renzy; and we know that repose and refinement have a
tendency to develop good correspondents. Among these we may number
Edward FitzGerald, whose letters are, perhaps, the most artistic of
any that have recently appeared, and may be placed without hesitation
in the class of letters that have a high intrinsic merit independently
of the writer's extraneous reputation; for FitzGerald was a recluse
with a tinge of misanthropy, nearly unknown to the outer world, except
by one exquisite paraphrase of a Persian poem, and his popularity
rests almost entirely upon his published correspondence. Of these
letters, so excellent of their kind, can it be said that they have the
note of improvisation, that they were written for a friend's eye,
without thought or care for that ordeal of posthumous publication
which has added, as we have been told, a fresh terror to death? The
composition is exactly suited to the tone of easy, pleasant
conversation; the writing has a serene flow, with ripples of wit and
humour; sometimes occupied with East Anglian rusticities and local
colouring, sometimes with pungent literary criticisms; it is never
exuberant, but nowhere dull or commonplace; the language is concise,
with a sedulous nicety of expression. A man of delicate irony, living
apart from the rough, tumbling struggle for existence, he was in most
things the very opposite to Carlyle, whose _French Revolution_ he
admired not much, and who, he thinks, 'ought to be laughed at a
little.' Such a man was not likely to write even the most ordinary
letter without a certain degree of mental preparation, without some
elaboration of thought, or solicitude as to form and finish, for all
which processes he had ample leisure. It may be noticed that he never
condescends to the travelling journal, and that his voyaging
impressions are given in a few fine strokes; but, although he was a
home-keeping Englishman, he was free from household cares, nor did he
keep up that obligatory family correspondence which, when it is
published to exhibit the domestic habits and affections of an eminent
person, becomes ever after a dead-weight upon his biography.

In endeavouring to analyse the charm of these delightful letters, we
may suggest that they gain their special flavour from his talent for
compounding them, like a skilful _chef de cuisine_, out of various
materials or intellectual condiments assorted and dexterously blended.
He is an able and accomplished egoist, one of