Chapter III: Part 3

I found here a Number of Tait's Magazine for August last, containing a paper on Southey, Wordsworth, etc., by De Quincey. Incomplete and disproportioned like his other papers: but containing two noble passages: one, on certain years of his own Life when Opium shut him out from the world; the other, on Southey's style: in which he tells a truth which is obvious, directly it is told. Tait seems to be very well worth a shilling a month: that is the price of him, I see. You have bought Carlyle's Miscellanies, have you not? I long to get them: but one must wait till they are out of print before the Dublin booksellers shall have heard of them. Now here is really a very long letter, and what is more, written with a pen of my own mending--more consolatory to me than to you. Mr. Macnish's inscription {65} for Milton is--

His lofty spirit was the home
Of inspirations high,
A mighty temple whose great dome
Was hidden in the sky.

Who Mr. Macnish is, I don't know. Didn't he write some Essays on Drunkenness once? or on Dreams?

Farewell for the present, my dear Sir. We shall soon shake hands again. Ever yours,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, [4 _April_, 1840]

MY DEAR ALLEN,

. . . The country is now showing symptoms of greenness and warmth. Yesterday I walked (not a common thing for me) eleven miles; partly over a heath, covered with furze bushes just come out into bloom, whose odour the fresh wind blew into my face. Such a day it was, only not so warm as when you and I used to sit on those rocks overlooking the sea at Tenby, just eight years ago. I am afraid you are growing too good a Christian for me, Master Allen, if you know what I mean by that. Don't be alarmed however. I have just read the first number of Dickens' new work {66a}: it does not promise much, I think.

Love to all Coram Street. {66b}

_To Frederic Tennyson_.

THE CORPORATE TOWN OF BEDFORD, _June_ 7, 1840.

DEAR FREDERIC,

Your letter dated from the Eternal City on the 15th of May reached me here two days ago. Perhaps you have by this time left Naples to which you bid me direct: or will have left it by the time my letter gets there. . . . Our letters are dated from two very different kinds of places: but perhaps equally well suited to the genius of the two men. For I am becoming more hebete every hour: and have not even the ambition to go up to London all this spring to see the Exhibitions, etc. I live in general quietly at my brother-in-law's in Norfolk {67} and I look with tolerable composure on vegetating there for some time to come, and in due time handing out my eldest nieces to waltz, etc., at the County Balls. People affect to talk of this kind of life as very beautiful and philosophical: but I don't: men ought to have an ambition to stir, and travel, and fill their heads and senses: but so it is. Enough of what is now generally called the subjective style of writing. This word has made considerable progress in England during the year you have been away, so that people begin to fancy they understand what it means. I have been striving at it, because it is a very _sine qua non_ condition in a book which I have just been reading, Eastlake's translation of Goethe's Theory of Colours. I recommend it to you, when you can get hold of it. Come back to England quick and read my copy. Goethe is all in opposition to Newton: and reduces the primitive colours to two. Whewell, I believe, does not patronise it: but it is certainly very Baconically put together. While you are wandering among ruins, waterfalls, and temples, and contemplating them as you sit in your lodgings, I poke about with a book and a colour- box by the side of the river Ouse--quiet scenery enough--and make horrible sketches. The best thing to me in Italy would be that you are there. But I hope you will soon come home and install yourself again in Mornington Crescent. I have just come from Leamington: while there, I met Alfred by chance: we made two or three pleasant excursions together: to Stratford upon Avon and Kenilworth, etc. Don't these names sound very thin amid your warm southern nomenclature? But I'll be bound you would be pleased to exchange all your fine burnt up places for a look at a Warwickshire pasture every now and then during these hot days. . . .

The sun shines very bright, and there is a kind of bustle in these clean streets, because there is to be a grand True Blue dinner in the town Hall. Not that I am going: in an hour or two I shall be out in the fields rambling alone. I read Burnet's History--ex pede Herculem. Well, say as you will, there is not, and never was, such a country as Old England--never were there such a Gentry as the English. They will be the distinguishing mark and glory of England in History, as the Arts were of Greece, and War of Rome. I am sure no travel would carry me to any land so beautiful, as the good sense, justice, and liberality of my good countrymen make this. And I cling the closer to it, because I feel that we are going down the hill, and shall perhaps live ourselves to talk of all this independence as a thing that has been. To none of which you assent perhaps. At all events, my paper is done, and it is time to have done with this solemn letter. I can see you sitting at a window that looks out on the bay of Naples, and Vesuvius with a faint smoke in the distance: a half-naked man under you cutting up watermelons, etc. Haven't I seen it all in Annuals, and in the Ballet of Massaniello long ago?

_To John Allen_.

BOULGE HALL, _Sunday_, _July_ 12/40.

MY DEAR JOHN ALLEN,

I wrote a good bit of a letter to you three weeks ago: but, being non- plussed suddenly, tore it up. Lusia says she has had a letter from Mrs. Allen, telling how you had a troublesome and even dangerous passage to Tenby: but that there you arrived at last. And there I suppose you are. The _veteris vestigia flammae_, or old pleasant recollections of our being together at that place make me begin another sheet to you. I am almost convicted in my own mind of ingratitude for not having travelled long ago to Pembrokeshire, to show my most kind friends of Freestone that I remember their kindness, and that they made my stay so pleasant as to make me wish to test their hospitality again. Nothing but my besetting indolence (the strongest thing about me) could have prevented my doing this. I should like much to see Mr. and Mrs. Allen again, and Carew Castle, and walk along the old road traversed by you and me several times between Freestone and Tenby. Does old Penelly Top stand where it did, faintly discernible in these rainy skies? Do you sit ever upon that rock that juts out by Tenby harbour, where you and I sat one day seven years ago, and quoted G. Herbert? Lusia tells me also that nice Mary Allen is to be married to your brother--Charles, I think. She is really one of the pleasantest remembrances of womanhood I have. I suppose she sits still in an upper room, with an old turnip of a watch (tell her I remember this) on the table beside her as she reads wholesome books. As I write, I remember different parts of the house and the garden, and the fields about. Is it absolutely _that_ Mary Allen that is to become Mrs. Charles Allen? Pray write, and let me hear of this from yourself. Another thing also: are you to become our Rector in Sussex? This is another of Lusia's scandals. I rather hope it is true: but not quite. Lusia is pretty well: better, I think, than when she first came down from London. . . . She makes herself tolerably happy down here: and wishes to exert herself: which is the highest wish a FitzGerald can form. I go on as usual, and in a way that needs no explanation to you: reading a little, drawing a little, playing a little, smoking a little, etc. I have got hold of Herodotus now: the most interesting of all Historians. But I find the disadvantage of being so ill-grounded and bad a scholar: I can get at the broad sense: but all the delicacies (in which so much of the beauty and character of an author lie) escape me sadly. The more I read, the more I feel this. But what does it all signify? Time goes on, and we get older; and whether my idleness comprehends the distinctions of the 1st and 2nd Aorist will not be noted much in the Book of Life, either on this or the other side of the leaf. Here is a letter written on this Sunday Night, July 12, 1840. And it shall go to-morrow. My kind remembrances to Mrs. Allen: and (I beg you to transmit them) to all my fore-known friends at Freestone. And believe me yours now as I have been and hope to be ever affectionately,

E. FITZGERALD.

I shall be here till the end of the month.

N.B. I am growing bald.

BOULGE, _July_ 25/40.

MY DEAR FELLOW,

Many thanks for your kind long letter. It brought me back to the green before the house at Freestone, and the old schoolroom in it. I have always felt within myself that if ever I did go again to Freestone, I should puzzle myself and every one else by bringing back old associations among existing things: I should have felt awkward. The place remains quite whole in my mind: Anne Allen's damask cheek forming part of the colouring therein. I remember a little well somewhere in the woods about a mile from the house: and those faint reports of explosions from towards Milford, etc., which we used to hear when we all walked out together. You are to thank Mary Allen for her kind wishes: and tell her she need not doubt that I wish her all good things. I enclose you as you see a little drawing of a Suffolk farm house close here: copied from a sketch of poor Mr. Nursey. If you think it worth giving to Mary Allen, do: it seems, and perhaps is, very namby-pamby to send this: but she and I used to talk of drawings together: and this will let her know that I go on just the same as I did eight years ago. N.B. It is not intended as a nuptial present.

Now, you need not answer this letter: as you have done remarkably well already. I am living (did I tell you this before?) at a little cottage close by the lawn gates, where I have my books, a barrel of beer which I tap myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me. I have also just concocted two gallons of Tar water under the directions of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a careful skimming: and then drunk by those who can and will. It is to be tried first on my old woman: if she survives, I am to begin: and it will then gradually spread into the Parish, through England, Europe, etc., 'as the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.' Good people here are much scandalized at Thirlwall's being made a Bishop: Isabella {73a} brought home a report from a clergyman that Thirlwall had so bad a character at Trinity that many would not associate with him. I do not think however that I would have made him Bishop: I am all for good and not great Bishops. Old Evans {73b} would have done better. I am become an Oxford High Church Divine after Newman: whose sermons are the best that ever were written in my judgment. Cecil I have read: and liked for his good sense. Is the croft at Tenby still green: and does Mary Allen take a turn on it in a riding habit as of old? And I remember a ravine on the horn of the bay opposite the town where the sea rushes up. I mean as you go on past the croft. I can walk there as in a dream. I see Thackeray's book {73c} announced as about to be published, and I hear Spedding has written a Review of Carlyle's Revolution in the Edinburgh. I don't know a book more certain to evaporate away from posterity than that, except it be supported by his other works. Parts may perhaps be found two hundred years hence and translated into Erse by some inverted Macpherson. 'These things seem strange,' says Herodotus, {73d} [Greek text]. Herodotus makes few general assertions: so when he does make them, they tell. I could talk more to you, but my paper is out. John Allen, I rejoice in you.

_To Bernard Barton_.

BEDFORD, _Aug_. 31/40.

DEAR SIR,

I duly received your letter. I am just returned from staying three days at a delightful Inn by the river Ouse, where we always go to fish. I dare say I have told you about it before. The Inn is the cleanest, the sweetest, the civillest, the quietest, the liveliest, and the cheapest that ever was built or conducted. Its name, the Falcon of Bletsoe. On one side it has a garden, then the meadows through which winds the Ouse: on the other, the public road, with its coaches hurrying on to London, its market people halting to drink, its farmers, horsemen, and foot travellers. So, as one's humour is, one can have whichever phase of life one pleases: quietude or bustle; solitude or the busy hum of men: one can sit in the principal room with a tankard and a pipe and see both these phases at once through the windows that open upon either. But through all these delightful places they talk of leading railroads: a sad thing, I am sure: quite impolitic. But Mammon is blind.

I went a week ago to see Luton, Lord Bute's place; filled with very fine pictures, of which I have dreamt since. It is the gallery in England that I most wish to see again: but I by no means say it is the most valuable. A great many pictures seemed to me misnamed--especially Correggio has to answer for some he never painted.

I am thinking of going to Naseby for a little while: after which I shall return here: and very likely find my way back to Norfolk before long. At all events, the middle of October will find me at Boulge, unless the Fates are very contrary.

_To Samuel Laurence_. {75}

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, _Nov_. 9/40.

DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . We have had much rain which has hindered the sporting part of our company: but has not made much difference to me. One or two sunshiny days have made me say within myself, 'how felicitously and at once would Laurence hit off an outline in this clear atmosphere.' For this fresh sunlight is not a mere dead medium of light, but is so much vital champagne both to sitter and to artist. London will become worse as it becomes bigger, which it does every hour.

I don't see much prospect of my going to Cumberland this winter: though I should like to go snipe-shooting with that literary shot James Spedding. Do you mean to try and go up Skiddaw? You will get out upon it from your bedroom window: so I advise you to begin before you go down to breakfast. There is a mountain called Dod, which has felt me upon its summit. It is not one of the highest in that range. Remember me to Grisedale Pike; a very well-bred mountain. If you paint--put him not only in a good light, but to leeward of you in a strong current of air. . . .

Farewell for the present.

_To F. Tennyson_.

LONDON, _Jan_. 16, 1841.

DEAR FREDERIC,

I have just concluded, with all the throes of imprudent pleasure, the purchase of a large picture by Constable, of which, if I can continue in the mood, I will enclose you a sketch. It is very good: but how you and Morton would abuse it! Yet this, being a sketch, escapes some of Constable's faults, and might escape some of your censures. The trees are not splashed with that white sky-mud, which (according to Constable's theory) the Earth scatters up with her wheels in travelling so briskly round the sun; and there is a dash and felicity in the execution that gives one a thrill of good digestion in one's room, and the thought of which makes one inclined to jump over the children's heads in the streets. But if you could see my great enormous Venetian Picture you would be extonished. Does the thought ever strike you, when looking at pictures in a house, that you are to run and jump at one, and go right through it into some behind-scene world on the other side, as Harlequins do? A steady portrait especially invites one to do so: the quietude of it ironically tempts one to outrage it: one feels it would close again over the panel, like water, as if nothing had happened. That portrait of Spedding, for instance, which Laurence has given me: not swords, nor cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan butting at it, could, I feel sure, discompose that venerable forehead. No wonder that no hair can grow at such an altitude: no wonder his view of Bacon's virtue is so rarefied that the common consciences of men cannot endure it. Thackeray and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea of Spedding's forehead: we find it somehow or other in all things, just peering out of all things: you see it in a milestone, Thackeray says. He also draws the forehead rising with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the lake of Geneva. We have great laughing over this. The forehead is at present in Pembrokeshire, I believe: or Glamorganshire: or Monmouthshire: it is hard to say which. It has gone to spend its Christmas there.

[A water-colour sketch of Constable's picture.]

This you see is a sketch of my illustrious new purchase. The two animals in the water are cows: that on the bank a dog: and that in the glade of the wood a man or woman as you may choose. I can't say my drawing gives you much idea of my picture, except as to the composition of it: and even that depends on the colour and disposition of light and shade. The effect of the light breaking under the trees is very beautiful in the original: but this can only be given in water-colours on thick paper, where one can scratch out the lights. One would fancy that Constable had been looking at that fine picture of Gainsborough's in the National: the Watering Place: which is superior, in my mind, to all the Claudes there. But this is perhaps because I am an Englishman and not an Italian.

_To W. H. Thompson_. {79a}

[18_th_ _Feb._ 1841.] * BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE.

* Doesn't this name express heavy clay? {79b}

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

I wish you would write to me ten lines to say how you are. You are, I suppose, at Cambridge: and I am buried (with all my fine parts, what a shame) here: so that I hear of nobody--except that Spedding and I abuse each other about Shakespeare occasionally: a subject on which you must know that he has lost his conscience, if ever he had any. For what did Dr. Allen . . . say when he felt Spedding's head? Why, that all his bumps were so tempered that there was no merit in his sobriety--then what would have been the use of a Conscience to him? Q. E. D.

Since I saw you, I have entered into a decidedly agricultural course of conduct: read books about composts, etc. I walk about in the fields also where the people are at work, and the more dirt accumulates on my shoes, the more I think I know. Is not this all funny? Gibbon might elegantly compare my retirement from the cares and splendours of the world to that of Diocletian. Have you read Thackeray's little book--the second Funeral of Napoleon? If not, pray do; and buy it, and ask others to buy it: as each copy sold puts 7.5_d._ in T.'s pocket: which is very empty just now, I take it. I think this book is the best thing he has done. What an account there is of the Emperor Nicholas in Kemble's last Review, {80a} the last sentence of it (which can be by no other man in Europe but Jack himself) has been meat and drink to me for a fortnight. The electric eel at the Adelaide Gallery is nothing to it. Then Edgeworth fires away about the Odes of Pindar, {80b} and Donne is very aesthetic about Mr. Hallam's Book. {80c} What is the meaning of 'exegetical'? Till I know that, how can I understand the Review?

Pray remember me kindly to Blakesley, Heath, and such other potentates as I knew in the days before they 'assumed the purple.' I am reading Gibbon, and see nothing but this d---d colour before my eyes. It changes occasionally to bright yellow, which is (is it?) the Imperial colour in China, and also the antithesis to purple (_vide_ Coleridge and Eastlake's Goethe)--even as the Eastern and Western Dynasties are antithetical, and yet, by the law of extremes, potentially the same (_vide_ Coleridge, etc.) Is this aesthetic? is this exegetical? How glad I shall be if you can assure me that it is. But, nonsense apart and begged-pardon-for, pray write me a line to say how you are, directing to this pretty place. 'The soil is in general a moist and retentive clay: with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick formation: adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover--requiring however a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every fourth year, etc.' This is not an unpleasing style on Agricultural subjects--nor an uncommon one.

_To F. Tennyson_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE. [21 March, 1841.]

DEAR FREDERIC TENNYSON,

I was very glad indeed to get a letter from you this morning. You here may judge, by the very nature of things, that I lose no time in answering it. I did not receive your Sicilian letter: and have been for a year and half quite ignorant of what part of the world you were in. I supposed you were alive: though I don't quite know why. De non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem est ratio. I heard from Morton three months ago: he was then at Venice: very tired of it: but lying on such luxurious sofas that he could not make up his mind to move from them. He wanted to meet you: or at all events to hear of you. I wrote to him, but could tell him nothing. I have also seen Alfred once or twice since you have gone: he is to be found in certain conjunctions of the stars at No. 8 Charlotte Street. . . . All our other friends are in statu quo: Spedding residing calmly in Lincoln's Inn Fields: at the Colonial all day: at the play and smoking at night: occasionally to be found in the Edinburgh Review. Pollock and the Lawyer tribe travel to and fro between their chambers in the Temple and Westminster Hall: occasionally varying their travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the Courts in Lincoln's Inn. As to me, I am fixed here where your letter found me: very rarely going to London: and staying there but a short time when I do go. You, Morton, Spedding, Thackeray, and Alfred, were my chief solace there: and only Spedding is now to be found. Thackeray lives in Paris.

From this you may judge that I have no such sights to tell of as you have. Neither do _mortaletti_ ever go off at Boulge: which is perhaps not to be regretted. Day follows day with unvaried movement: there is the same level meadow with geese upon it always lying before my eyes: the same pollard oaks: with now and then the butcher or the washerwoman trundling by in their carts. As you have lived in Lincolnshire I will not further describe Suffolk. No new books (except a perfectly insane one of Carlyle, {82} who is becoming very obnoxious now that he is become popular), nor new pictures, no music. A game at picquet of two hours duration closes each day. But for that I might say with Titus--perdidi diem. Oh Lord! all this is not told you that you may admire my philosophic quietude, etc.; pray don't think that. I should travel like you if I had the eyes to see that you have: but, as Goethe says, the eye can but see what it brings with it the power of seeing. If anything I had seen in my short travels had given me any new ideas worth having I should travel more: as it is, I see your Italian lakes and cities in the Picturesque Annuals as well as I should in the reality. You have a more energetic, stirring, acquisitive, and capacious soul. I mean all this seriously, believe me: but I won't say any more about it. Morton also is a capital traveller: I wish he would keep notes of what he sees, and publish them one day.

I must however tell you that I am becoming a Farmer! Can you believe in this? I hope we shall both live to laugh over it together. When do you mean to come back? Pray do not let so long a time elapse again without writing to me: never mind a long letter: write something to say you are alive and where. Rome certainly is nearer England than Naples: so perhaps you are coming back. Bring Morton back with you. I will then go to London and we will smoke together and be as merry as sandboys. We will all sit under the calm shadow of Spedding's forehead. People talk of a war with America. Poor dear old England! she makes a gallant shew in her old age. If Englishmen are to travel, I am glad that such as you are abroad--good specimens of Englishmen: with the proper fierte about them. The greater part are poor wretches that go to see oranges growing, and hear Bellini for eighteen-pence. I hope the English are as proud and disagreeable as ever. What an odd thing that the Italians like such martial demonstrations as you describe--not at all odd, probably--their spirit begins and goes off in noise and smoke. It is like all other grand aspirations. So ---'s Epics crepitate in Sonnets. All I ask of you is to write no Sonnets on what you see or hear--no sonnets can sound well after Daddy Wordsworth, ---, etc., who have now succeeded in quite spoiling one's pleasure in Milton's--and they are heavy things. The words 'subjective and objective' are getting into general use now, and Donne has begun with _aesthetics_ and _exegetical_ in Kemble's review. Kemble himself has written an article on the Emperor Nicholas which must crush him. If you could read it, no salvos of _mortalletti_ could ever startle you again. And now my paper is almost covered: and I must say Good bye to you. This is Sunday March 21--a fine sunny blowing day. We shall dine at one o'clock--an hour hence--go to Church--then walk--have tea at six, and pass rather a dull evening, because of no picquet. You will be sauntering in St. Peter's perhaps, or standing on the Capitol while the sun sets. I should like to see Rome after all. Livy's lies (as the aesthetics prove them to be) do at least animate one so far--how far?--so far as to wish, and not to do, having perfect power to do.

Oh eloquent, just, and mighty Theory of Mortaletti!

_To W. H. Thompson_.

BOULGE HALL, WOODBRIDGE, _March_ 26/41.

MY DEAR THOMPSON,

. . . I had a long letter from Morton the other day--he is still luxuriating at Venice. Also a letter from Frederic Tennyson, who has been in Sicily, etc., and is much distracted between enjoyment of those climates and annoyance from Fleas. These two men are to be at Rome together soon: so if any one wants to go to Rome, now is a good time. I wish I was there. F. Tennyson says that he and a party of Englishmen fought a cricket match with the crew of the Bellerophon on the _Parthenopaean hills_ (query about the correctness of this--I quote from memory), and _sacked_ the sailors by 90 runs. Is not this pleasant?--the notion of good English blood striving in worn out Italy--I like that such men as Frederic should be abroad: so strong, haughty and passionate. They keep up the English character abroad. . . . Have you read poor Carlyle's raving book about heroes? Of course you have, or I would ask you to buy my copy. I don't like to live with it in the house. It smoulders. He ought to be laughed at a little. But it is pleasant to retire to the Tale of a Tub, Tristram Shandy, and Horace Walpole, after being tossed on his canvas waves. This is blasphemy. Dibdin Pitt of the Coburg could enact one of his heroes. . . .

_To F. Tennyson_.

IRELAND, _July_ 26, 1841.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I got your letter ten days ago in London on my way here. We have incessant rain, which is as bad as your sciroccos; at least it damps my energies very much. But people are accustomed to it in Ireland: and my uncle (in whose house I am staying) is just set off with three of his children--on horseback--cantering and laughing away in the midst of a hopeless shower. I am afraid some of us are too indolent for such things.

I am glad Morton has taken up painting in good earnest, and I shall encourage him to persevere as much as I can. . . . I have begun to draw a little--the fit comes upon one in summer with the foliage: as to sunshine, so necessary for pictures, I have been obliged to do without that. We have had scarce a ray for a month . . . I have read nothing, except the Annual Register: which is not amiss in a certain state of mind, and is not easily exhausted. A goodly row of some hundred very thick volumes which may be found in every country town wherever one goes forbid all danger of exhaustion. So long as there is appetite, there is food: and of that plain substantial nature which, Johnson says, suits the stomach of middle life. Burke, for instance, is a sufficiently poetical politician to interest one just when one's sonneteering age is departing, but before one has come down quite to arid fact. Do you know anything of poor Sir Egerton Brydges?--this, in talking of sonnets--poor fellow, he wrote them for seventy years, fully convinced of their goodness, and only lamenting that the public were unjust and stupid enough not to admire them also. He lived in haughty seclusion, and at the end of life wrote a doating Autobiography. He writes good prose however, and shews himself as he is very candidly: indeed he is proud of the display.

All this is not meant to be a lesson to you who write, everybody says, good sonnets. Sir E. Brydges would have been the same dilettante if he had written Epics--probably worse. I certainly don't like sonnets, as you know: we have been spoiled for them by Daddy Wordsworth, ---, and Co. Moxon must write them too forsooth. What do they seem fit for but to serve as little shapes in which a man may mould very mechanically any single thought which comes into his head, which thought is not lyrical enough in itself to exhale in a more lyrical measure? The difficulty of the sonnet metre in English is a good excuse for the dull didactic thoughts which naturally incline towards it: fellows know there is no danger of decanting their muddy stuff ever so slowly: they are neither prose nor poetry. I have rather a wish to tie old Wordsworth's volume about his neck and pitch him into one of the deepest holes of his dear Duddon.

But it is very stupid to write all this to Italy, though it would have done very well to have canvassed with you and Morton over our pipes in Mornington Crescent. I suppose you never will come back to stay long in England again: I have given you up to a warmer latitude. If you were more within reach, I would make you go a trip with me to the West of Ireland, whither I am not confident enough to go alone. Yet I wish to see it.

_To Bernard Barton_.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _September_ 2/41.

MY DEAR BARTON,

You must allow I am a good correspondent--this half year at least. This is Septr. 2, a most horrible day for a Bazaar, judging at least by the weather here. But you may be better off. I came to this house a week ago to visit a male friend, who duly started to England the day before I got here. I therefore found myself domiciled in a house filled with ladies of divers ages--Edgeworth's wife, aged--say 28--his mother aged 74--his sister (the great Maria) aged 72--and another cousin or something--all these people very pleasant and kind: the house pleasant: the grounds ditto: a good library: . . . so here I am quite at home. But surely I must go to England soon: it seems to me as if that must take place soon: and so send me a letter directed to me at Mr. Watcham's, Naseby, Thornby. Those places are in England. You may put Northampton after Thornby if you like. I am going to look at the winding up of the harvest there.

I am now writing in the Library here: and the great Authoress is as busy as a bee making a catalogue of her books beside me, chattering away. We are great friends. She is as lively, active, and cheerful as if she were but twenty; really a very entertaining person. We talk about Walter Scott whom she adores, and are merry all the day long. I have read about thirty-two sets of novels since I have been here: it has rained nearly all the time.

I long to hear how the Bazaar went off: and so I beg you to tell me all about it. When I began this letter I thought I had something to say: but I believe the truth was I had nothing to do. When you see my dear Major {89} give him my love, and tell him I wish he were here to go to Connemara with me: I have no heart to go alone. The discomfort of Irish inns requires a companion in misery. This part of the country is poorer than any I have yet seen: the people becoming more Spanish also in face and dress. Have you read The Collegians? {90a}

I have now begun to sketch heads on the blotting paper on which my paper rests--a sure sign, as Miss Edgeworth tells me, that I have said quite enough. She is right. Good-bye. In so far as this country is Ireland I am glad to be here: but inasmuch as it is not England I wish I were there.

_To S. Laurence_.

NASEBY, _Septr_. 28/41.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

. . . Do you know that I wanted you to come down by the railroad and see me here: where there is nothing else to be seen but myself: which would have been a comfort to you. I have been staying here three weeks alone, smoking with farmers, looking at their lands, and taking long walks alone: during which (as well as when I was in Ireland) I made such sketches as will make you throw down your brush in despair. I wish you would ask at Molteno's or Colnaghi's for a new Lithographic print of a head of Dante, after a fresco by Giotto, lately discovered in some chapel {90b} at Florence. It is the most wonderful head that ever was seen--Dante at about twenty-seven years old: rather younger. The Edgeworths had a print in Ireland: got by great interest in Florence before the legitimate publication: but they told me it was to be abroad in September. If you can get me a copy, pray do.

_To F. Tennyson_.

Imo piano. No. o. Strada del Obelisco. NASEBY. [_Oct_. 1841.]

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

I am surprised you think my scanty letters are worth encouraging, especially with such long and excellent answers as that I have just got from you. It has found its way down here: and oddly enough does your Italian scenery, painted, I believe, very faithfully upon my inner eye, contrast with the British barrenness of the Field of Naseby. Yet here was fought a battle of some interest to Englishmen: and I am persuading farmers to weed well the corn that grows over those who died there. No, no; in spite of your Vesuviuses and sunshine, I love my poor dear brave barren ugly country. Talk of your Italians! why, they are extinguished by the Austrians because they don't blaze enough of themselves to burn the extinguisher. Only people who deserve despotism are forced to suffer it. We have at last good weather: and the harvest is just drawing to a close in this place. It is a bright brisk morning, and the loaded waggons are rolling cheerfully past my window. But since I wrote what is above a whole day has passed: I have eaten a bread dinner: taken a lonely walk: made a sketch of Naseby (not the least like yours of Castellamare): played for an hour on an old tub of a piano: and went out in my dressing- gown to smoke a pipe with a tenant hard by. That tenant (whose name is Love, by the bye) was out with his folks in the stack yard: getting in all the corn they can, as the night looks rainy. So, disappointed of my projected 'talk about runts' and turnips, I am come back--with a good deal of animal spirits at my tongue's and fingers' ends. If I were transported now into your room at Castellamare, I would wag my tongue far beyond midnight with you. These fits of exultation are not very common with me: as (after leaving off beef) my life has become of an even grey paper character: needing no great excitement, and as pleased with Naseby as Naples. . . .

I am reading Schlegel's lectures on the History of Literature: a nice just book: as also the comedies of Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar: the latter very delightful: as also D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, a good book. When I am tired of one I take up the other: when tired of all, I take up my pipe, or sit down and recollect some of Fidelio on the pianoforte. Ah Master Tennyson, we in England have our pleasures too. As to Alfred, I have heard nothing of him since May: except that some one saw him going to a packet which he believed was going to Rotterdam. . . . When shall you and I go to an Opera again, or hear one of Beethoven's Symphonies together? You are lost to England, I calculate: and I am given over to turnips and inanity. So runs the world away. Well, if I never see you again, I am very very glad I _have_ seen you: and got the idea of a noble fellow all ways into my head. Does this seem like humbug to you? But it is not. And that fine fellow Morton too. Pray write when you can to me: and when my stars shine so happily about my head as they do at this minute, when my blood feels like champagne, I will answer you. . .

When you go to Florence, get to see a fresco portrait of Dante by Giotto: newly discovered in some chapel there. Edgeworth saw it, and has brought home a print which is (he says) a tolerable copy. It is a most awful head: Dante, when about twenty-five years old. The likeness to the common portraits of him when old is quite evident. All his great poem seems in it: like the flower in the bud. I read the last cantos of the Paradiso over and over again. I forget if you like him: but, if I understand you at all, you must. Farewell!

P.S. Just heard from Edgeworth that Alfred is in London 'busy preparing for the press'!!!

_To Bernard Barton_.

LONDON, _November_ 27/41.

DEAR BARTON,

I am afraid you were disappointed last night at finding no picture by the Shannon. {93} Mayhap you had asked Mr C[hurchyard] to come and give his judgment upon it over toasted cheese. But the truth is, the picture has just been varnished with mastick varnish, which is apt to chill with the cold at this season of the year: and so I thought it best to keep it by me till its conveyance should be safer. I hope that on Monday you will get it. But I must tell you that, besides the reason of the varnish, I have had a sneaking desire to keep the picture by me, and not to lose it from my eyes just yet. I am in love with it. I washed it myself very carefully with only sweet salad oil: perfectly innocuous as you may imagine: and that, with the new lining, and the varnishing, has at least made the difference between a dirty and a clean beauty. And now, whoever it may be painted by, I pronounce it a very beautiful picture: tender, graceful, full of repose. I sit looking at it in my room and like it more and more. All this is independent of its paternity. But if I am asked about that, I should only answer on my own judgment (not a good one in such a matter, as I have told you) that it is decidedly by Gainsborough, and in his best way of conception. My argument would be of the Johnsonian kind: if it is not by G., who the devil is it by? There are some perhaps feeble touches here and there in the tree in the centre, though not in those autumnal leaves that shoot into the sky to the right: but who painted that clump of thick solemn trees to the left of the picture:--the light of evening rising like a low fire between their boles? The cattle too in the water, how they stand! The picture must be an original of somebody's: and if not of Gainsborough's--whose? It is better painted far than the Market Cart in the National Gallery: but not better, only equal (in a sketchy way) to the beautiful evening Watering Place.

Now I have raised your expectations too high. But when you have looked at the picture some time, you will agree with me. I say all this in sober honesty, for upon my word, whether it be by Gainsborough or not, it is a kind of pang to me to part from the picture: I believe I should like it all the better for its being a little fatherless bastard which I have picked up in the streets, and made clean and comfortable. Yet, if your friend tells you it is by G. I shall be glad you should possess it. Any how, never part with it but to me.

I must tell you my friend Laurence still persists it is not by Gainsborough: but I have thrown him quite overboard. Oh the comfort of independent self confidence! Said Laurence also observed that Gainsborough was the Goldsmith of Painters: which is perhaps true. I should like to know if he would know an original of Goldsmith, if I read something to him. He is a nice fellow this Laurence by the way.

Our prospect of going down to Suffolk this year is much on the wane: the Doctor has desired that Lusia should remain in town. Though I should like much to see you and others, yet I am on the whole glad that my sisters should stay here, where they are likely to be better off. I shall stay with them, as I am of use. I may however run down one day to give you a look. I wish you would enquire and let me know how Mr. Jenney {96} is: he was not well when my Father was in Suffolk. Only _don't ask himself_: he hates that. And now farewell. This is a long letter: but look at it by way of notice when the picture comes to you. If it does not come on Monday don't be angry: but it probably will.

BRIGHTON, _Dec_. 29, 1841.

MY DEAR BARTON,

The account you give of my old Squire 'that he is in a poorish way' does not satisfy me: and I want you to ask Mr. Jones the surgeon, whom you know, and who used to attend on the Squire,--to ask him, I say, how that Squire is. He has been ill for the last two or three winters, and may not be worse now than before. He is one of our oldest friends: and though he and I have not very much in common, he is a part of my country of England, and involved in the very idea of the quiet fields of Suffolk. He is the owner of old Bredfield House in which I was born--and the seeing him cross the stiles between Hasketon and Bredfield, and riding with his hounds over the lawn, is among the scenes in that novel called The Past which dwell most in my memory. What is the difference between what has been, and what never has been, _none_? At the same time this Squire, so hardy, is indignant at the idea of being ill or laid up: so one must inquire of him by some roundabout means. . . .

We had a large party here last night: Horace Smith came: like his brother James, but better looking: and said to be very agreeable. Do you [know] that he gives a dreadful account of Mrs. Southey: that meek and Christian poetess: he says, she's a devil in temper. He told my mother so: had you heard of this? I don't believe it yet: one ought not so soon, ought one?

Goodbye.

_To W. B. Donne_.

MONDAY.

MY DEAR DONNE,

Thompson tells me you are writing a Roman History. But you have not been asked to Lecture at the Ipswich Mechanics' Institution, as I have--'any subject except controversial Divinity, and party Politics.' In the meantime I have begun Livy: I have read one book, and can't help looking at the four thick octavos that remain--

Oh beate Sesti,
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. {97}

But it is very stately reading. As to old Niebuhr, it is mean to attack old legends that can't defend themselves. And what does it signify in the least if they are true or not? Whoever _actively_ believed that Romulus was suckled by a wolf? But I have found in Horace a proper motto for those lumbering Germans:

Quis Parthum paveat? quis gelidum Scythen?
Quis Germania quos horrida parturit
Foetus? {98}

_To Bernard Barton_.

[GELDESTONE, _Jan_. 1842.]

MY DEAR SIR,

You tell my Father you mean to write a Poem about my invisibility--and somehow it seems strange to myself that I have been so long absent from Woodbridge. It was a toss up (as boys say--and perhaps Gods) whether I should go now:--the toss has decided I should not. On the contrary I am going to see Donne at Mattishall: a visit, which having put off a fortnight ago, I am now determined to pay. But if I do not see you before I go to London, I shall assuredly be down again by the latter part of February: when toasted cheese and ale shall again unite our souls. You need not however expect that I can return to such familiar intercourse as once (in former days) passed between us. New honours in society have devolved upon me the necessity of a more dignified deportment. A letter has been sent from the Secretary of the Ipswich Mechanics' Institution asking me to Lecture--any subject but Party Politics or Controversial Divinity. On my politely declining, another, a fuller, and a more pressing, letter was sent urging me to comply with their demand: I answered to the same effect, but with accelerated dignity. I am now awaiting the third request in confidence: if you see no symptoms of its being mooted, perhaps you will kindly propose it. I have prepared an answer. Donne is mad with envy. He consoles himself with having got a Roman History to write for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. {99} What a pity it is that only Lying Histories are readable. I am afraid Donne will stick to what is considered the Truth too much.

This is a day like May: I and the children have been scrambling up and down the sides of a pit till our legs ache.

_Jan_. 24/42.

DEAR BARTON,

You mistake. The Poacher was bought in his shell--for 3 pounds--did I not name that price? As you desire a packing case, I will order one to day: and I hope you will have him down on Wednesday, just when your Bank work is over, and you will be glad of such good company. One of my friends thought the picture must have been an anticipation of Bill Sykes: put a cap and feathers on his head and you make him Iago, Richard the Third, or any other aristocratic villain. I really think the picture is a very good one of its kind: and one that you will like. {100a}

I am going to get my large Constable very lightly framed, and shall bring it down into Suffolk with me to shew you and others. I like it more and more.

. . . There is something poetical, and almost heroic, in this Expedition to the Niger--the motives lofty and Christian--the issue so disastrous. Do you remember in A. Cunningham's Scottish Songs {100b} one called 'The Darien Song'? It begins

We will go, maidens, go,
To the primrose {100c} woods and mourn, etc.

Look for it. It applies to this business. Some Scotch young folks went out to colonize Darien, and never came back.

Oh there were white hands wav'd,
And many a parting hail,
As their vessel stemm'd the tide,
And stretch'd her snowy sail.

I remember reading this at Aldbro', and the sound of the sea hangs about it always, as upon the lips of a shell.

Farewell for the present. We shall soon be down amongst you.

P.S. I think Northcote drew this picture from life: and I have no doubt there is some story attached to it. The subject may have been some great malefactor. You know that painters like to draw such at times. Northcote could not have painted so well but from life.

_To F. Tennyson_.

LONDON, _February_ 6, 1842.

DEAR FREDERIC,