Our old English essays, the papers in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, were
originally nothing but letters. The vehicle permits a touch of personal
taste, perhaps of personal prejudice. So I shall write my "Letters on
Literature," of the present and of the past, English, American, ancient,
or modern, to _you_, in your distant Kansas, or to such other
correspondents as are kind enough to read these notes.

Poetry has always the precedence in these discussions. Poor Poetry! She
is an ancient maiden of good family, and is led out first at banquets,
though many would prefer to sit next some livelier and younger Muse, the
lady of fiction, or even the chattering _soubrette_ of journalism.
_Seniores priores_: Poetry, if no longer very popular, is a dame of the
worthiest lineage, and can boast a long train of gallant admirers, dead
and gone. She has been much in courts. The old Greek tyrants loved her;
great Rhamses seated her at his right hand; every prince had his singers.
Now we dwell in an age of democracy, and Poetry wins but a feigned
respect, more out of courtesy, and for old friendship's sake, than for
liking. Though so many write verse, as in Juvenal's time, I doubt if
many read it. "None but minstrels list of sonneting." The purchasing
public, for poetry, must now consist chiefly of poets, and _they_ are
usually poor.

Can anything speak more clearly of the decadence of the art than the
birth of so many poetical "societies"? We have the Browning Society, the
Shelley Society, the Shakespeare Society, the Wordsworth Society--lately
dead. They all demonstrate that people have not the courage to study
verse in solitude, and for their proper pleasure; men and women need
confederates in this adventure. There is safety in numbers, and, by dint
of tea-parties, recitations, discussions, quarrels and the like, Dr.