Chapter VII: Part 7

When you were to start for Spain, I was thinking what a hot time of it you would have there: in Madrid too, I suppose, worst of all, I have heard. But you have Titian and Velasquez to refresh you. Cervantes too is not far. We have here (some two or three years old) a Book 'Untrodden Spain'; unaffectedly and pleasantly written by some Clergyman, Rose, who lived chiefly among the mining folk. But there is a Chapter in Vol. 2 entitled '[_El_]_ Pajaro_,' and giving account of a day's sport with [Pedro the Barber] who carries a Decoy Bird, which is as another Chapter to Don Quixote. Ah! I look at him on my Shelf, and know that I can take him down when I will, and that I shall do so many a time before 1878 if I live. . . .

Tell me something of the Spanish Drama, Lope, or Calderon. I think you could get one acted by Virtue of your Office.

WOODBRIDGE. [_October_, 1877.]

MY DEAR SIR--(which I will exchange for your own name if you will set me Example).

You see I write to you; but do not expect any answer from the midst of all your Business. But I have lately been re-reading--(at that same old Dunwich, too)--those Essays of yours on which you wished to see my 'Adversaria.' These are too few and insignificant to specify by Letter: when you return to English-speaking World, you shall, if you please, see my Copy, or Copies, marked with a Query at such places as I stumbled at. Were not the whole so really admirable, both in Thought and Diction, I should not stumble at such Straws; such Straws as you can easily blow away if you should ever care to do so. Only, pray understand (what I really mean) that, in all my remarks, I do not pretend to the level of an original Writer like yourself: only as a Reader of Taste, which is a very different thing you know, however useful now and then in the Service of Genius. I am accredited with the Aphorism, 'Taste is the Feminine of Genius.' However that may be, I have some confidence in my own. And, as I have read these Essays of yours more than once and again, and with increasing Satisfaction, so I believe will other men long after me; not as Literary Essays only, but comprehending very much beside of Human and Divine, all treated with such a very full and universal Faculty, both in Thought and Word, that I really do not know where to match in any work of the kind. I could make comparisons with the best: but I don't like comparisons. But I think your Work will last, as I think of very few Books indeed. You are yet two good years from sixty (Mr. Norton tells me), and have yet at least a dozen more of Dryden's later harvest: pray make good use of it: Cervantes, at any rate, I think to live to read, though one of your great merits is, not being in a hurry: and so your work completes itself. But I nearer seventy than you sixty. . . .

You should get Dryden's Prefaces published separately in America, with your own remarks on them, and also Johnson's very fine praise: in which he praises Dryden for those unexpected turns in which he himself is so deficient. But pray love old Johnson, a little more than I think you do. We have, you may know, a rather clumsy Edition of this Dryden Prose in four 8vo volumes by Malone; the first volume all Life and a few Letters. I have bought some three or four Copies of this work, more or less worse for wear, to give away: one extra Copy, much the worse for wear, on a back shelf now, waiting its destination. No English Publisher, I suppose, would do this work, unless under some great name: perhaps under yours, if your own Country were not the fitter place. As in the case of your Essays, I don't pretend to say which is finest: but I think that to me Dryden's Prose, _quoad_ Prose, is the finest Style of all. So Gray, I believe, thought: that man of Taste, very far removed, perhaps as far as feminine from masculine, from the Man he admired.

Your Wordsworth should introduce any future Edition of him, as I think some of Ste. Beuve's Essays do some of his men. He rarely, you know, gets beyond French.

Now, as I see my Paper draws short, I turn from your Works to those of 'The Great Twalmley,' viz.: the Dialogue I mentioned, and you ask for. I really got it out: but, on reading it again after many years, was so much disappointed even in the little I expected that I won't send it to you, or any one more. It is only eighty 12 mo pages, and about twenty too long, and the rest over-pointed (Oh Cervantes!), and all somewhat antiquated. But the Form of it is pretty: and the little Narrative part: and one day I may strike out, etc., and make you a present of a pretty Toy. But it won't do now.

I have at last bid Adieu to poor old Dunwich: the Robin singing in the Ivy that hangs on those old Priory walls. A month ago I wrote to ask Carlyle's Niece about her Uncle, and telling her of this Priory, and how her Uncle would once have called me Dilettante; all which she read him; he only said 'Poor, Poor old Priory!' She says he is very well, and abusing V. Hugo's 'Miserables.' I have been reading his Cromwell, and not abusing it. You tell all the Truth about him.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 28/77.

MY DEAR SIR ('_Norton_' I will write in my next if you will anticipate me by a reciprocal Familiarity).

I wish I had some English Life, Woodbridge, or other, to send you: but Woodbridge, I sometimes say, is as Pompeii, in that respect; and I know little of the World beyond but what a stray Newspaper tells me. So I must get back to my Friends on the Shelf.

Thence I lately took down Mr. Lowell's (I have proposed to _un-mister_ him too), Lowell's Essays, and carried them with me to that old Dunwich, which I suppose I shall see no more this year. Robin Redbreast--have you him?--was piping in the Ivy along the Walls; and, under them, Blackberries ripening from stems which those old Grey Friars picked from. And I had the Essays abroad, and within doors; and marked with a Query some words, or sentences, which I stumbled at: which I should not have stumbled at had all the rest not been such capital Reading. I really believe I know not, on the whole, any such Essays, of that kind: and that a very comprehensive kind, both in Subject, and Treatment. I think he settles many Questions that every one discusses: and on which a Final Verdict is what we now want. I believe the Books will endure: and that is why I want a few blemishes, as I presume to think them, removed: and the Author is to see my Pencil marks, when he returns to England, or to her 'Gigantic Daughter of the West.' I hope he will live to write many more such Books: Cervantes, first of all!

I have also been reading Carlyle's Cromwell: which I think will last also, and so carry along with it many of his more perishable tirades. I don't know indeed if his is the Final Verdict on Oliver: or on so many of the subordinate Characters whom he sketches in so confidently. A shrewd Man is he; but it is not so easy to judge of men by a few stray hints of them in Books. A quaint instance of this Carlyle himself supplied me with, in his total misapprehension of his hitherto unseen Correspondent 'Squire,' who burned the Cromwell Diary. I was the intelligent Friend who interviewed Squire; as unlike as might be in Age, Person, and Character, to the Man Carlyle had prefigured from his Letters. One day I will send you the little Correspondence between T. C. and his intelligent Friend, as rather a Curiosity in Historical Acumen.

I, Dryasdust, want to know if the Moon, the 'Harvest' Moon, too, really 'waded through the Clouds' on the night before Dunbar Battle. She makes so good a Figure in the Scene that I wish the Almanack to authorize her Presence. Carlyle is, I believe, generally accurate in these as in sublunary matters, but I had just found him writing of Orion looking down on Paris on August 9, when Orion is hardly up before Sunrise. . . .

And you have been so near where once I lived as Wherstead! in which Parish my Family resided from about 1822 to 1835, at a large Square House on the hill opposite to the Vicarage. I know no more of Mr. Zincke than his Books, which are very good, I think: there is a bit concerning Hodge the English Labourer's inward thoughts as he works in a ditch through a Winter's Day, that is--a piece of Shakespeare. It is one of my few recital pieces: and I was quoting it the other day to two People, who wondered they had never observed it in the Book it came from, which is 'Egypt under the Pharaohs,' {231} I think.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 14/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

It is so long since I have heard from you that, in spite of knowing how inopportunely an idle Letter may reach any one amid any sorrows, or much business, I venture one, you see: but whether it be a trouble to lead or not, do not feel bound to answer it except in the fewest words, in case you are any way indisposed. You have--a family: you had an aged Mother, when last I heard from you: room enough for anxieties and sorrows!

I had your printed Report on Olympia, which I do not pretend to be a Judge [of]. I lent it to one who thinks he returned it, but certainly did not: and I wanted to lend it to another much more competent Judge, very much interested in the Subject, Edward Cowell, a Brother Professor of yours at our Cambridge: the most learned man there, I believe, and the most amiable and delightful, I believe, also. He came here to see me a month ago: and I had one more search for the Pamphlet which I knew was no longer 'penes me,' which he much wished to see. Will you send me another Copy for him: if not to 'Professor Cowell, Cambridge, England' direct?

I have been rubbing up a little Latin from some Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus, by H. Munro, who edited Lucretius so capitally that even German Scholars, I am told, accept it with a respect which they accord to very few English. Do you know it in America? If not, do. The Text and capital English prose Translation in vol. I; and Notes in vol. II: all admirable, it seems to me, though I do not understand his English Punctuation. I do not follow all Lucretius' Atoms, etc.: but other parts are as fine to me as any Poet has done. Catullus I have never taken much to: though some of him too is as fine as anything else in its way, I think. So I have read through this Book of Munro's, only 240 pages, not commenting on the best of the Poems, but on those which most needed Elucidation; which are many of them the least interesting, and even most disagreeable. Like your Olympia, I don't understand much: but what I do understand is so good that I feel sure the rest (and that is the larger and perhaps more important part) is as good for those it is intended for.

Just as I shut up Catullus, I opened Keats' Love Letters just published; and really felt no shock of change between the one Poet and the other. This Book will doubtless have been in America long before my Letter reaches it. Mr. Lowell, who justly writes (in his Keats) that there is much in a Name, will wish Keats' mistress went by some other than 'Fanny Brawne,' which I cannot digest.

And Mr. Lowell himself? I do not like to write to him amid his diplomatic avocations; if I did, I should perhaps tell him that I did not like the style of his 'Moosehead Journal,' which has been sent me by I know not whom. I hope he is getting on with his Cervantes; which I know I shall like, if it be at all of the same Complexion as his other two Volumes, which I still think are best of their kind.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 20/78.

MY DEAR NORTON!

If Packet follows Packet duly, you will have received ere this a letter I wrote you, and posted, a few hours before yours reached me. You will have seen that I guessed at some Shadow as of Illness in your household: no wonderful conjecture in this World in any case; still less where a Life of eighty years is concerned. It is in vain to wish well: but I wish the best.

Your mention of your Mother reminded me of another Eighty years that I had forgotten to tell you of--Carlyle. I wrote to enquire about him of his Niece a month ago: he had been very poorly, she said, but was himself again; only going in Carriage, not on foot, for his daily Exercise: wrapt up in furry Dressing-gown, and wondering that any one else complained of Cold. He kept on reading assiduously, sometimes till past midnight, in spite of all endeavours to get him to bed. 'Qu'est ce que cela fait si je m'amuse?' as old Voltaire said on like occasions.

I have got down the Doudan {234} you recommended me: but have not yet begun with him. Pepys' Diary and Sir Walter, read to me for two hours of a night, have made those two hours almost the best of the twenty-four for all these winter months. That Eve of Preston Battle, with the old Baron's Prayers to his Troop! He is tiresome afterwards, I know, with his Bootjack. But Sir Walter for ever! What a fine Picture would that make of Evan Dhu's entrance into Tully Veolan Breakfast Hall, with a message from his Chief; he standing erect in his Tartan, while the Baron keeps his State, and pretty Rose at the Table. There is a subject for one of your Artists. Another very pretty one (I thought the other Day) would be that of the child Keats keeping guard with a drawn sword at his sick Mother's Chamber door. Millais might do it over here: but I don't know him. . . .

I will send you Carlyle's Squire correspondence, which you will keep to yourself and Lowell: you being Carlyle's personal friend as well as myself. Not that there is anything that should not be further divulged: but one must respect private Letters. Carlyle's proves a droll instance of even so shrewd a man wholly mistaking a man's character from his Letters: had now that Letter been two hundred years old! and no intelligent Friend to set C. right by ocular Demonstration.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 28/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I ventured to send you Keats' Love Letters to Miss--_Brawne_! a name in which there is much, as you say of his, and other names. . . . Well, I thought you might--must--wish to see these Letters, and, may be, not get them so readily in Spain. So I made bold. The Letters, I doubt not, are genuine: whether rightly or wrongly published I can't say: only I, for one, am glad of them. I had just been hammering out some Notes on Catullus, by our Cambridge Munro, Editor of Lucretius, which you ought to have; English Notes to both, and the Prose Version of Lucretius quite readable by itself. Well, when Keats came, I scarce felt a change from Catullus: both such fiery Souls as wore out their Bodies early; and I can even imagine Keats writing such filthy Libels against any one he had a spite against, even Armitage Brown, had Keats lived two thousand years ago. . . .

I had a kind letter lately from Mr. Norton: and have just posted him some Carlyle letters about that Squire business. If you return to America before very long you will find them there. How long is your official Stay in Spain? Limited, or Unlimited? By the bye of Carlyle, I heard from his Niece some weeks ago that he had been poorly: but when she wrote, himself again: only taking his daily walk in a Carriage, and sitting up till past Midnight with his Books, in spite of Warnings to Bed. As old Voltaire said to his Niece on like occasion, 'Qu'est ce que cela fait si je m'amuse?' I have from Mudie a sensible dull Book of Letters from a Miss Wynn: with this one good thing in it. She has been to visit Carlyle in 1845: he has just been to visit Bishop Thirlwall in Wales, and duly attended Morning Chapel, as a Bishop's Guest should. 'It was very well done; it was like so many Souls pouring in through all the Doors to offer their orisons to God who sent them on Earth. We were no longer Men, and had nothing to do with Men's usages; and, after it was over, all those Souls seemed to disperse again silent into Space. And not till we all met afterward in the common Room, came the Human Greetings and Civilities.' {237} This is, I think, a little piece worth sending to Madrid; I am sure, the best I have to offer.

I have had read to me of nights some of Sir Walter's Scotch Novels; Waverley, Rob, Midlothian, now the Antiquary: eking them out as charily as I may. For I feel, in parting with each, as parting with an old Friend whom I may never see again. Plenty of dull, and even some bad, I know: but parts so admirable, and the Whole so delightful. It is wonderful how he sows the seed of his Story from the very beginning, and in what seems barren ground: but all comes up in due course, and there is the whole beautiful Story at last. I think all this Fore-cast is to be read in Scott's shrewd, humorous, Face: as one sees it in Chantrey's Bust; and as he seems meditating on his Edinburgh Monument. I feel a wish to see that, and Abbotsford again; taking a look at Dunbar by the way: but I suppose I shall get no further than Dunwich.

Some one (not you) sent me your Moosehead Journal: but I told Mr. Norton I should tell you, if I wrote, that I did not like the Style of it at all; all 'too clever by half.' Do you not say so yourself after Cervantes, Scott, Montaigne, etc.? I don't know I ought to say all this to you: but you can well afford to be told it by one of far more authority than yours most sincerely,

E. FITZGERALD.

_To W. A. Wright_.

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 3/78.

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . You may infer that I have been reading--yes, and with great Interest, however little Scholarship--your Fellow-Collegian's new Book of Notes, etc. {238} And just as I had done my best with his Catullus, came to hand the Love-Letters of a kindred Spirit, Keats; whose peevish Jealousy might, two thousand years ago, have made him as bitter and indecent against his friend Armitage Brown, as Catullus against Caesar. But in him too Malice was not stronger than Love, any more than in Catullus; not only of the Lesbia-Brawne, but of the Fraternal, kind. Keats sighs after 'Poor Tom' as well as he whose 'Frater ave atque vale' continues sighing down to these times. (I hope I don't misquote, more Hibernorum.)

That is a fine Figure of old Caesar entertaining his Lampooner at the Feast. And I have often thought what a pretty picture, for Millais to do, of the Child Keats keeping guard outside his sick Mother's Chamber with a drawn Sword. If Catullus, however, were only _Fescennining_, his 'Malice' was not against Caesar, but against the Nemesis that might else be revenged on him--eh? But I don't understand how Suetonius, or those he wrote for, could have forgotten, though for party purposes they may have ignored, the nature and humour of that _Fescennine_ which is known to Scholars two thousand years after. How very learned, and probably all wrong, have I become, since becoming interested in this Book!

WOODBRIDGE. _March_ 21 [1878].

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

. . . The Enclosed only adds a little to the little Paper of _Data_: {239} you may care to add so much in better MS. than mine to the leaves I sent you. Those leaves were more intended for such an Edition of the Letters in batches, as now edited; and, as many of them are private right, _so_ edited they must continue for some time, I suppose.

An odd coincidence happened only yesterday about them. I was looking to Lamb's Letter to Manning of Feb. 26, 1808, where he extols Braham, the Singer, who (he says) led his Spirit 'as the Boys follow Tom the Piper.' I had not thought who Tom was: rather acquiesced in some idea of the 'pied Piper of Hamelin'; and, not half an hour after, chancing to take down Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, {240a} found Tom against the Maypole, with a ring of Dancers about him. I suppose Tom survived in '_Folk lore_' . . . till dear Lamb's time: but how he, a Cockney, knew of it, I don't know.

I was looking for Keats (when I happened on Browne) to find the passage you quote {240b}: but (of course) I could not find the Book I wanted. Nor can I construe him any more than so much of Shakespeare: whether from the negligent hurry of both (Johnson says Shakespeare often contented himself with a halfborn expression), or from some Printer's error. The meaning is clear enough to me, if I conjecture the context right; and more so to you, I dare say. The passage is one of those bad ones, except the first line, which he afterwards repeated, mutatis mutandis,

The leaves
That _tremble_ round a Nightingale, {240c}

and is one of those which justly incensed the Quarterly, and which K. himself knew were bad: but he must throw off the Poem red hot, and could not alter.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 4, 1878.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I wish you would not impose on yourself to write me a Letter; which you say is 'in your head.' You have Literary work, and a Family to enjoy with you what spare time your Professional Studies leave you. Whereas I have nothing of any sort that I am engaged to do: all alone for months together: taking up such Books as I please; and rather liking to write Letters to my Friends, whom I now only communicate with by such means. And very few of my oldest Friends, here in England, care to answer me, though I know from no want of Regard: but I know that few sensible men, who have their own occupations, care to write Letters unless on some special purpose; and I now rarely get more than one yearly Letter from each. Seeing which, indeed, I now rarely trouble them for more. So pray be at ease in this respect: you have written to me, as I to you, more than has passed between myself and my fifty years old Friends for some years past. I have had two notes from you quite lately: one to tell me that Squire reached you; and another that he was on his way back here. I was in no hurry for him, knowing that, if he got safe into your hands, he would continue there as safe as in my own. I also had your other two Copies of Olympia: one of which I sent to Cowell, who is always too busy to write to me, except about twice a year, in his Holydays.

I am quite content to take History as you do, that is, as the Squire-Carlyle presents it to us; not looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth. Also, I am sure you are quite right about the Keats' Letters. I hope I should have revolted from the Book had anything in it detracted from the man: but all seemed to me in his favour, and therefore I did not feel I did wrong in having the secret of that heart opened to me. I hope Mr. Lowell will not resent my thinking he might so far sympathize with me. In fact, could he, could you, resist taking up, and reading, the Letters, however doubtful their publication might have seemed to your Conscience?

Now I enclose you a little work of mine {242} which I hope does no irreverence to the Man it talks of. It is meant quite otherwise. I often got puzzled, in reading Lamb's Letters, about some Data in his Life to which the Letters referred: so I drew up the enclosed for my own behoof, and then thought that others might be glad of it also. If I set down his Miseries, and the one Failing for which those Miseries are such a Justification, I only set down what has been long and publickly known, and what, except in a Noodle's eyes, must enhance the dear Fellow's character, instead of lessening it. 'Saint Charles!' said Thackeray to me thirty years ago, putting one of C. L.'s letters {243} to his forehead; and old Wordsworth said of him: 'If there be a Good Man, Charles Lamb is one.'

I have been interested in the Memoir and Letters of C. Sumner: a thoroughly sincere, able, and (I should think) affectionate man to a few; without Humour, I suppose, or much artistic Feeling. You might like to look over a slight, and probably partial, Memoir of A. de Musset, by his Brother, who (whether well or ill) leaves out the Absinthe, which is generally supposed to have shortened the Life of that man of Genius. Think of Clarissa being one of his favourite Books; he could not endure the modern Parisian Romance. It reminded me of our Tennyson (who has some likeness, 'mutatis mutandis' of French Morals, Absinthe, etc., to the Frenchman)--of his once saying to me of Clarissa, 'I love those large, still, Books.'

I parted from Doudan with regret; that is, from two volumes of him; all I had: but I think I see four quoted. That is pretty, his writing to his Brother, who is dwelling (1870-1) in some fortified Town, on whose ramparts, now mounted with cannon, 'I used to gather Violets.' And I cannot forget what he says to a Friend at that crisis, 'Engage in some long course of Study to drown Trouble in:' and he quotes Ste. Beuve saying, one long Summer Day in the Country, 'Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne.' You may have to advise me to some such course before long. I will avoid speaking, or, so far as I can, thinking, of what I cannot prevent, or alter. You say you like my Letters: which I say is liking what comes from this old Country, more yours than mine. I have heard that some of your People would even secure a Brick, or Stone, from some old Church here to imbed in some new Church a-building over the Atlantic. Plenty of such materials might be had, for this foolish People are restoring, and rebuilding, old Village Churches that have grown together in their Fields for Centuries. Only yesterday I wrote to decline helping such a work on a poor little Church I remember these sixty years. Well, you like my Letters; I think there is too much of this one; but I will end, as I believe I began, in praying you not to be at any trouble in answering it, or any other, from

Yours sincerely, E. F. G.

Pray read the Scene at Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn when Colonel Mannering returns from India to Ellangowan. It is Shakespeare.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 16/1878.

Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire-Carlyle from you: and a kind long letter from Mr. Lowell: and--and the first Nightingale, who sang in my Garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days: and, before the Day had closed, Dandie Dinmont came into my room on his visit to young Bertram in Portanferry Gaol-house.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 17/78.

MY DEAR (SIR ---)--(LOWELL)?

Your letter reached me just after hearing this year's first Nightingale in my Garden: both very welcome. I am very glad you did not feel bound to answer me before; I should not write otherwise to you or to some very old Friends who, like most sensible men as they grow older, dislike all unnecessary writing more and more. So that I scarce remind them of myself more than once a year now. I shall feel sure of your good Will toward me whether you write or not; as I do of theirs.

Mr. Norton thinks, as a Gentleman should, that Keats' Letters should not have been published. I hope I should not have bought them, had I not gathered from the Reviews that they were not derogatory to him. You know, I suppose, that she of whom K. wrote about to others so warmly, his Charmian, was not Fanny Brawne. Some years ago Lord Houghton wrote me it was: but he is a busy man of the World, though really a very good Fellow: indeed, he did not deserve your _skit_ about his 'Finsbury Circus gentility,' which I dare say you have forgotten. I have not seen him, any more than much older and dearer friends, for these twenty years: never indeed was very intimate with him; but always found him a good natured, unaffected, man. He sent me a printed Copy of the first draught of the opening of Keats' Hyperion; very different from the final one: if you wished, I would manage to send it to you, quarto size as it is. This now reminds me that I will ask his Lordship why it was not published (as I suppose it was not). For it ought to be. He said he did not know if it were not the second draught rather than the first. But he could hardly have doubted if he gave his thoughts to it, I think. . . .

I want you to do De Quincey; certainly a very remarkable Figure in Literature, and not yet decisively drawn, as you could do it. There is a Memoir of him by one Page, showing a good deal of his familiar, and Family, Life: all amiable: perhaps the frailties omitted. It is curious, his regard to Language even when writing (as quite naturally he does) to his Daughter, 'I was disturbed last night at finding no natural, or spontaneous, opening--how barbarous by the way, is this collision of _ings_--find_ing_--open_ing_, etc.' And some other instances.

I cannot understand why I have not yet taken to Hawthorne, a Man of real Genius, and that of a kind which I thought I could relish. I will have another Shot. His Notes of Travel seemed to me very shrewd, original, and sincere. Charles Sumner, of so different a Genius, also appears to me very truthful, and, I still fancy, strongly attached to the few he might care for. I am sorry he got a wrong idea of Sir Walter from Lord Brougham, and the Whigs, who always hated Scott. Indeed (as I well remember) it was a point of Faith with them that Scott had not written the Novels, till the Catastrophe discovered him: on which they changed their Cry into a denunciation of his having written them only for money, 'Scott's weak point,' Sumner quotes from Brougham. As if Scott loved Money for anything else than to spend it: not only on Lands and House (which I maintain were simply those of a Scotch Gentleman) but to help any poor Devil that applied to him. Then that old Toad Rogers must tell Sumner that Manzoni's 'Sposi' were worth any ten of Scott's; yes, after Scott's Diary spoke of 'I really like Rogers, etc.,' and such moderate expressions of regard as Scott felt for him and his Breakfast of London Wits.

Here am I running over to Chapter II. You will be surfeited, like your Captain, if not on Turtles' Eggs. But you can eat me at intervals, you know, or not at all. Only you will certainly read my last Great Work, {247} which I enclose, drawn up first for my own benefit, in reading Lamb's Letters, as now printed in batches to his several Correspondents; and so I thought others than myself might be glad of a few Data to refer the letters to. Pollock calls my Paper 'Cotelette d'Agneau a la minute.'

As to my little Dialogue, I can't send it: so pretty in Form, I think, and with some such pretty parts: but then some odious smart writing, which I had forgotten till I looked it over again before sending to you. But I will send you the Calderon which you already like.

And, if you would send me any samples of Spanish, send me some Playbill (of the old Drama, if now played), or some public Advertisement, or Newspaper; this is what I should really like. As to Books, I dare say Quaritch has pretty well ferreted them out of Spain. Give a look, if you can, at a Memoir of Alfred de Musset written by his Brother. Making allowance for French morals, and Absinthe (which latter is not mentioned in the Book) Alfred appears to me a fine Fellow, very un-French in some respects. He did not at all relish the new Romantic School, beginning with V. Hugo, and now alive in --- and Co.--(what I call The _Gurgoyle_ School of Art, whether in Poetry, Painting, or Music)--he detested the modern 'feuilleton' Novel, and read Clarissa! . . . Many years before A. de M. died he had a bad, long, illness, and was attended by a Sister of Charity. When she left she gave him a Pen with 'Pensez a vos promesses' worked about in coloured silks: as also a little worsted 'Amphore' she had knitted at his Bed side. When he came to die, some seventeen years after, he had these two little things put with him in his Coffin.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 1878.

Ecce iterum--Crispin! I think you will soon call me '_Les_ FitzGerald_s_' as Madame de Sevigne called her too officious friend '_Les_ Hacqueville_s_.' However, I will risk that in sending you a Copy of that first Draught of an opening to Hyperion. I have got it from that Finsbury Circus Houghton, who gave me the first Copy, which I keep: so you shall have this, if you please; I know no one more worthy of it; and indeed I told Lord H. I wanted it for you; so you see he bears no malice. He is in truth a very good natured fellow. . . .

Well, to leave that, he writes me that he had the original MS.: it was stolen from him. Fortunately, a friend of his (Edmund Lushington) had taken a MS. copy, and from that was printed what I send you. The corrections are from Lushington. I do not understand why Lord H. does not publish it. He says he has just written to Bendizzy to do something from the state purse for an aged Sister of Keats, now surviving in great Poverty. Her name is 'Fanny.' Ben might do much worse: some say he is about worse, now: I do not know; I cannot help: and I distress myself as little as I can. 'Lisons tout Madame de Sevigne,' said Ste. Beuve one day to some Friends in the Country; and Doudan (whom Mr. Norton admires, as I do) bids a Friend take that advice in 1871. One may be glad of it here in England ere 1879.

A short while ago we were reading the xith Chapter of Guy Mannering, where Colonel Mannering returns to Ellangowan after seventeen years. A long gap in a Story, Scott says: but scarcely so in Life, to any one who looks back so far. And, at the end of the Novel, we found a pencil note of mine, 'Finished 10.30 p.m. Tuesday Decr. 17/1861.' Not on this account, but on account of its excellence, pray do read the Chapter if you can get the Book: it is altogether admirable--Cervantes--Shakespeare. I mean that Chapter of the Colonel's return to Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn at Kippletringan.

We are now reading 'Among the Spanish People,' by the Mr. Rose who wrote 'Untrodden Spain'; a really honest, good-hearted, fellow, I think: with some sentimentality amid his Manhood, and (I suppose) rather too rose- coloured in his Estimate of the People he has long lived among. But he can't help recalling Don Quixote. He has a really delightful account of a Visit he pays to a _pueblo_ he calls Banos up the Sierra Morena: one would expect Don and Sancho there, by one of the old Houses with Arms over the Door. Pray get hold of this Book also if you can: else 'les Hacquevilles' will have to buy it second hand from Mudie and send--'Coals to Newcastle.'

With Keats I shall send you an Athenaeum with a rather humorous account of a Cockney squabble about whether Shelley called his Lark an '_un_-bodied,' or '_em_-bodied,' Spirit. I really forget which way was settled by MS. Shelley is now the rage in Cockayne; but he is too unsubstantial for me.

It is now hot here: I suppose something [like] February in Andalusia. Do you find Madrid Climate as bad as Rose and others describe it? He has also a very pleasant [chapter] about the Lavanderas of the Manzanares. What delightful words!

_To W. A. Wright_.

[1878.]

On looking into my dear old Montaigne, I find a passage which may have rustled in Shakespeare's head while doing Othello: it is about the pleasures of Military Life in the Chapter 'De l'Experience' beginning 'Il n'est occupation plaisante comme la militaire, etc.' in course of which occurs in Florio, 'The courageous _minde-stirring_ harmonic of warlike music, etc.' What a funny thing is that closing Apostrophe to Artillery--but this is not AEsthetic.

Bacon's appropriation you know of C'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas' (De la Vanite, I _think_).

WOODBRIDGE. _June_ 11, [1878]

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

If you do not remember the passage in Bacon's Essays {251} about 'not to decide, etc.' I must have fancied it. I am glad you recognize the Othello bit of Montaigne. You know, as I know, the nonsense of talking of Shakespeare stealing such things: one is simply pleased at finding his footsteps in the Books he read, just as one is in walking over the fields he walked about Stratford and seeing the Flowers, and hearing the Birds, he heard and saw, and told of. My Canon is, there is no plagiarism when he who adopts has proved that he could originate what he adopts, and a great deal more: which certainly absolves Shakespeare from any such Charge--even 'The Cloud capt Towers, etc.' That Passage in Othello about the Propontic and the Hellespont, was, I have read, an afterthought, after reading some Travel: and, like so many Afterthoughts, I must think, a Blunder: breaking the Torrent of Passion with a piece of Natural History. One observes it particularly when acted: the actor down on his Knees, etc. Were I to act Othello (there'd be many a Bellow

From Pit, Boxes, etc., on that occasion) {252}

I should leave out the passage. . . .

An answer from Carlyle's Niece to my half-yearly enquiry tells me that he is well, and hardy, and reading Goethe which he never tires of: glancing over Reviews which he calls 'Floods of Nonsense,' etc. I sent them Groome's 'Only Darter,' which I think so good that I shall get him to let me print it for others beside those of the Ipswich Journal: it seems to me a beautiful Suffolk 'Idyll' (why not _Ei_dyll?) and so it seemed to those at Chelsea. By the by, I will send you their Note, if Groome returns it to me.

_To C. E. Norton_.

_July_ 2/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

You wrote me a very kind Invitation--to your own home--in America! But it is all too late for that; more on account of habit than time of life: I will not repeat what I feel sure I have told you before on that subject. You will be more interested by the enclosed note: of which this is the simple Story. Some three weeks ago I wrote my half-yearly note of enquiry to Carlyle's Niece; he was, she said, quite well; walking by the river before Breakfast: driving out of an Afternoon: constantly reading: just then reading Goethe of whom he never tired: and glancing over Magazines and Reviews which he called 'Floods of Nonsense, Cataracts of Twaddle,' etc. I had sent him the enclosed paper, {253} written by a Suffolk Archdeacon for his Son's East Anglian Notes and Queries: and now reprinted, with his permission, by me, for the benefit of others, yourself among the number. Can you make out the lingo, and see what I think the pretty Idyll it tells of? If I were in America, at your home, I would recite it to you; nay, were the Telephone prepared across the Atlantic! Well: it was sent, as I say, to Carlyle: who, by what his Niece replied, I suppose liked it too. And, by way of return, I suppose, he sends me a Volume of Norway Kings and Knox: which I was very glad to have, not only as a token of his Good Will, but also because Knox was, I believe, the only one of his works I had not read. And I was obliged to confess to him in my acknowledgment of his kindly Present, that I relished these two children of his old Age as much as any of his more fiery Manhood. I had previously asked if he knew anything of John Wesley's Journal, which I was then re-perusing; as he his Goethe: yes, he knew that Wesley too, and 'thought as I did about it' his Niece said; and in reply to my Question if he knew anything of two 'mountains' (as English people called hills a hundred years ago) which Wesley says were called 'The Peas' at Dunbar {254}--why, here is his Answer: evincing the young Blood in the old Man still.

Wesley's Journal is very well worth reading, and having; not only as an outline of his own singular character, but of the conditions of England, Ireland, and Scotland, in the last Century. Voila par exemple un Livre dont Monsr Lowell pourrait faire une jolie critique, s'il en voudrait, mais il s'occupe de plus grandes choses, du Calderon, du Cervantes. I always wish to run on in bad French: but my friends would not care to read it. But pray make acquaintance with this Wesley; if you cannot find a copy in America, I will send you one from here: I believe I have given it to half a dozen Friends. Had I any interest with Publishers, I would get them to reprint parts of it, as of my old Crabbe, who still sticks in my Throat.

I have taken that single little Lodging at Dunwich for the next three months, and shall soon be under those Priory Walls again. But the poor little 'Dunwich Rose,' brought by those monks from the North Country, will have passed, after the hot weather we are at last having. Write when you will, and not till then; I believe in your friendly regard, with, or without, a Letter to assure me of it.

WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 15/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

. . . I got little more than a Fortnight at that old Dunwich; for my Landlady took seriously ill, and finally died: and the Friend {255a} whom I went to meet there became so seriously ill also as to be obliged to return to London before August was over. So then I went to an ugly place {255b} on the sea shore also, some fifteen miles off the old Priory; and there was with some Nephews and Nieces, trying to read the Novels from a Circulating Library with indifferent Success. And now here am I at home once more; getting my Garden, if not my House, in order; and here I shall be probably all Winter, except for a few days visit to that sick Friend in London, if he desires it. . . .

We too have been having a Fortnight of delightful weather, so as one has been able to sit abroad all the Day. And now, that Spirit which Tennyson sung of in one of his early Poems is heard, as it were, walking and talking to himself among the decaying flower-beds. This Season (such as we have been enjoying)--my old Crabbe sings of it too, in a very pathetic way to me: for it always seems to me an Image of the Decline of Life also.

It was a Day ere yet the Autumn closed,
When Earth before her Winter's War reposed;
When from the Garden as we look'd above,
No Cloud was seen, and nothing seem'd to move;
[When the wide River was a silver Sheet,
And upon Ocean slept the unanchored fleet;] {256a}
When the wing'd Insect settled in our sight,
And waited wind to recommence its flight. {256b}

You see I cross out two lines which, fine as they are, go beyond the Garden: but I am not sure if I place them aright. The two last lines you will feel, I think: for I suppose some such Insect is in America too. (You must not mind Crabbe's self-contradiction about 'nothing moving.') . . .

I have two Letters I want to send Lowell: but I do not like writing as if to extort answers from him. You see Carlyle's Note within: I do not want it back, thank you. Good night: for Night it is: and my Reader is coming. We look forward to The Lammermoor, and Old Mortality before long. I made another vain attempt on George Eliot at Lowestoft, Middlemarch.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Octr._ 17/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I scarce like to write to you again because of seeming to exact a Letter. I do not wish that at all, pray believe it: I don't think letter-writing men are much worth. What puts me up to writing just now is, the enclosed two Letters by other men; one of them relating to yourself; the other to the Spain you are now in. I sent Frederic Tennyson, eldest Brother of the Laureate, your Study Windows: and now you see what he says about it. He is a Poet too, as indeed all the Brethren more or less are; and is _a Poet_: only with (I think) a somewhat monotonous Lyre. But a very noble Man in all respects, and one whose good opinion is worth having, however little you read, or care for, opinion about yourself, one way or other. I do not say that I agree with all he says: but here is his Letter. I am going to send him a Volume of yours 'Among my Books,' which I know is a maturer work than the Windows; and you know what I think of it.

The other Letter, or piece of Letter, is from our Professor Cowell, and has surely a good Suggestion concerning a Spanish Dictionary. You might put some Spanish Scholar on the scent. And so much about my two Letters.

I was but little at my old Dunwich this Summer, for my Landlady fell sick, and died: and the Friend I went to be with was obliged to leave; I doubt his Brain is becoming another Ruin to be associated with that old Priory wall, already so pathetic to me. So here am I back again at my old Desk for all the Winter, I suppose, with my old Crabbe once more open before me, disembowelled too; for I positively meditate a Volume made up of 'Readings' from his Tales of the Hall, that is, all his better Verse connected with as few words of my own Prose as will connect it intelligibly together.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 15/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

You are very good to ask for my _OEdipodes_, etc. And when I can find Eyes as well as Courage to copy out a '_brouillon_,' I will see what can be done. Only, you and Professor Goodwin must not feel any way bound to print them, even if you both approved of them; and that is not at all certain. How would you two Scholars approve of two whole Scenes omitted in either OEdipus (as I know to be the case), and the Choephori {259a} reduced almost to an Act? So that would be, I doubt. Then, as you know, Sophocles does not strike Fire out of the Flint, as old AEschylus does; and though my Sophocles has lain by me (lookt at now and then) these ten years, I was then a dozen years older than when Agamemnon haunted me, until I laid his Ghost so far as I myself was concerned. By the way, I see that Dr. Kennedy, Professor of Greek at our Cambridge, has published a Translation of Agamemnon in 'rhythmic English.' So, at any rate, I have been the cause of waking up two great men (Browning and Kennedy) and a minor Third (I forget his name) {259b} to the Trial, if it were only for the purpose of extinguishing my rash attempt. However that may be, I cannot say my attempt on Sophocles would please you and my American Patrons (in England I have none) so well as AEschylus; indeed I only see in what I remember to have done, good English, and fair Verse, beyond the chief merit of shaping the Plays to modern Taste by the very excisions which Scholars will most deprecate. However, you shall see, one day. . . .

I want to send you a very little volume by Charles Tennyson, long ago published: too modest to make a noise: worth not only all me, but all --- , ---, & Co. put together. Three such little volumes have appeared, but just appeared; like Violets, I say: to be overlooked by the 'madding Crowd,' but I believe to smell sweet and blossom when all the gaudy Growths now in fashion are faded and gone. He ought to be known in America--everywhere; is he?

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 19/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I am writing to you because you say you like to hear from me. I dare say, a Letter from your home, or mine, is acceptable in Madrid, which, by the by, if Travellers' Stories be true, must be terrible this winter: and I always try to stuff my Letters with all I can about other people more or less worth hearing of. But for that I have but little to say, certainly nothing worth your keeping. But if you like me to write, no matter why. I wish I could find you a short Letter written to me this time last year by C. Merivale, Dean of Ely, Roman Historian; a man of infinite dry humour, and quaint fancy. I have put it away in some safe place where (of course) I can't find it. Perhaps the like may happen to yourself now and then. I tell him that some one should pick up his Table- talk and Letter-talk: for he of course would not do it himself. I have known him from College days, fifty years ago; but have never read his History: never having read any History but Herodotus, I believe. But I should like you to see how an English Dean and Roman Historian can write in spite of Toga and Canonicals.

_December_ 22.

I left off when my Reader came to finish The Bride of Lammermoor; as wonderful to me as ever. O, the Austens, Eliots, and even Thackerays, won't eclipse Sir Walter for long.