A LIST OF BOOKS - JScholarship

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 27
value of the whole collection.
This value
I take to consist in a most truthfiil conformity
of the Correspondence, in its limited degree,
with the moral and intellectual character of
the writer as displayed in the highest manifestations
of his genius.
Letters and poems
are obviously an act of the same
mind,
produced by the same law, only differing in
the appHcation to the individual or coUective
understanding.
Letters and poems may be
used indifferently as the basement of our
opinion
upon the writer's character; the
finished expression of a sentiment in the
poems, giving Hght and significance to the
rudiments of the same in the letters, and
these, again, in their incipiency and unripeness,
authenticating the exalted mood and
reattaching it to the personality
of the
writer.
The musician speaks on the note he
sings with; there is no change in the scale,
as he diminishes the volume into famiUar
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