satisfaction which genuine letters
afford is almost identical with that given by actual intercourse with
other human beings. However, it is unnecessary to "go on refining."

Perhaps indeed, after all, the artificial letters may be permitted if
only in an "utmost, last, provincial band," to add to the muster of
pleasure-giving things which epistolary literature so amply provides.
Even fiction itself, which, as has been said often, draws on this
source, cannot supply anything more "pastimeous"; even drama anything
more arresting to the attention. Indeed good letters may be said to be
constantly presenting little stories, little dramas, little
pictures--all of them sometimes not so _very_ little--which are now
practically complete; now easily filled up by any reasonable
intelligence; now perhaps tantalizingly, but all the more interestingly
enigmatic. For those people (one may or may not sympathise with them,
but they are certainly pretty numerous) who cannot take interest or can
only take a reduced interest in things that "did not really happen";
letters may be even more interesting than novels. Only to very wayward
or very unimaginative ones can they be less so, if they are in any
respect good of their kind.

One of their main attractions is, with the same caution, their
remarkable _variety_. It has been complained with a certain amount of
truth that fiction, whether in prose or verse, is a little apt to fall
into grooves: that all the histories are told, all the plays acted. This
is undoubtedly the curse of Art, and every now and then we see it
acknowledged in the most convincing manner by the frantic efforts made
to be "different." But that real things and persons are never quite
identical is not merely a philosophical doctrine but a practical fact.
The "two peas" of one saying are never so much "alike" as the "two
blades of grass" of another are unlike.

Now as letters--that is to say letters that deserve to exist at all--are
bound to reproduce the personality of their writers, it will follow that
a refreshing diversity must also belong to them. And as a matter of fact
this will be found to be the case. Even the eighteenth century--the
century