To have known such men as Tennyson and Browning is indeed a rare fortune. It helps us in two ways. We are preserved from extravagant admiration, which is always stupid; and, on the other hand, we can enjoy even insignificant verses of theirs, as coming from our friends and lighting up some corner of their character. There are cases where personal acquaintance with the poets actually spoils our taste for their poetry, which we might otherwise have enjoyed; and to imagine that one knows a poet better because one has once shaken hands with him, is a fatal mistake. It would be far better to go at once to Westminster Abbey, and spend a few thoughtful moments at the tombs of such poets as Tennyson or Browning, for there, at all events, there would be no disappointment. LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS IV Authors complain, and in many cases complain justly, of the large number of letters and visits which they receive from unknown friends and distant admirers. I myself, though the subjects on which I write are not exactly popular, have been sitting at the receipt of such custom for many years. It is difficult to know what to do. To answer all the letters, even to acknowledge all the books that are sent to me from India, Australia, New Zealand, from every new sphere of influence in Africa, from America, North and South, and from the principal countries of Europe, would be physically impossible. A simple knowledge of arithmetic would teach my friends that if I were only to glance at a book in order to give an opinion, or say something pleasant about it, one hour at least of my time in the morning would certainly be consumed by every single book. Every writer imagines that he is the only one who writes a letter, asks a question, or sends a book; but he forgets that in this respect everybody has as much right as everybody else, and claims it too, unmindful of the rights of others, and quite unconscious that the sum total of such interruptions would swallow up the whole of a man’s working day. And there is this further danger: however guarded one may be in expressing one’s gratitude or one’s opinion of the merits of a book, one’s letter is apt to appear in advertisements, if only far away in India or the Colonies; nay, we often find that the copy of a book was not even sent us by the author himself, but with the author’s compliments, that is, by an enterprising publisher.