AND if this be true of such external resemblances as pictorial art is employed to produce, it is equally true of that unconscious self-portraiture, that revelation of the inner mind, which is contained in a greater or less degree in any collection of published letters. The interest which such works are intended to excite is, in the main, biographical, and their object is not merely to preserve and bring to light a number of writings of intrinsic merit and beauty, but still more, perhaps, to present to the reader a record, however imperfect, of the personal characteristics, both moral and intellectual, of the writer. But how faint and inadequate, if not incorrect, is that image of the departed, which can alone be thus reproduced! Even the original correspondence, could it be given entire in all its details (which is, for obvious reasons, impossible), *Lines in "Phantasmion." |