Other famous or eminent critics whose writings you may read some day are: Matthew Arnold, a poet as well as critic, whose father was the Dr. Arnold of Engby School that you have read about in _Tom Brown's School Days_; a Frenchman, Sainte-Beuve, one of the clearest, and most delightful of critical writers; another Frenchman, H. A. Taine; and a Dane, Georg Brandes, a learned writer, who was one of the first to show how close the connection is between one literature and another, especially in European literatures. {215} CHAPTER XXXI LETTERS AND LETTER WRITERS: PEPYS AND OTHER DIARISTS Cowper, the poet, who wrote _John Gilpin_, is a delightful letter writer. He had a number of pets living with him, and these little friends of his, goldfinches, pigeons, a cat and a kitten, often make their appearance in Cowper's letters to his correspondents. Part of one of his letters contains a description of the kitten. "I have a kitten, the drollest of all creatures that ever wore a cat's skin. Her gambols are not to be described, and would be incredible, if they could. In point of size she is likely to be a kitten always, being extremely small of her age, but time, I suppose, that spoils everything, will make her also a cat. You will see her, I hope, before that melancholy period shall arrive, for no wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter will compensate the loss of her present hilarity. She is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know that you will delight in her." Sometimes Cowper used to write his letters in rhyme. The paragraph that follows will make anyone who reads it feel like dancing: "I have heard before of a room with a floor laid upon springs, and such like things, with so {216} much art in every part, that when you went in you were forced to begin a minuet pace, with an air and a grace, swimming about, now in and now out, with a deal of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe, or string, or anything such thing; and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and as you advance, will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to an end of what I have penn'd, which that you may do, ere Madam and you are quite worn out with jigging about I take my leave, and here you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, from your humble me--W.C."