.., and one purely moral
and intellectual, carried on for the sake of ghostly edification in
which each party has to put salt on the tails of all sorts of ideas on
all sorts of subjects." These two classes embrace, perhaps, the great
bulk of letters, but George Eliot says there is a third class to which
her correspondence with Miss Hennel belongs--one of _impulse_.
Strictly speaking, all of the letters which really belong as such to
literature come under this last head. The result of a perfect fusion
of the two other styles, they exhibit a sparkle, a pungency, and
lightness of touch, which take the curse from mere gossip, supple the
joints of intellectual disquisition, and mark unmistakably the
epistolary artist. The letter-writer, no less than the poet, is born,
not made, and his art, though for the most part unconscious, is no
less an art. The expression of every sentiment, the choice of every
word, however random it may seem, is determined for the born enditer
of epistles by a sense of fitness so exquisite that its niceties of
distinction escape analysis and only its more general principles can
be enunciated.
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