Of human notabilities men of letters are the most interesting, and this arises mainly from their outspokenness as a class.  The writer makes himself known in a way that no other man makes himself known.  The distinguished engineer may be as great a man as the distinguished writer, but as a rule we know little about him.  We see him invent a locomotive, or bridge a strait, but there our knowledge stops; we look at the engine, we walk across the bridge, we admire the ingenuity of the one, we are grateful for the conveniency of the other, but to our apprehensions the engineer is undeciphered all the while.  Doubtless he reveals himself in his work as the poet reveals himself in his song, but then this revelation is made in a tongue unknown to the majority.  After all, we do not feel that we get nearer him.  The man of letters, on the other hand, is outspoken, he takes you into his confidence, he keeps no secret from you.  Be you beggar, be you king, you are welcome.  He is no respecter of persons.  He gives without reserve his fancies, his wit, his wisdom; he makes you a present of all that the painful or the happy years have brought him.  The writer makes his reader heir in full.  Men of letters are a peculiar class.  They are never commonplace or prosaic—­at least those of them that mankind care for.  They are airy, wise, gloomy, melodious spirits.  They give us the language we speak, they furnish the subjects of our best talk.  They are full of generous impulses and sentiments, and keep the world young.  They have said fine things on every phase of human experience.  The air is full of their voices.  Their books are the world’s holiday and playground, and into these neither care, nor the dun, nor despondency can follow the enfranchised man.  Men of letters forerun science as the morning star the dawn.  Nothing has been invented, nothing has been achieved, but has gleamed a bright-coloured Utopia in the eyes of one or the other of these men.  Several centuries before the Great Exhibition of 1851 rose in Hyde Park, a wondrous hall of glass stood, radiant in sunlight, in the verse of Chaucer.  The electric telegraph is not so swift as the flight of Puck.  We have not yet realised the hippogriff of Ariosto.  Just consider what a world this would be if ruled by the best thoughts of men of letters!  Ignorance would die at once, war would cease, taxation would be lightened, not only every Frenchman, but every man in the world, would have his hen in the pot.  May would not marry January.  The race of lawyers and physicians would be extinct.  Fancy a world the affairs of which are directed by Goethe’s wisdom and Goldsmith’s heart!  In such a case, methinks the millennium were already come.  Books are a finer world within the world.  With books are connected all my desires and aspirations.  When I go to my long sleep, on a book will my head be pillowed.  I care for no other fashion of greatness.  I’d as lief not be remembered at all as remembered in connection