GLIMPSES OF BENGAL

The letters translated in this book span the most productive period of my literary life, when, owing to great good fortune, I was young and less known. Youth being exuberant and leisure ample, I felt the writing of letters other than business ones to be a delightful necessity. This is a form of literary extravagance only possible when a surplus of thought and emotion accumulates. Other forms of literature remain the authors and are made public for his good; letters that have been given to private individuals once for all, are therefore characterised by the more generous abandonment.