Chapter LXXI: WOODBRIDGE, March 1, 1880

MY DEAR LADY,

I am something like my good old friend Bernard Barton, who would begin--and end--a letter to some one who had just gone away from his house. I should not mind that, only you will persist in answering what calls for no answer. But the enclosed came here To-day, and as I might mislay it if I waited for my average time of writing to you, I enclose it to you now. It shows, at any rate, that I do not neglect your Queries; nor does he to whom I refer what I cannot answer myself. {174}

This Wright edits certain Shakespeare Plays for Macmillan: very well, I fancy, so far as Notes go; simply explaining what needs explanation for young Readers, and eschewing all _aesthetic_ (now, don't say you don't know what 'aesthetic' means, etc.) aesthetic (detestable word) observation. With this the Swinburnes, Furnivalls, Athenaeums, etc., find fault: and a pretty hand they make of it when they try that tack. It is safest surely to give people all the _Data_ you can for forming a Judgment, and then leave them to form it by themselves.

You see that I enclose you the fine lines {175} which I believe I repeated to you, and which I wish you to paste on the last page of my Crabbe, so as to be a pendant to Richard's last look at the Children and their play. I know not how I came to leave it out when first printing: for certainly the two passages had for many years run together in my Memory.

Adieu, Madame: non pas pour toujours, j'espere; pas meme pour long temps. Cependant, ne vous genez pas, je vous prie, en repondant a une lettre qui ne vaut--qui ne reclame pas meme--aucune reponse: tandis que vous me croyez votre tres devoue

EDOUARD DE PETITGRANGE.