The Art of Letter Writing.

Mr. Copeland began his lecture last evening by taking up in brief detail the lately published correspondence of Matthew Arnold, Coleridge, Edward Fitzgerald, Flaubert, and Stevenson. The Coleridge volumes contain the fullest record yet printed of the poet's life, the long struggle with opium, and an indolent and irresolute nature. Arnold's letters also are largely biographical by intention, since Arnold like Thackeray was unwilling to have any formal life of himself published. A good many dry and trivial details, as well as references to persons still living, might well have been omitted; and the finical hypercritical streak in the great critic comes to the surface with unpleasant frequency. But the collection as a whole shows Arnold in an engaging light as son, brother, husband and father; the glimpses of English scenery are many and charming; and the governing bent of Arnold's mind is characteristically displayed. The letters of Flaubert note in the main artistic procedure and the painful battle of the artist with the elements of his craft. Stevenson also is revealed as a laboring artist, but the vivid epistles written from Samoa to Mr. Sidney Colvin exhibit varied and significant traits of the heroic yet very human man as well as of the brilliant writer waging an unequal warfare with life.

The letters of Edward Fitzgerald, said Mr. Copeland, come nearer the epistolary ideal than any of those in the list just enumerated. The late Alexander Dumas is reported to have said that a play should contain a picture, an ideal, and a judgment. One of these elements, the picture-said the speaker-should have a place in the ideal letter. It should also, if may be, contain an incident; and it should be composed with an exquisite union of correctness and ease. The letters of the poet Cowper are, on the whole, the best in the language, and Fitzgerald's often approach these in merit.