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
successful with it long ago_?

_Very sincerely yours_,

_A. LANG_.

_To W. J. Way_, _Esq_.
_Topeka_, _Kansas_.




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 a Emilie sur la Mythologie_ are a well-
known model, but Emilie was not an imaginary correspondent. The persons