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Carlyle was susceptible to praise, though few readers had the temerity to offer it. We find him, after the publication of the “French Revolution,” writing urbanely to a young and unknown admirer; “I do not blame your enthusiasm.” But when a less happily-minded youth sent him some suggestions for the reformation of society, Carlyle, who could do all his own grumbling, returned his disciple’s complaints with this laconic denial: “A pack of damned nonsense, you unfortunate fool.” It sounds unkind; but we must remember that there were six posts a day in London, that “each post brought its batch of letters,” and that nine tenths of these letters–so Carlyle says–were from strangers, demanding autographs, and seeking or proffering advice. One man wrote that he was distressingly ugly, and asked what should he do about it. “So profitable have my epistolary fellow creatures grown to me in these years,” notes the historian in his journal, “that when the postman leaves nothing, it may well be felt as an escape.”

The most patient correspondent known to fame was Sir Walter Scott, though Lord Byron surprises us at times by the fine quality of his good nature. His letters are often petulant,–especially when Murray has sent him tragedies instead of tooth-powder; but he is perhaps the only man on record who received with perfect equanimity the verses of an aspiring young poet, wrote him the cheerfullest of letters, and actually invited him to breakfast. The letter is still extant; but the verses were so little the precursor of fame that the youth’s subsequent history is to this day unknown. It was with truth that Byron said of himself: “I am really a civil and polite person, and do hate pain when it can be avoided.”

Scott was also civil and polite, and his heart beat kindly for every species of bore. As a consequence, the world bestowed its tediousness upon him, to the detriment of his happiness and health. Ingenious jokers translated his verses into Latin, and then wrote to accuse him of plagiarizing from Vida. Proprietors of patent medicines offered him fabulous sums to link his fame with theirs. Modest ladies proposed that he should publish their effusions as his own, and share the profits. Poets demanded that he should find publishers for their epics, and dramatists that he should find managers for their plays. Critics pointed out to him his anachronisms, and well-intentioned readers set him right on points of morality and law. When he was old, and ill, and ruined, there was yet no respite from the curse of correspondents. A year before his death he wrote dejectedly in his journal:–“A fleece of letters which must be answered, I suppose; all from persons–my zealous admirers, of course–who expect me to make up whatever losses have been their lot, raise them to a desirable rank, and stand their protector and patron. I must, they take it for granted, be astonished at having an address from a stranger. On the contrary, I should be astonished if one of these extravagant epistles came from anybody who had the least title to enter into correspondence.”

And there are people who believe, or who pretend to believe, that fallen human nature can be purged and amended by half-rate telegrams, and a telephone ringing in the hall. Rather let us abandon illusions, and echo Carlyle’s weary cry, when he heard the postman knocking at his door: “Just Heavens! Does literature lead to this!”