Read it through once

While her first book was passing through the press, Miss Mitford paid a series of hurried visits to London, and it was during the course of one of these visits that she was introduced to a gentleman of wide sympathy and of great culture and ability. This was Sir William Elford, one of her father’s friends, although the friendship was not of that character which would blind the one to the other’s faults and failings. He was a Fellow of the Royal and Linnæan Societies, an exhibitor in the Royal Academy, and Recorder of Plymouth, for which borough he was representative in Parliament for a number of years. At the time of this introduction he was well over sixty, a man of an age therefore with whom Miss Mitford was not so likely to be reserved as with one of fewer years. As a result of this meeting a correspondence was started which continued for many years, during which time Sir William encouraged his young friend to write freely to him on any and every topic which interested her. It is a remarkable and interesting correspondence, as the occasional extracts we propose to give will prove, although, when he came to bear his share in editing these letters, the Rev. William Harness spoke of them as possessing “hardly any merit but high, cold polish, all freshness of thought being lost in care about the expression”; and again, “I like all the letters to Sir W. Elford, which (except when she forgets whom she is writing to and is herself again) are in conventional English and almost vulgar in their endeavour to be something particularly good.” Nevertheless, he confessed later “the letters improve as I go on. Even those to Sir W. Elford get easier and better, as she became less upon punctilio and more familiar with him; in fact, as—with all her asserted deference—she felt herself more and more his superior in intellect and information.”