of rule and class, of objection to "the streaks of the tulip,"
of machine-made verse, etc.,--has, except in the case of letters
artificially made to pattern, shown this signally.

One last recommendation. A bad letter-writer is sure to betray himself
almost everywhere, and letters are as a rule short. Most people must
have attempted books of other classes, especially novels, and hoping
against hope turned them over, and dipped and peeped till repeated
disappointment compelled the traditional flinging to the other end of
the room, or simply dropping the thing in less explosive weariness. You
never need do that with letters. If a man's letters are not worth
reading you will "have a confessing criminal" at once; if they are he
will hardly be able to keep the quality latent whenever he goes beyond
the shortest business note. The man of one book, in the sense of having
read it, is proverbially formidable but in fact too frequently a bore.
The man of one letter, in the sense of having written a good one and no
more, probably never existed.[59]

APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION

I

GREEK LETTERS.--SYNESIUS (_c._ 375-430)

English readers may know something, from Kingsley's
_Hypatia_, of the excellent bishop of Ptolemais who, at the
meeting of the fourth and fifth centuries, combined the
functions of neo-Platonist philosopher, Christian prelate,
country gentleman, and most efficient yeomanry officer
against the ancestors, or at least forerunners, of the
present Senussi, who were constantly raiding his diocese and
its neighbourhood. These two letters--to Hypatia herself and
to his brother--show him in different, but in each case
favourable lights.

LETTER CVIII. (TO HIS BROTHER)

I have already got 300 spears and as many cutlasses, though I had, even
before, only half a score two-edged swords: and these long flat blades
are not forged with us. But I think the cutlasses can be struck more
vigorously into the enemies' bodies, and so we shall use them. And at
need we shall have bludgeons--for the wild olive trees are good with
us.[60] Some of our men have single-bladed axes at their belts with
which those of us who have no defensive armour shall chop their[61]
shields and make them fight on equal terms. The fight will, at a guess,
come off to-morrow: for when some of the foe had fallen in with scouts
of ours and pursuing them at their best speed had found them too good to