FROM THE ORIGINAL BY JARVIS IN THE COLLECTION AT STRAWBERRY HILL. From a Print in the British Museum. PREFACE. FOR the most part, the Literature of Letter-Writing, properly so-called, falls within quite modern times. From Antiquity have come down to us several Collections of "Letters"; but, with two or three notable exceptions, such only in name, they are chiefly moral or political essays, descriptive pieces, and rhetorical declamations. In Greek Literature, one of the earliest of them bears the magic name of Plato. Modern criticism, generally, holds them to be forgeries; and their intrinsic merit or interest is not so high as to make their genuineness or spuriousness matter of very great concern. Equally spurious, but more entertaining, are the Letters of the Scythian or Tartar prince, Anacharsis, the enterprising traveller of the Sixth Century, B.C.1 Next, in order of time, come the so-called Letters of Alkiphron (of the Second or Third Century of the Christian era), the most entertaining and valuable of the species. As pictures of Athenian life and manners, of the New Comedy period, high interest attaches to them; and for elegance of style, and picturesqueness of description, they have a deserved repute. Not much later, probably, were composed the Love-Letters of Aristænetus. In their day, they seem to have had some vogue. Not more, however, than the Epistles of Alkiphron do they 1 Others, of more or less fame, are those of Phalaris, the Greek prince of Agrigentum, so celebrated by the Bentley-Boyle controversy; of Theano, the wife of Pythagoras; and of Philostratus, the author of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Only the last are genuine. |