who wrote to Dickens for a donkey, and who said he would call for it the next day, as though Dickens kept a herd of donkeys in Tavistock Square, and could always spare one for an emergency.  There was a French gentleman who wrote to Moore, demanding a lock of Byron’s hair for a young lady, who would—­so he said—­die if she did not get it.  This was a very lamentable letter, and Moore was conjured, in the name of the young lady’s distracted family, to send the lock, and save her from the grave.  And there was a misanthrope who wrote to Peel that he was weary of the ways of men (as so, no doubt, was Peel), and who requested a hermitage in some nobleman’s park, where he might live secluded from the world.  The best begging-letter writers depend upon the element of surprise as a valuable means to their end.  I knew a benevolent old lady who, in 1885, was asked to subscribe to a fund for the purchase of “moderate luxuries” for the French soldiers in Madagascar.  “What did you do?” I asked, when informed of the incident.  “I sent the money,” was the placid reply.  “I thought I might never again have an opportunity to send money to Madagascar.”

It would be idle to deny that a word of praise, a word of thanks, sometimes a word of criticism, have been powerful factors in the lives of men of genius.  We know how profoundly Lord Byron was affected by the letter of a consumptive girl, written simply and soberly, signed with initials only, seeking no notice and giving no address; but saying in a few candid words that the writer wished before she died to thank the poet for the rapture his poems had given her.  “I look upon such a letter,” wrote Byron to Moore, “as better than a diploma from Gottingen.”  We know, too, what a splendid impetus to Carlyle was that first letter from Goethe, a letter which he confessed seemed too wonderful to be real, and more “like a message from fairyland.”  It was but a brief note after all, tepid, sensible, and egotistical; but the magic sentence, “It may be I shall yet hear much of you,” became for years an impelling force, the kind of prophecy which insured its own fulfilment.

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.”