文档介绍：Letters on Literature
Letters on Literature
By Andrew Lang
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Letters on Literature
DEDICATION
Dear Mr. Way,
After so many letters to people who never existed, may I venture a
short one, to a person very real to me, though I have never seen him, and
only know him by his many kindnesses? Perhaps you will add another to
these by accepting the Dedication of a little work, of a sort experimental in
English, and in prose, though Horace--in Latin and in verse--was
essful with it long ago?
Very sincerely yours,
A. LANG.
To W. J. Way, Esq. Topeka, Kansas.
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Letters on Literature
PREFACE
These Letters were originally published in the Independent of New
York. The idea of writing them occurred to the author after he had
produced "Letters to Dead Authors." That kind of Epistle was open to
the objection that nobody would write so frankly to a correspondent about
his own work, and yet it seemed that the form of Letters might be
attempted again. The Lettres e Emilie sur la Mythologie are a well-
known model, but Emilie was not an imaginary correspondent. The
persons addressed here, on the other hand, are all people of fancy--the
name of Lady Violet Lebas is an invention of Mr. Thackeray's: gifted
Hopkins is the minor poet in Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes's "Guardian
Angel." The author's object has been to discuss a few literary topics with
more freedom and personal bias than might be permitted in a graver kind
of essay. The Letter on Samuel Richardson is by a lady more frequently
the author's critic than his collaborator.
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Letters on Literature
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 though