Bible studies, contributions chiefly from papyri and ... - Predestination

12 BIBLE STUDIES. [198, 199^
the more important, the more personal, are fit for printing at
all. The public voice of the market-place and the confidential
one of private correspondence are, and always continue to
be, very different." Herder,^ in these v^ords, which are a
classical description of the true idea of a letter, claims that
his book has, in fact, the character of actual letters, but is
nevertheless quite well aware that a printed (that is, accord-
ing to the context, a literary) letter is essentially different
from a letter that is actually such.
It is easy to understand how the epistle became a
favourite form of published literature in almost all literary
nations. There could hardly be a more convenient form.
The extraordinary convenience of it lay in the fact that
it was, properly speaking, so altogether " unhterary," that,
in fact, it did not deserve to be called a " form " at all.
One needed but to label an address on any piece of tittle-
tattle, and lo ! one
had achieved what else could have been
accomplished only by a conscientious adherence to the strict
rules of artistic form. Neither as to expression nor contents
does the epistle make any higher pretensions. The writer
could, in the matter of style, write as he pleased, and the
address on the letter became a protective mark for thoughts
that would have been too silly for a poem, and too paltry
for an essay. The epistle, if we disregard the affixed
address, need l)e no more than, say a feuilleton or a causerie.
The zenith of epistolography may always be looked upon as
assuredly indicating the decline of literature ; literature becomes
decadent—Alexandrian, so to speak—and although
epistles may have been composed and published by great
creative spirits, still the derivative character of the move-
ment cannot be questioned :
even
the great will want to
gossip, to lounge, to take it easy for once. Their epistles
may be good, but the epistle in general, as a literary phenomenon,
is light ware indeed.
6. Of collections of letters, bearing the name of wellknown
poets and philosophers, we have, indeed, a great
1 Briefe, das titudiuvi dcr Tlwologie betreffend, Third Part, Frankfurt
and Leipzig, 1790, Preface to tl^e first edition, pp. i.-iii.