All the world has been, as I suppose you have read, crazy about Jenny Lind: and they are now giving her £400 to sing at a Concert.  What a frightful waste of money!  I did not go to hear her: partly out of contradiction perhaps; and partly because I could not make out that she was a great singer, like my old Pasta.  Now I will go and listen to any pretty singer whom I can get to hear easily and unexpensively: but I will not pay and squeeze much for any canary in the world.  Perhaps Lind is a nightingale: but I want something more than that.  Spedding’s cool blood was moved to hire stalls several times at an advanced rate: the Lushingtons (your sister told me) were enraptured: and certainly people rushed up madly from Suffolk to hear her but once and then die.  I rather doubted the value of this general appreciation.  But one cause of my not hearing her was that I was not in London for more than a fortnight all the Spring: and she came out but at the close of my fortnight. . . .

. . . You are wrong, as usual, about Moore and Eastlake: all the world say that Moore had much the best of the controversy, and Eastlake only remains cock of the walk because he is held up by authority.  I do not pretend to judge which of the two is right in art: but I am sure that Moore argues most logically, and sets out upon finer principles; and if two shoemakers quarrelled about the making of a shoe, I should be disposed to side with him who argued best on the matter, though my eyes and other senses could not help me to a verdict.  Moore takes his stand on high ground, and appeals to Titian, Michel Angelo, and Reynolds.  Eastlake is always shifting about, and appealing to Sir Robert Peel, Etty, and the Picture-dealers. [225]  Now farewell.  Write when you can to Boulge.

To S. Laurence.

[1847.]

Dear Laurence,

. . . I assure you I am deeply obliged to you for the great trouble you have taken, and the kindness you have shewn about the portrait.  In spite of all our objections (yours amongst the number) it is very like, and perhaps only misses of being quite like by that much more than hairbreadth difference, which one would be foolish to expect to see adequated.  Perhaps those painters are right who set out with rather idealising the likeness of those we love; for we do so ourselves probably when we look at them.  And as art must miss the last delicacy of nature, it may be well to lean toward a better than our eyes can affirm.

I was very glad of your letter: especially as regards that part in it about the Derbyshire villages.  In many other parts of England (not to mention my own Suffolk) you would find the same substantial goodness among the people, resulting (as you say) from the funded virtues of many good humble men gone by.  I hope you will continue to teach us all, as you have done, to make some use and profit of all this: at least, not to let what good remains to die away under penury and neglect.  I also hope you will have some mercy now, and in future, on the ‘Hebrew rags’ which are grown offensive to you; considering that it was these rags that really did bind together those virtues which have transmitted down to us all the good you noticed in Derbyshire.  If the old creed was so commendably effective in the Generals and Counsellors of two hundred years ago, I think we may be well content to let it work still among the ploughmen and weavers of to-day; and even to suffer some absurdities in the Form, if the Spirit does well upon the whole.  Even poor Exeter Hall ought, I think, to be borne with; it is at least better than the wretched Oxford business.  When I was in Dorsetshire some weeks ago, and saw chancels done up in sky-blue and gold, with niches, candles, an Altar, rails to keep off the profane laity, and the parson (like your Reverend Mr. Hitch [227]) intoning with his back to the people, I thought the Exeter Hall war-cry of ‘The Bible—the whole Bible—and nothing but the Bible’ a good cry: I wanted Oliver and his dragoons to march in and put an end to it all.  Yet our Established Parsons (when quiet and in their senses) make good country gentlemen, and magistrates; and I am glad to secure one man of means and education in each parish of England: the people can always resort to Wesley, Bunyan, and Baxter, if they want stronger food than the old Liturgy, and the orthodox Discourse.  I think you will not read what I have written: or be very bored with it.  But it is written now.

. . . I am only got half way in the third book of Thucydides: but I go on with pleasure; with as much pleasure as I used to read a novel.  I have also again taken up my Homer.  That is a noble and affecting passage where Diomed and Glaucus, being about to fight, recognize each other as old family friends, exchange arms, and vow to avoid each other henceforth in the fray.  (N.B. and this in the tenth year of the war!)  After this comes, you know, the meeting of Hector and Andromache, which we read together; altogether a truly Epic canto indeed.

Yet, as I often think, it is not the poetical imagination, but bare Science that every day more and more unrolls a greater Epic than the Iliad; the history of the World, the infinitudes of Space and Time!  I never take up a book of Geology or Astronomy but this strikes me.  And when we think that Man must go on to discover in the same plodding way, one fancies that the Poet of to-day may as well fold his hands, or turn them to dig and delve, considering how soon the march of discovery will distance all his imaginations, [and] dissolve the language in which they are uttered.  Martial, as you say, lives now, after two thousand years; a space that seems long to us whose lives are so brief; but a moment, the twinkling of an eye, if compared (not to Eternity alone) but to the ages which it is now known the world must have existed, and (unless for some external violence) must continue to exist.  Lyell in his book about America, says that the falls of Niagara, if (as seems certain) they have worked their way back southwards for seven miles, must have taken over 35,000 years to do so, at the rate of something over a foot a year!  Sometimes they fall back on a stratum that crumbles away from behind them more easily: but then again they have to roll over rock that yields to them scarcely more perceptibly than the anvil to the serpent.  And those very soft strata which the Cataract now erodes contain evidences of a race of animals, and of the action of seas washing over them, long before Niagara came to have a distinct current; and the rocks were compounded ages and ages before those strata!  So that, as Lyell says, the Geologist looking at Niagara forgets even the roar of its waters in the contemplation of the awful processes of time that it suggests.  It is not only that this vision of Time must wither the Poet’s hope of immortality; but it is in itself more wonderful than all the conceptions of Dante and Milton.

As to your friend Pliny, I don’t think that Time can use his usual irony on that saying about Martial. [230a]  Pliny evidently only suggests that ‘at non erunt æterna quæ scripsit’ as a question of his correspondent; to which he himself replies ‘Non erunt fortasse.’  Your Greek quotations are very graceful.  I should like to read Busbequius. [230b]  Do you think Tacitus affected in style, as people now say he is?

* * * * *

In the Notes to his edition of Selden’s Table Talk, published in 1847, Mr. Singer says, ‘Part of the following Illustrations were kindly communicated to the Editor by a gentleman to whom his best thanks are due, and whom it would have afforded him great pleasure to be allowed to name.’  It might have been said with truth that the ‘greater part’ of the illustrations were contributed by the same anonymous benefactor, who was, I have very little doubt, FitzGerald himself.  I have in my possession a copy of the Table Talk which he gave me about 1871 or 1872, with annotations in his own handwriting, and these are almost literally reproduced in the Notes to Singer’s Edition.  Of this copy FitzGerald wrote to me, ‘What notes I have appended are worth nothing, I suspect; though I remember that the advice of the present Chancellor [231] was asked in some cases.’

To E. B. Cowell.

Geldestone, Jan. 13/48.

My dear Cowell,

. . . I suppose you have seen Carlyle’s thirty-five Cromwell letters in Fraser.  I see the Athenæum is picking holes with them too: and I certainly had a misgiving that Squire of Yarmouth must have pieced out the erosions of ‘the vermin’ by one or two hotheaded guesses of his own.  But I am sure, both from the general matter of the letters, and from Squire’s own bodily presence, that he did not forge them.  Carlyle has made a bungle of the whole business; and is fairly twitted by the Athenæum for talking so loud about his veneration for Cromwell, etc., and yet not stirring himself to travel a hundred miles to see and save such memorials as he talks of.

I liked your paper on the Mesnavi [232] very much; both your criticism and your Mosaic legend.  That I may not seem to give you careless and undistinguishing praise, I will tell you that I could not quite hook on the latter part of Moses to the former; did you leave out any necessary link of the chain in the hiatus you made? or is the inconsequence only in my brains?  So much for the legend: and I must reprehend you for one tiny bit of Cockney about Memory’s rosary at the end of your article, which, but for that, I liked so much.

So judges Fitz-Dennis; who, you must know by this time, has the judgment of Molière’s old woman, and the captiousness of Dennis.  Ten years ago I might have been vext to see you striding along in Sanscrit and Persian so fast; reading so much; remembering all; writing about it so well.  But now I am glad to see any man do any thing well; and I know that it is my vocation to stand and wait, and know within myself whether it is done well.

I have just finished, all but the last three chapters, the fourth Book of Thucydides, and it is now no task to me to go on.  This fourth book is the most interesting I have read; containing all that blockade of Pylos; that first great thumping of the Athenians at Oropus, after which they for ever dreaded the Theban troops.  And it came upon me ‘come stella in ciel,’ when, in the account of the taking of Amphipolis, [233] Thucydides, ος ταυτα ξυνεyραψεν, comes with seven ships to the rescue!  Fancy old Hallam sticking to his gun at a Martello tower!  This was the way to write well; and this was the way to make literature respectable.  Oh, Alfred Tennyson, could you but have the luck to be put to such employment!  No man would do it better; a more heroic figure to head the defenders of his country could not be.

To S. Laurence.

Boulge, Woodbridge,
[30 Jan. 1848.]

My dear Laurence,

How are you—how are you getting on?  A voice from the tombs thus addresses you; respect the dead, and answer.  Barton is well; that is, I left him well on Friday: but he was just going off to attend a Quaker’s funeral in the snow: whether he has survived that, I don’t know.  To-morrow is his Birth-day: and I am going (if he be alive) to help him to celebrate it.  His portrait has been hung (under my directions) over the mantel-piece in his sitting room, with a broad margin of some red stuff behind it, to set it off.  You may turn up your nose at all this; but let me tell you it is considered one of the happiest contrivances ever adopted in Woodbridge.  Nineteen people out of twenty like the portrait much; the twentieth, you may be sure, is a man of no taste at all.

. . . Every year I have less and less desire to go to London: and now you are not there I have one reason the less for going there.  I want to settle myself in some town—for good—for life!  A pleasant country town, a cathedral town perhaps!  What sort of a place is Lichfield?

My old friend Major Moor died rather suddenly last Saturday: [235] and this next Saturday is to be buried in the Church to which he used to take me when I was a boy.  He has not left a better man behind him.

Boulge, Friday.

My dear Allen,

. . . I suppose by a ‘Minster Pool’ in Lichfield you mean a select coterie of Prebends, Canons, etc.  These would never trouble me.  I should much prefer the society of the Doctor, the Lawyer (if tolerably honest) and the singing men.  I love a small Cathedral town; and the dignified respectability of the Church potentates is a part of the pleasure.  I sometimes think of Salisbury: and have altogether long had an idea of settling at forty years old.  Perhaps it will be at Woodbridge, after all!

To F. Tennyson.

When you talk of two idle men not taking the trouble to keep up a little intercourse by letters, you do not, in conscience, reflect upon me; who, you know, am very active in answering almost by return of post.  It is some six months since you must have got my last letter, full of most instructive advice concerning my namesake; of whom, and of which, you say nothing.  How much has he borrowed of you?  Is he now living on the top of your hospitable roof?  Do you think him the most ill-used of men?  I see great advertisements in the papers about your great Grimsby Railway. . . .  Does it pay? does it pay all but you? who live only on the fine promises of the lawyers and directors engaged in it?  You know England has had a famous winter of it for commercial troubles: my family has not escaped the agitation: I even now doubt if I must not give up my daily two-pennyworth of cream and take to milk: and give up my Spectator and Athenæum.  I don’t trouble myself much about all this: for, unless the kingdom goes to pieces by national bankruptcy, I shall probably have enough to live on: and, luckily, every year I want less.  What do you think of my not going up to London this year; to see exhibitions, to hear operas, and so on?  Indeed I do not think I shall go: and I have no great desire to go.  I hear of nothing new in any way worth going up for.  I have never yet heard the famous Jenny Lind, whom all the world raves about.  Spedding is especially mad about her, I understand: and, after that, is it not best for weaker vessels to keep out of her way?  Night after night is that bald head seen in one particular position in the Opera house, in a stall; the miserable man has forgot Bacon and philosophy, and goes after strange women.  There is no doubt this lady is a wonderful singer; but I will not go into hot crowds till another Pasta comes; I have heard no one since her worth being crushed for.  And to perform in one’s head one of Handel’s choruses is better than most of the Exeter Hall performances.  I went to hear Mendelssohn’s Elijah last spring: and found it wasn’t at all worth the trouble.  Though very good music it is not original: Haydn much better.  I think the day of Oratorios is gone, like the day for painting Holy Families, etc.  But we cannot get tired of what has been done in Oratorios more than we can get tired of Raffaelle.  Mendelssohn is really original and beautiful in romantic music: witness his Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Fingal’s Cave.

I had a note from Alfred three months ago.  He was then in London: but is now in Ireland, I think, adding to his new poem, the Princess.  Have you seen it?  I am considered a great heretic for abusing it; it seems to me a wretched waste of power at a time of life when a man ought to be doing his best; and I almost feel hopeless about Alfred now.  I mean, about his doing what he was born to do. . . .  On the other hand, Thackeray is progressing greatly in his line: he publishes a Novel in numbers—Vanity Fair—which began dull, I thought: but gets better every number, and has some very fine things indeed in it.  He is become a great man I am told: goes to Holland House, and Devonshire House: and for some reason or other, will not write a word to me.  But I am sure this is not because he is asked to Holland House.  Dickens has fallen off in his last novel, [238] just completed; but there are wonderful things in it too.  Do you ever get a glimpse of any of these things?

As to public affairs, they are so wonderful that one does not know where to begin.  If England maintains her own this year, she must have the elements of long lasting in her.  I think People begin to wish we had no more to do with Ireland: but the Whigs will never listen to a doctrine which was never heard of in Holland House.  I am glad Italy is free: and surely there is nothing for her now but a Republic.  It is well to stand by old kings who have done well by us: but it is too late in the day to begin Royalty.

If anything could tempt me so far as Italy, it would certainly be your presence in Florence.  But I boggle about going twenty miles, and cui bono? deadens me more and more.

July 2.  All that precedes was written six weeks ago, when I was obliged to go up to London on business. . . .  I saw Alfred, and the rest of the sçavans.  Thackeray is a great man: goes to Devonshire House, etc.: and his book (which is capital) is read by the Great: and will, I hope, do them good.  I heard but little music: the glorious Acis and Galatea; and the redoubtable Jenny Lind, for the first time.  I was disappointed in her: but am told this is all my fault.  As to naming her in the same Olympiad with great old Pasta, I am sure that is ridiculous.  The Exhibition is like most others you have seen; worse perhaps.  There is an ‘Aaron’ and a ‘John the Baptist’ by Etty far worse than the Saracen’s Head on Ludgate Hill.  Moore is turned Picture dealer: and that high Roman virtue in which he indulged is likely to suffer a Picture-dealer’s change, I think.  Carlyle writes in the Examiner about Ireland: raves and foams, but has nothing to propose.  Spedding prospers with Bacon.  Alfred seemed to me in fair plight: much dining out: and his last Poem is well liked I believe.  Morton is still at Lisbon, I believe also: but I have not written to him, nor heard from him.  And now, my dear Frederic, I must shut up.  Do not neglect to write to me sometimes.  Alfred said you ought to be in England about your Grimsby Land.

To E. B. Cowell.

. . . I do not know that I praised Xenophon’s imagination in recording such things as Alcibiades at Lampsacus; [240] all I meant to say was that the history was not dull which does record such facts, if it be for the imagination of others to quicken them. . . .  As to Sophocles, I will not give up my old Titan.  Is there not an infusion of Xenophon in Sophocles, as compared to Æschylus,—a dilution?  Sophocles is doubtless the better artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the divinest?  Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but Æschylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and appalling?  Or if one will have Æschylus too a work of man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the genius of man aspiring up to the immeasurable, and reaching after the infinite in complexity and gloom, according as Christianity elevated and widened men’s minds.  A dozen lines of Æschylus have a more Almighty power on me than all Sophocles’ plays; though I would perhaps rather save Sophocles, as the consummation of Greek art, than Æschylus’ twelve lines, if it came to a choice which must be lost.  Besides these Æschyluses trouble us with their grandeur and gloom; but Sophocles is always soothing, complete, and satisfactory.

I saw many of my friends in London, Carlyle and Tennyson among them; but most and best of all, Spedding.  I have stolen his noble book [241] away from him; noble, in spite (I believe, but am not sure) of some adikology in the second volume: some special pleadings for his idol: amica Veritas, sed magis, etc.  But I suppose you will think this the intolerance of a weak stomach.

Roe promised me six copies of his Tennyson. [242]  Do you know anything of them?  Why I ask is, that, in case they should be at your house, I may have an opportunity of having them brought down here one day.  And I have promised them nearly all to people hereabout.

Barton is out of health; some affection of the heart, I think, that will never leave him, never let him be what he was when you saw him.  He is forced to be very abstemious . . . but he bears his illness quite as a man; and looks very demurely to the necessary end of all life. [243]  Churchyard is pretty well; has had a bad cough for three months.  I suppose we are all growing older: though I have been well this winter, and was unwell all last.  I forget if you saw Crabbe (I mean the Father) when you were down here.

You may tell Mr. Hullah, if you like, that in spite of his contempt for my music, I was very much pleased, with a duett of his I chanced to see—‘O that we two were maying’—and which I bought and have forced two ladies here to take pains to learn.  They would sing nicely if they had voices and were taught.

Fragment of Letter to J. Allen.

I see a good deal of Alfred, who lives not far off me: and he is still the same noble and droll fellow he used to be.  A lithograph has been made from Laurence’s portrait of him; my portrait: and six copies are given to me.  I reserve one for you; how can I send it to you?

Laurence has for months been studying the Venetian secret of colour in company with Geldart; and at last they have discovered it, they say.  I have seen some of Laurence’s portraits done on his new system; they seem to be really much better up to a certain point of progress: but I think he is apt, by a bad choice of colours, to spoil the effect which an improved system of laying on the colours should ensure.  But he has only lately begun on his new system, of which he is quite confident; and perhaps all will come right by and by.

I often think of you: often wish to write to you—often intend to do so—determine to do so—but perhaps should not do so for a long time, but that this sheet of thin paper happens to come under my fingers this 19th of June 1849.  You must not believe however that it is only chance that puts me up to this exertion; I really should have written before but that the reports we read of Italian and Florentine troubles put me in doubt first whether you are still at Florence to receive my letter: and secondly whether, if you be there, it would ever reach your hands.  But I will brace myself up even to that great act of Friendship, to write a long letter with all probability of its miscarrying.  Only look here; if it ever does reach you, you must really write to me directly: to let me know how you and yours are, for I am sincerely anxious to know this.  I saw great reports in the paper too some months back of Prince Albert going to open Great Grimsby Docks.  Were not such Docks to be made on your land? and were you not to be a rich man if they were made?  And have you easily consented to forego being paid in money, and to accept in lieu thereof a certain quantity of wholly valueless shares in said Docks, which will lead you into expense, instead of enriching you?  This is what I suppose will be the case.  For though you have a microscopic eye for human character, you are to be diddled by any knave, or set of knaves, as you well know.

After you left London, I remained there nearly to the end of December; saw a good deal of Alfred, etc.  Since then I have been down here except a fortnight’s stay in London, from which I have just returned.  I heard Alfred had been seen flying through town to the Lushingtons: but I did not see him.  He is said to be still busy about that accursed Princess.  By the by, beg, borrow, steal, or buy Keats’ Letters and Poems; most wonderful bits of Poems, written off hand at a sitting, most of them: I only wonder that they do not make a noise in the world.  By the by again, it is quite necessary your poems should be printed; which Moxon, I am sure, would do gladly.  Except this book of Keats, we have had no poetry lately, I believe; luckily, the ---, ---, ---, etc., are getting older and past the age of conceiving—wind.  Send your poems over to Alfred to sort and arrange for you: he will do it: and you and he are the only men alive whose poems I want to see in print.  By the by, thirdly and lastly, and in total contradiction to the last sentence, I am now helping to edit some letters and poems of—Bernard Barton!  Yes: the poor fellow died suddenly of heart disease; leaving his daughter, a noble woman, almost unprovided for: and we are getting up this volume by subscription.  If you were in England you must subscribe: but as you are not, you need only give us a share in the Great Grimsby Dock instead.

Now there are some more things I could tell you, but you see where my pen has honestly got to in the paper.  I remember you did not desire to hear about my garden, which is now gorgeous with large red poppies, and lilac irises—satisfactory colouring: and the trees murmur a continuous soft chorus to the solo which my soul discourses within.  If that be not Poetry, I should like to know what is? and with it I may as well conclude.  I think I shall send this letter to your family at Cheltenham to be forwarded to you:—they may possibly have later intelligence of you than I have.  Pray write to me if you get this; indeed you must; and never come to England without letting me know of it.

To George Crabbe. [247]

Terrace House, Richmond,
October 22/49.

My dear George,

Warren’s analysis of my MS. is rather wonderful to me.  Though not wholly correct (as I think, and as I will expound to you one day) it seems to me yet as exact as most of my friends who know me best could draw out from their personal knowledge.  Some of his guesses (though partly right) hit upon traits of character I should conceive quite out of all possibility of solution from mere handwriting.  I can understand that a man should guess at one’s temperament, whether lively or slow; at one’s habit of thought, whether diffuse or logical; at one’s Will, whether strong and direct or feeble and timid.  But whether one distrusts men, and yet trusts friends?  Half of this is true, at all events.  Then I cannot conceive how a man should see in handwriting such an accident as whether one knew much of Books or men; and in this point it is very doubtful if Warren is right.  But, take it all in all, his analysis puzzles me much.  I have sent it to old Jem Spedding the Wise.  You shall have it again.

One day I mean to go and pay you another visit, perhaps soon.  I heard from Miss Barton you were reading, and even liking, the Princess—is this so?  I believe it is greatly admired in London coteries.  I remain in the same mind about [it].  I am told the Author means to republish it, with a character of each speaker between each canto; which will make the matter worse, I think; unless the speakers are all of the Tennyson family.  For there is no indication of any change of speaker in the cantos themselves.  What do you say to all this?

Your note came to me to-day.  I ought to have written to you long ago: and indeed did half do a letter before the summer was half over: which letter I mislaid.  I shall be delighted indeed to have your photograph: insufficient as a photograph is.  You are one of the few men whose portrait I would give a penny to have: and one day when you are in England we must get it done by Laurence; half at your expense and half at mine, I think.  I wish you had sent over to me some of your poems which you told me you were printing at Florence: and often I wish I was at Florence to give you some of my self-satisfied advice on what you should select.  For though I do not pretend to write Poetry you know I have a high notion of my judgment in it.

In a week I go to London, where I hope to see Alfred.  Oddly enough, I had a note from him this very day on which I receive yours: he has, he tells me, taken chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.  Moxon told me he was about to publish another edition of his Princess, with interludes added between the parts: and also that he was about to print, but (I think) not to publish, those Elegiacs on Hallam.  I saw poor old Thackeray in London: getting very slowly better of a bilious fever that had almost killed him.  Some one told me that he was gone or going to the Water Doctor at Malvern.  People in general thought Pendennis got dull as it got on; and I confess I thought so too: he would do well to take the opportunity of his illness to discontinue it altogether.  He told me last June he himself was tired of it: must not his readers naturally tire too?  Do you see Dickens’ David Copperfield?  It is very good, I think: more carefully written than his later works.  But the melodramatic parts, as usual, bad.  Carlyle says he is a showman whom one gives a shilling to once a month to see his raree-show, and then sends him about his business.

I have been obliged to turn Author on the very smallest scale.  My old friend Bernard Barton chose to die in the early part of this year. . . .  We have made a Book out of his Letters and Poems, and published it by subscription . . . and I have been obliged to contribute a little dapper [251] Memoir, as well as to select bits of Letters, bits of Poems, etc.  All that was wanted is accomplished: many people subscribed.  Some of B. B.’s letters are pleasant, I think, and when you come to England I will give you this little book of incredibly small value.  I have heard no music but two concerts at Jullien’s a fortnight ago; very dull, I thought: no beautiful new Waltzes and Polkas which I love.  It is a strange thing to go to the Casinos and see the coarse whores and apprentices in bespattered morning dresses, pea-jackets, and bonnets, twirl round clumsily and indecently to the divine airs played in the Gallery; ‘the music yearning like a God in pain’ indeed.  I should like to hear some of your Florentine Concerts; and I do wish you to believe that I do constantly wish myself with you: that, if I ever went anywhere, I would assuredly go to visit the Villa Gondi.  I wish you to believe this, which I know to be true, though I am probably further than ever from accomplishing my desire.  Farewell: I shall hope to find out your Consul and your portrait in London: though you do not give me very good directions where I am to find them.  And I will let you know soon whether I have found the portrait, and how I like it.

. . . I am glad you like the Book. [252a]  You are partly right as to what I say about the Poems.  For though I really do think some of the Poems very pretty, yet I think they belong to a class which the world no longer wants.  Notwithstanding this, one is sure the world will not be the worse for them: they are a kind of elder Nursery rhymes; pleasing to younger people of good affections. [252b]  The letters, some of them, I like very much: but I had some curiosity to know how others would like them.

I found A. Tennyson in chambers at Lincoln’s Inn: and recreated myself with a sight of his fine old mug, and got out of him all his dear old stories, and many new ones.  He is re-publishing his Poems, the Princess with songs interposed.  I cannot say I thought them like the old vintage of his earlier days, though perhaps better than other people’s.  But, even to you, such opinions appear blasphemies.  A. T. is now gone on a visit into Leicestershire: and I miss him greatly.  Carlyle I have not seen; but I read an excellent bit of his in the Examiner, about Ireland.  Thackeray is well again, except not quite strong yet.  Spedding is not yet returned: and I doubt will not return before I have left London.

I have been but to one play; to see the Hypocrite, and Tom Taylor’s burlesque [254a]  at the Strand Theatre.  It was dreadfully cold in the pit: and I thought dull.  Farren almost unintelligible: Mrs. Glover good in a disagreeable part. [254b]  Diogenes has very good Aristophanic hits in it, as perhaps you know: but its action was rather slow, I thought: and I was so cold I could not sit it half through.

To F. Tennyson.

[Written from Bramford?  E. F. G. was staying at this time with the Cowells.]

Direct to Boulge, Woodbridge.
March 7/50.

My dear old Frederic,

. . . I saw Alfred in London—pretty well, I thought.  He has written songs to be stuck between the cantos of the Princess, none of them of the old champagne flavour, as I think.  But I am in a minority about the Princess, I believe.  If you print any poems, I especially desire you will transmit them to me.  I wish I was with you to consider about these: for though I cannot write poems, you know I consider that I have the old woman’s faculty of judging of them: yes, much better than much cleverer and wiser men; I pretend to no Genius, but to Taste: which, according to my aphorism, is the feminine of Genius. . . .

. . . I have now been home about three weeks, and, as you say, one sees indications of lovely spring about.  I have read but very little of late; indeed my eyes have not been in superfine order.  I caught a glimpse of the second volume of Southey’s Life and Letters; interesting enough.  I have also bought Emerson’s ‘Representative Men,’ a shilling book of Bohn’s: with very good scattered thoughts in it: but scarcely leaving any large impression with one, or establishing a theory.  So at least it has seemed to me: but I have not read very carefully.  I have also bought a little posthumous volume of Ebenezer Elliott: which is sure to have fine things in it.

You tell me to write soon: and this letter is begun, at least, on the day yours reaches me.  This is partly owing to my having to wait an hour here in the Coffee room of the Portland Hotel: whither your letter has been forwarded to me from Boulge.  I am come up for one week: once more to haggle with Lawyers; once more to try and settle my own affairs as well as those of others for a time. . . .

I am come to London; but I do not go to Operas or Plays: and have scarce time (and, it must be said, scarce inclination) to hunt up many friends.  Dear old Alfred is out of town; Spedding is my sheet-anchor, the truly wise and fine fellow: I am going to his rooms this very evening: and there I believe Thackeray, Venables, etc., are to be.  I hope not a large assembly: for I get shyer and shyer even of those I knew.  Thackeray is in such a great world that I am afraid of him; he gets tired of me: and we are content to regard each other at a distance.  You, Alfred, Spedding, and Allen, are the only men I ever care to see again.  If ever I leave this country I will go and see you at Florence or elsewhere; but my plans are at present unsettled.  I have refused to be Godfather to all who have ever asked me; but I declare it will give me sincere pleasure to officiate for your Child.  I got your photograph at last: it is a beastly thing: not a bit like: why did you not send your Poems, which are like you; and reflect your dear old face well?  As you know I admire your poems, the only poems by a living writer I do admire, except Alfred’s, you should not hesitate.  I can have no doubt whatever they ought to be published in England: I believe Moxon would publish them: and I believe you would make some money by them.  But don’t send them to Alfred to revise or select: only for this reason, that you would both of you be a little annoyed by gossip about how much share each of you had in them.  Your poems can want no other hand than your own to meddle with them, except in respect of the choice of them to make a volume which would please generally: a little of the vulgar faculty of popular tact is all that needs to be added to you, as I think.  You will know I do not say this presumptuously: since I think the power of writing one fine line transcends all the ‘Able-Editor’ ability in the ably-edited Universe.

Do you see Carlyle’s ‘Latter Day Pamphlets’?  They make the world laugh, and his friends rather sorry for him.  But that is because people will still look for practical measures from him: one must be content with him as a great satirist who can make us feel when we are wrong though he cannot set us right.  There is a bottom of truth in Carlyle’s wildest rhapsodies.  I have no news to tell you of books or music, for I scarce see or hear any.  And moreover I must be up, and leave the mahogany coffee-room table on which I write so badly: and be off to Lincoln’s Inn.  God bless you, my dear fellow.  I ask a man of business here in the room about Grimsby: he says, ‘Well, all these railways are troublesome; but the Grimsby one is one of the best: railway property must look up a little: and so will Grimsby.’

I am packing up my mind by degrees to move away from here on a round of visits: and will give you a look at Bury if you like it.  I am really frightened that it is a whole year since I have seen you: and we but two hours asunder!  I know it is not want of will on my part: though you may wonder what other want detains me; but you will believe me when I say it is not want of will.  You are too busy to come here: where indeed is nothing to come for.  I wished for Charles last Monday: for people came to shoot the three brace of pheasants inhabiting these woods: had I remembered the first of October, I would have let him know.  Otherwise, I am afraid to invite the young, whom I cannot entertain.

If you knew how glad I am to hear from you, you would write to me oftener.  You see I make a quick return whenever I get an epistle from you.  I should indeed have begun to indite before, but I had not a scrap of serviceable paper in the house: and I am only this minute returned from a wet walk to Woodbridge bringing home the sheet on which I am now writing, along with the rest of a half-quire, which may be filled to you, if we both live.  I now count the number of sheets: there are nine.  I do not think we average more than three letters a year each.  Shall both of us, or either, live three years more, beginning with the year that opens to-morrow?  I somehow believe not: which I say not as a doleful thing (indeed you may look at it as a very ludicrous one).  Well, we shall see.  I am all for the short and merry life.  Last night I began the sixth Book of Lucretius in bed.  You laugh grimly again?  I have not looked into it for more than a year, and I took it up by mistake for one of Swift’s dirty volumes; and, having got into bed with it, did not care to get out to change it.

The delightful lady . . . is going to leave this neighbourhood and carry her young Husband [261] to Oxford, there to get him some Oriental Professorship one day.  He is a delightful fellow, and, I say, will, if he live, be the best Scholar in England.  Not that I think Oxford will be so helpful to his studies as his counting house at Ipswich was.  However, being married he cannot at all events become Fellow, and, as so many do, dissolve all the promise of Scholarship in Sloth, Gluttony, and sham Dignity.  I shall miss them both more than I can say, and must take to Lucretius! to comfort me.  I have entirely given up the Genteel Society here about; and scarce ever go anywhere but to the neighbouring Parson, [262a] with whom I discuss Paley’s Theology, and the Gorham Question.  I am going to him to-night, by the help of a Lantern, in order to light out the Old Year with a Cigar.  For he is a great Smoker, and a very fine fellow in all ways.

I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from any one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two days with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, [262b] in their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River side.  Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say, in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume.  For has he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some personal Beauty to boot?  He explained to us one day about the laws of reflection in water: and I said then one never could look at the willow whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him.  How beastly this reads!  As if he gave us a lecture!  But you know the man, how quietly it all came out; only because I petulantly denied his plain assertion.  For I really often cross him only to draw him out; and vain as I may be, he is one of those that I am well content to make shine at my own expense.

Don’t suppose that this or any other ideal day with him effaces my days with you.  Indeed, my dear Frederic, you also mark many times and many places in which I have been with you.  Gravesend and its ανηριθμοι shrimps cannot be forgotten.  You say I shall never go to see you at Florence.  I have said to you before and I now repeat it, that if ever I go abroad it shall be to see you and my Godchild.  I really cannot say if I should not have gone this winter (as I hinted in my last) in case you had answered my letter.  But I really did not know if you had not left Florence; and a fortnight ago I thought to myself I would write to Horatio at Cheltenham and ask him for news of you.  As to Alfred, I have heard of his marriage, etc., from Spedding, who also saw and was much pleased with her indeed.  But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well satisfied to see one when one falls in his way.  You will think I have a spite against him for some neglect, when I say this, and say besides that I cannot care for his In Memoriam.  Not so, if I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now.  His poem I never did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest order.  So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical œstrus, is gone. . . It is the cursed inactivity (very pleasant to me who am no Hero) of this 19th century which has spoiled Alfred, I mean spoiled him for the great work he ought now to be entering upon; the lovely and noble things he has done must remain.  It is dangerous work this prophesying about great Men. . . .  I beg you very much to send me your poems, the very first opportunity; as I want them very much.  Nobody doubts that you ought to make a volume for Moxon.  Send your poems to Spedding to advise on.  No doubt Alfred would be best adviser of all: but then people would be stupid, and say that he had done all that was good in the Book—(wait till I take my tea, which has been lying on the table these ten minutes)—Now, animated by some very inferior Souchong from the village shop, I continue my letter, having reflected during my repast that I have seen two College men you remember since I last wrote, Thompson and Merivale.  The former is just recovering of the water cure, looking blue: the latter, Merivale, is just recovering from—Marriage!—which he undertook this Midsummer, with a light-haired daughter of George Frere’s.  Merivale lives just on the borders of Suffolk: and a week before his marriage he invited me to meet F. Pollock and his wife at the Rectory.  There we spent two easy days, and I heard no more of Merivale till three weeks ago when he asked me to meet Thompson just before Christmas. . . .  Have you seen Merivale’s History of Rome, beginning with the Empire?  Two portly volumes are out, and are approved of by Scholars, I believe.  I have not read them, not having money to buy, nor any friend to lend.

I hear little music but what I make myself, or help to make with my Parson’s son and daughter.  We, with not a voice among us, go through Handel’s Coronation Anthems!  Laughable it may seem; yet it is not quite so; the things are so well-defined, simple, and grand, that the faintest outline of them tells; my admiration of the old Giant grows and grows: his is the Music for a Great, Active, People.  Sometimes too, I go over to a place elegantly called Bungay, where a Printer [265] lives who drills the young folks of a manufactory there to sing in Chorus once a week. . . .  They sing some of the English Madrigals, some of Purcell, and some of Handel, in a way to satisfy me, who don’t want perfection, and who believe that the grandest things do not depend on delicate finish.  If you were here now, we would go over and hear the Harmonious Blacksmith sung in Chorus, with words, of course.  It almost made me cry when I heard the divine Air rolled into vocal harmony from the four corners of a large Hall.  One can scarce comprehend the Beauty of the English Madrigals till one hears them done (though coarsely) in this way and on a large scale: the play of the parts as they alternate from the different quarters of the room.

I have taken another half sheet to finish my letter upon: so as my calculation of how far this half-quire is to spread over Time is defeated.  Let us write oftener, and longer, and we shall not tempt the Fates by inchoating too long a hope of letter-paper.  I have written enough for to-night: I am now going to sit down and play one of Handel’s Overtures as well as I can—Semele, perhaps, a very grand one—then, lighting my lantern, trudge through the mud to Parson Crabbe’s.  Before I take my pen again to finish this letter the New Year will have dawned—on some of us.  ‘Thou fool! this night thy soul may be required of thee!’  Very well: while it is in this Body I will wish my dear old F. T. a happy New Year.  And now to drum out the Old with Handel.  Good Night.

I send you an Euphranor, and (as you desire it) Spedding’s Examiner. [266]  I believe that I should be ashamed of his praise, if I did not desire to take any means to make my little book known for a good purpose.  I think he over-praises it: but he cannot over-praise the design, and (as I believe) the tendency of it.

. . . My heart saddens to think of Bramford all desolate; [267a] and I shall now almost turn my head away as any road, or railroad, brings me within sight of the little spire!  I write once a week to abuse both of them for going.  But they are quite happy at Oxford.

I felt a sort of horror when I read in your letter you had ordered the Book [267b] into your Club, for fear some one might guess.  But if your folks don’t guess, no one else will.  I have heard no more of it since I wrote to you last, except that its sale does not stand still.  Pickering’s foreman blundered in the Advertisements; quoting an extract about the use of the Book, when he should have quoted about its amusement, which is what the world is attracted by.  But I left it to him.  As it would be a real horror to me to be known as the writer, I do not think I can have much personal ambition in its success; but I should sincerely wish it to be read for what little benefit it may do. . . .

I have seen scarce anybody here: Thackeray only once; neither Tennyson nor Carlyle.  Donne came up for a day to see as to the morality of the ‘Prodigal Son’ [268] at Drury Lane, which the Bishop of London complained of.  Donne is deputy Licenser for Jack Kemble.  I went to see it with him; it was only stupid and gaudy.

Boulge, Tuesday, May the something, 1851.

My dear George,

I am ashamed you should have the trouble of asking me to Merton so often, and so in vain.  I might give you a specious reason for not going now . . . but I will honestly confess I believe I should not have accompanied your Father in his Voyage to your house, had the sky been quite clear of engagement.  Why, I cannot exactly say: my soul is not packed up for Merton yet, though one day it will be; and I have no such idea of the preciousness of my company as to have any hesitation in letting my friends wait any length of time before I go to occupy their easy chairs.  The day will come, if we live.  I have had a very strong invitation to Cambridge this week; to live with my old friends the Skrines in Sidney College.  But why should we meet to see each other grown old, etc.?  (I don’t mean this quite seriously.)  Ah, I should like a drive over Newmarket Heath: the sun shining on the distant leads of Ely Cathedral.

Why do you never write to me?  I am sure I wrote last: I constantly am thinking of you, and constantly wishing to see you.  Perhaps you are in England at this very hour, and do not let me know of it.  When I wrote to you last I cannot remember; whether in Winter or Spring.  I was in London during January and February last, but have been vegetating down here ever since.  Have not been up even to see the Great Exh.—one is tired of writing, and seeing written, the word.  All the world, as you know, goes in droves: you may be lounging in it this very hour, though I don’t mean to say you are one of a drove.  It is because there are so few F. Tennysons in the world that I do not like to be wholly out of hearing of the one I know. . . .  My own affairs do not improve, and I have seen more and more of the pitiful in humanity . . . but luckily my wants decrease.  I am quite content never to buy a picture or a Book; almost content not to see them.  One could soon relapse into Barbarism.  I do indeed take a survey of old Handel’s Choruses now and then; and am just now looking with great delight into Purcell’s King Arthur, real noble English music, much of it; and assuredly the prototype of much of Handel.  It is said Handel would not admire Purcell; but I am sure he adapted himself to English ears and sympathies by means of taking up Purcell’s vein.  I wish you were here to consider this with me; but you would grunt dissent, and smile bitterly at my theories.  I am trying to teach the bumpkins of the united parishes of Boulge and Debach to sing a second to such melodies as the women sing by way of Hymns in our Church: and I have invented (as I think) a most simple and easy way of teaching them the little they need to learn.  How would you like to see me, with a bit of chalk in my hand, before a black board, scoring up semibreves on a staff for half a dozen Rustics to vocalize?  Laugh at me in Imagination. . . .