He admits that he likes your books, or at least—­here is a veiled reproach—­that he “has liked the earlier ones”; he assumes, unwarrantably, that you are familiar with his favourite authors; and he believes that it would be for you “an interesting and congenial task” to trace the “curious connection” between American fiction and the stock exchange.  Sometimes, with thinly veiled sarcasm, he demands that you should “enlighten his dulness,” and say why you gave your book its title.  If he cannot find a French word you have used in his “excellent dictionary,” he thinks it worth while to write and tell you so.  He fears you do not “wholly understand or appreciate the minor poets of your native land”; and he protests, more in sorrow than in anger, against certain innocent phrases with which you have disfigured “your otherwise graceful pages.”

Now it must be an impulse not easily resisted which prompts people to this gratuitous expression of their opinions.  They take a world of trouble which they could so easily escape; they deem it their privilege to break down the barriers which civilization has taught us to respect; and if they ever find themselves repaid, it is assuredly by something remote from the gratitude of their correspondents.  Take, for example, the case of Mr. Peter Bayne, journalist, and biographer of Martin Luther, who wrote to Tennyson,—­with whom he was unacquainted,—­protesting earnestly against a line in “Lady Clare":—­

   “‘If I’m a beggar born,’ she said.”

It was Mr. Bayne’s opinion that such an expression was not only exaggerated, inasmuch as the nurse was not, and never had been, a beggar; but, coming from a child to her mother, was harsh and unfilial.  “The criticism of my heart,” he wrote, “tells me that Lady Clare could never have said that.”

Tennyson was perhaps the last man in Christendom to have accepted the testimony of Mr. Bayne’s heart-throbs.  He intimated with some asperity that he knew better than anyone else what Lady Clare did say, and he pointed out that she had just cause for resentment against a mother who had placed her in such an embarrassing position.  The controversy is one of the drollest in literature; but what is hard to understand is the mental attitude of a man—­and a reasonably busy man—­who could attach so much importance to Lady Clare’s remarks, and who could feel himself justified in correcting them.

Begging letters form a class apart.  They represent a great and growing industry, and they are too purposeful to illustrate the abstract passion for correspondence.  Yet marvellous things have been done in this field.  There is an ingenuity, a freshness and fertility of device about the begging letter which lifts it often to the realms of genius.  Experienced though we all are, it has surprises in store for every one of us.  Seasoned though we are, we cannot read without appreciation of its more daring and fantastic flights.  There was, for instance, a very imperative person