eauty,
wit, or genius; and now left shivering, poor, thin, transparent ghosts
in those faded, thrice-crossed paper rags! I feel rebuked for my
inhuman irreverence. Out upon it! I will speak only pious words about
the letters of dead folk.

But, to make up for such good feeling, let me say what I think about the
letters of persons now living, in good health, my contemporaries and
very liable to outlive me. For if I am to praise the letters which my
soul loves, I must be plain also about those which my soul abhors.

And to begin with the worst. The letter we all hate most, I feel quite
sure, is the nice letter of a person whom we think horrid. Some beings
have the disquieting peculiarity, which crowns their other bad
qualities, of being able to write more pleasingly than they speak, look,
or (we suppose) act; revealing, pen in hand, human characteristics,
sometimes alas! human charms, high principle, pathetic sentiment, poetic
insight, sensitiveness to nature, things we are bound to love, but
particularly do not wish to love in _them_. This villainous faculty,
which puts us in a rage and forces us to be amiable, is almost enough to
make us like, or at all events condone, its contrary in our own dear
friends. I mean that marvellous transformation to which so many of those
we love are subject; creatures, supple, subtle and sympathetic in the
flesh, in speech and glance and deed, becoming stiff, utterly impervious
and heartless once they set to writing; lovely Melusinas turning, not
into snakes, but into some creature like a dried cod. This is much
worse with persons of our nation than with our foreign friends, owing to
that fine contempt for composition, grammar, and punctuation which marks
the well-bred Briton, and especially the well-bred Briton's wife and
daughter. As a result, there is a positive satisfaction, a sense of
voluminous well-being, derived from a letter which is merely explicit,
consecutive, and garnished with occasional stops. This question of
punctuation is a serious one. Speaking personally, I find I cannot enjoy
the ineffable sense of resting in the affection and wisdom of my friend,
if I am jerked breathless from noun to noun and from verb to verb, or
set hunting desperately after predicates. Worse even is the lack of
explicitness. The peace and trustfulness, the respite given by
friendship from what Whitman calls "the terrible doubt of appearances"
are incompatible with brief and casual utterance, rag