ay. The Letter on Samuel Richardson is by a lady more frequently the
author's critic than his collaborator.

INTRODUCTORY: OF MODERN ENGLISH POETRY

_To Mr. Arthur Wincott, Topeka, Kansas_.

Dear Wincott,--You write to me, from your "bright home in the setting
sun," with the flattering information that you have read my poor "Letters
to Dead Authors." You are kind enough to say that you wish I would write
some "Letters to Living Authors;" but that, I fear, is out of the
question,--for me.

A thoughtful critic in the _Spectator_ has already remarked that the
great men of the past would not care for my shadowy epistles--if they
could read them. Possibly not; but, like Prior, "I may write till they
can spell"--an exercise of which ghosts are probably as incapable as was
Matt's little Mistress of Quality. But Living Authors are very different
people, and it would be perilous, as well as impertinent, to direct one's
comments on them literally, in the French phrase, "to their address." Yet
there is no reason why a critic should not adopt the epistolary form.

Our old English essays, the papers in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, were
originally nothing but letters. The vehicle permits a touch of personal
taste, perhaps of personal prejudice. So I shall write my "Letters on
Literature," of the present and of the past, English, American, ancient,
or modern, to _you_, in your distant Kansas, or to such other
correspondents as are kind enough to read these notes.

Poetry has always the precedence in these discussions. Poor Poetry! She
is an ancient maiden of good family, and is led out first at banquets,
though many would prefer to sit next some livelier and younger Muse, the
lady of fiction, or even the chattering _soubrette_ of journalism.
_Seniores priores_: Poetry, if no longer very popular, is a dame of the
worthiest lineage, and can boast a long train of gallant admirers, dead
and gone. She has been much in courts. The old Greek tyrants loved her;
great Rhamses seated her at his right hand; every prince had his singers.
Now we dwell in an age of democracy, and Poetry wins but a feigned
respect, more out of courtesy, and for old friendship's sake, than for
liking. Though so many write verse, as in Juvenal's time, I doubt if
many read it. "None but minstrels list of sonneting." The purchasing
public, for poetry, must now consist chiefly of poets, and _they_ are
usually poor.

Can anything speak more c