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.
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 Cæsar. 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar, 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 Sévigné.’ 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—finding—opening, 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 ‘Côtelette d’Agneau à 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 à 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.
Ecce iterum—Crispin! I think you will soon call me ‘Les FitzGeralds’ as Madame de Sévigné called her too officious friend ‘Les Hacquevilles.’ 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 Sévigné,’ 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 10½ 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 Baños 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 Athenæum 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’Expérience’ 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 Æsthetic.
Bacon’s appropriation you know of C’est bien choisir de ne choisir pas’ (De la Vanité, 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 Eidyll?) 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. Voilà 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 Œdipodes, 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 Œdipus (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 Æschylus 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 Æschylus; 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.
To come down rather a little from him, my Calderon, which you speak of—very many beside myself, with as much fair Dramatic Spirit, knowledge of good English and English Verse, would do quite as well as you think I do, if they would not hamper themselves with Forms of Verse, and Thought, irreconcilable with English Language and English Ways of Thinking. I am persuaded that, to keep Life in the Work (as Drama must) the Translator (however inferior to his Original) must re-cast that original into his own Likeness, more or less: the less like his original, so much the worse: but still, the live Dog better than the dead Lion; in Drama, I say. As to Epic, is not Cary still the best Dante? Cowper and Pope were both Men of Genius, out of my Sphere; but whose Homer still holds its own? The elaborately exact, or the ‘teacup-time’ Parody? Is not Fairfax’ Tasso good? I never read Harington’s Ariosto, English or Italian. Another shot have I made at Faust in Bayard Taylor’s Version: but I do not even get on with him as with Hayward, hampered as he (Taylor) is with his allegiance to original metres, etc. His Notes I was interested in: but I shall die ungoethed, I doubt, so far as Poetry goes: I always believe he was Philosopher and Critic.
But, harking back to Calderon, surely you have seen the ‘Mágico’ printed from the Duc d’Osuna’s original MS., with many variations from the text as we have it. This volume is edited, in French, by ‘Alfred Morel Fatio,’ printed at ‘Heilbronn’ (wherever that is), and to be bought of ‘M. Murillo, Calle de Alcalá, Num. 18, Madrid.’ It contains a Facsimile of the old Boy’s MS. I will send you my Copy if there be ‘no Coal in Newcastle.’
To C. E. Norton.
Woodbridge. May 18/79.
My dear Norton,
It is over six months, I believe, since we exchanged a letter; mine the last shot: which I mention only because that has been my reason for not writing again till I should hear from you that all was well enough with you and yours to justify my writing an idle letter. You have spoken of an aged Mother:—if your Winter has been such as ours! And not over yet, as scarce a leaf on the trees, and a N. E. wind blowing Cold, Cough, Bronchitis, etc., and the confounded Bell of a neighbouring Church announcing a Death, day after day. I certainly never remember so long, and so mortal a Winter: among young as well as old. Among the latter, I have just lost my elder, and only surviving Brother. But I shall close this Bill of Mortality before turning over the leaf.
Well: it is Mr. Clarke’s pamphlet which has encouraged me to ‘take up the pen,’ for I think it was you who sent it to me. All I am qualified to say about it is, that it is very well and earnestly written; but on a Subject, like your own Olympia, that I am no Judge of. I think of forwarding it to Cowell at our Cambridge, who is a Judge of Everything, I think, while pretending to Nothing. . . .
This reminds me of all the pains he bestowed on me five and twenty years ago; of which the result is one final Edition of Omar and Jámí. . . . Omar remains as he was; Jámí (Salámán) is cut down to two-thirds of his former proportion, and very much improved, I think. It is still in a wrong key: Verse of Miltonic strain, unlike the simple Eastern; I remember trying that at first, but could not succeed. So there is little but the Allegory itself (not a bad one), and now condensed into a very fair Bird’s Eye view; quite enough for any Allegory, I think. . . .
And—(this Letter is to be all about myself)—by this post I send you my Handbook of Crabbe’s Tales of the Hall, of which I am so doubtful that I do not yet care to publish it. I wished to draw a few readers to a Book which nobody reads, by an Abstract of the most readable Parts connected with as little of my Prose as would tell the story of much prosaic Verse, but that very amount of prosy Verse may help to soak the story into the mind (as Richardson, etc.) in a way that my more readable Abstract does not. So it may only serve to remind any one of a Book—which he never read! The Original must be more obsolete in America than here in England; however, I should like to know what you make of it: and you see that you may tell me very plainly, for it is not as an Author, but only as Author’s Showman that I appear.
It is rather shameful to take another Sheet because of almost filling the first with myself. And I have but little to tell in it. Carlyle I have not heard of for these six months: nor Tennyson: I must write to hear how they have weathered this mortal Winter. Tennyson’s elder, not eldest, Brother Charles is dead: and I was writing only yesterday to persuade Spedding to insist on Macmillan publishing a complete edition of Charles’ Sonnets: graceful, tender, beautiful, and quite original, little things. Two thirds of them would be enough: but no one can select in such a case, you know. I have been reading again your Hawthorne’s Journal in England when he was Consul here; this I have: I cannot get his ‘Our old Home,’ nor his Foreign Notes: can you send me any small, handy, Edition of these two last? I delight in them because of their fearless Truthfulness as well as for their Genius. I have just taken down his Novels, or Romances, to read again, and try to relish more than I have yet done; but I feel sure the fault must be with me, as I feel about Goethe, who is yet as sealed a Book to me as ever. . . . I have (alas!) got through all Sir Walter’s Scotch Novels this winter, even venturing further on Kenilworth: which is wonderful for Plot: and one scene, Elizabeth reconciling her Rival Earls at Greenwich, seeming to me as good as Shakespeare’s Henry VIII., which is mainly Fletcher’s, I am told. I have heard nothing of Mr. Lowell since I heard of you, and do think that I will pitch him a Crabbe into the midst of Madrid, if he be still there. (N.B. Some of Crabbe is not in the Text but from MS. first (and best) readings printed in the Son’s edition.)
The Nightingale is now telling me that he is not dead.
Woodbridge. May 20/79.
My dear Sir,
By this post I send you a bit of a Book, in which you see that I only play very second Fiddle. It is not published yet, as I wait for a few friends to tell me if it be worth publishing, or better kept among ourselves, who know Crabbe as well as myself. You could tell me better than any one, only that I doubt if any Transatlantic Man can care, even if he knows of a Writer whose Books are all but unread by his own Countrymen, so obsolete has become his Subject (in this Book) as well as his way of treating it. So I think I may exonerate you from giving an opinion, and will only send it to you for such amusement as it may afford you in your Exile. I fancied I could make a pleasant Abstract of a much too long and clumsy Book, and draw a few Readers to the well-nigh forgotten Author. But, on looking over my little work, I doubt that my short and readable Handybook will not leave any such impression as the long, rather un-readable, original; mere length having, you know, the inherent Virtue of soaking it in: so as my Book will scarce do but as a reminder of the original, which nobody reads! . . .
Voilà assez sur ce sujet là. I think that you will one day give us an account of your Spanish Consulship, as Hawthorne did of his English: a noble Book which I have just been reading over again. His ‘Our old Home’ is out of print here; and I have asked Mr. Norton to send me any handy Edition of it, as also of the Italian Journal, my Copies having been lent out past recovery. I am going to begin again with his Scarlet Letter and Seven Gables; which (oddly to myself) I did not take to. And yet I think they are not out of my line, or reach, I ought to say.
We have had such a long, and mortal Winter as never do I remember in my seventy years, which struck 70 on March 31 last. I have just lost a Brother—75. Proximus ardet, etc. But I escaped through all these seven months Winter, till a week or ten days ago, when a South Wind and Sunshine came for a Day, and one expatiated abroad, and then down comes a North Easter, etc. I was like the Soldier in Crabbe’s Old Bachelor (now with you), who compares himself to the Soldier stricken by a random Shot, when resting on his Arms, etc. [267] So Cold, Cough, Bronchitis, etc. And To-day Sunshine again, and Ruiseñor (do you know him?) in my Shrubs only just be-greening, and I am a Butterfly again. I have heard nothing of Carlyles, Tennysons, etc., save that the latter had written some Ballad about Lucknow. I shall be glad to hear a word of yourself, Calderon, and Don Quixote, the latter of whom σαίνει με from my Bookshelf. Yes, yes, I am soon coming.
Woodbridge. June 13/79.
My dear Sir,
I had just written a Letter to Tennyson, a thing I had not done these two years, when one was brought to me with what I thought his Subscription, which I have not seen for twice two years, I suppose. Well, but the Letter was from you. I ought not to write again so quick: but you know I never exact a Reply: especially as you never will answer what I ask you, which I rather admire too. To be sure you have so much filled your Letter with my Crabbe that you have told me nothing of yourself, Calderon, and Cervantes, both of whom, I suppose, are fermenting, and maturing, in your head. Cowell says he will come to this coast this Summer with Don Quixote that we may read him together: so, if you should come, you will find yourself at home. I have said all I can say about your taking any such trouble as coming down here only to shake hands with me, as you talk of. I never make any sort of ‘hospitality’ to the few who ever do come this way, but just put a fowl in the Pot (as Don Quixote’s ama might do), and hire a Shandrydan for a Drive, or a Boat on the river, and ‘There you are,’ as one of Dickens’ pleasant young fellows says. But I never can ask any one to come, and out of his way, to see me, a very ancient, and solitary, Bird indeed. But you know all about it. ‘Parlons d’autres choses,’ as Sévigné says.
I was curious to know what an American, and of your Quality, would say of Crabbe. The manner and topics (Whig, Tory, etc.) are almost obsolete in this country, though I remember them well: how then must they appear to you and yours? The ‘Ceremoniousness’ you speak of is overdone for Crabbe’s time: he overdid it in his familiar intercourse, so as to disappoint everybody who expected ‘Nature’s sternest Poet,’ etc.; but he was all the while observing. I know not why he persists in his Thee and Thou, which certainly Country Squires did not talk of, except for an occasional Joke, at the time his Poem dates from, 1819: and I warned my Readers in that stillborn Preface to change that form into simple ‘You.’ If this Book leaves a melancholy impression on you, what then would all his others? Leslie Stephen says his Humour is heavy (Qy is not his Tragedy?), and wonders how Miss Austen could admire him as it appears she did; and you discern a relation between her and him. I find plenty of grave humour in this Book: in the Spinster, the Bachelor, the Widow, etc. All which I pointed out (in the still-born) to L. S. . . . He says too that Crabbe is ‘incapable of Epigram,’ which also you do not agree in; Epigrams more of Humour than Wit; sometimes only hinted, as in those two last lines of that disagreeable, and rather incomprehensible Sir Owen Dale. I think he will do in the land of Cervantes still.
When my Copy of Tennyson’s Lover’s Tale comes home I will send it to you. . . . As to Gray—Ah, to think of that little Elegy inscribed among the Stars, while ---, --- & Co., are blazing away with their Fireworks here below. I always think that there is more Genius in most of the three volume Novels than in Gray: but by the most exquisite Taste, and indefatigable lubrication, he made of his own few thoughts, and many of other men’s, a something which we all love to keep ever about us. [270] I do not think his scarcity of work was from Design: he had but a little to say, I believe, and took his time to say it. . . .
Only think of old Carlyle, who was very feeble indeed during the winter, having read through all Shakespeare to himself during these latter Spring months. So his Niece writes me. I do not hear of his doing the like by his Goethe.
I had another shot at your Hawthorne, a Man of fifty times Gray’s Genius, but I could not take to him. Painfully microscopic and elaborate on dismal subjects, I still thought: but I am quite ready to admit that (as in Goethe’s case) the fault lies in me. I think I have a good feeling for such things; but ‘non omnia possumus, etc.;’ some Screw loose. ‘C’est égal.’ That is a serviceable word for so much.
Now have I any more that turns up for this wonderful Letter? I should put it in, for I do think it might amuse you in Madrid. But nothing does turn up this Evening. Tea, and a Walk on our River bank, and then, what do you think? An hour’s reading (to me) of a very celebrated Murder which I remember just thirty years ago at Norwich: then ‘Ten minutes’ Refreshment’; and then, Nicholas Nickleby! Then one Pipe: and then to Bed. Yours sincerely,
E. F. G.
This Letter shall sleep a night too before Travelling. Next Morning. Revenons à notre Crabbe. ‘Principles and Pew’ very bad. ‘The Flowers, etc., cut by busy hands, etc.,’ are, or were, common on the leaden roofs of old Houses, Churches, etc. I made him stop at ‘Till the Does ventured on our Solitude,’ [271] without adding ‘We were so still!’—which is quite ‘de trop.’ You will see by the enclosed prefatory Notice what I have done in the matter, as little as I could in doing what was to be done. My own Copy is full of improvements. Yes, for any Poetaster may improve three-fourths of the careless old Fellow’s Verse: but it would puzzle a Poet to improve the better part. I think that Crabbe differs from Pope in this thing for one: that he aims at Truth, not at Wit, in his Epigram. How almost graceful he can sometimes be too!
What we beheld in Love’s perspective Glass
Has pass’d away—one Sigh! and let it pass. [272]
Lowestoft. August 20/79.
My dear Sir,
Mr. Norton wrote me that you had been detained in Spain by Mrs. Lowell’s severe, nay, dangerous, illness; a very great affliction to you. I venture a bit of a Letter, which you are not to answer, even by a word; no, not even read further than now you have got, unless a better day has dawned on you, and unless you feel wholly at liberty to write. I should be very glad to hear, in ever so few words, that your anxiety was over.
I do not think I shall make a long letter of this; for I do not think of much that can amuse you in the least, even if you should be open to such sort of amusement as I could give you. I am come here to be a month with my friend Cowell; he and I are reading the Second Part of Don Quixote together, as we used to read together thirty years ago; he always the Teacher, and I the Pupil, although he is quite unaware of that Relation between us; indeed, rather reverses it. It so happens that he is not so well acquainted with this Second Part as with the First; indeed not so well with the Story of it as I, but then he is so much a better Scholar in all ways that he lights up passages of the Book in a way that is all new to me. Some of the strange words reminded me again of his wish for a Spanish Dictionary in the style of Littré’s French: he would assuredly be the Man to do it, but he has his Sanskrit Professorship to mind.
There is a Book rather worth reading called ‘On Foot through Spain’; [273] meaning, as much of Spain as extends from St. Sebastian on the Bay of Biscay to Barcelona on the Mediterranean; with a good deal of Cervantesque Ventas, Carreteros, etc., in it. There is an account of the Obsequies of Pau Pi (Basque?) on the last Day of Carnival at Saragossa, which reminded me of the ‘Cortes de Muerte,’ etc. Hawthorne (whose admirable Italian Journal I brought with me here) says that originally the Italian Carnival ended with somewhat of the same Burlesque Ceremonial, but was thought to mimic too Graciosoly that of the Church. I believe the Moccoli, etc., are a remainder of it.
‘Eso allá se ha de entender, respondió Sancho, con los que naciéron en las malvas’ (ii. c. 4), made my Master jump at once to Job xxx. 4.
I cannot but suppose that you are gradually gathering materials for some Essay on Spanish Literature, and it is a rare Quality in these days to be in no hurry about such work, but to wait till one can do it thoroughly; as is the case with you. I suppose you know Lope: of whom I have read, and now shall read, nothing: even Cowell, who has read some, is not much interested in him. He delights in Calderon, of whom he has one thick Volume here, and still finds many obscure passages to clear up. He was telling me of one about Madrid, [274] which (as you are now there) I must quote by way of filling up this Second Sheet of Letter. But, to do this, I must wait till I have been with him for our morning’s reading, so as I may give it you Chapter and Verse.
P.S. Here is my Professor’s MS. note for you, which I told him I wanted to send. We have been reading Chapters 14-15 of Don Quixote, Second Part. Do you know why Carrasco finds an Algebrista for his hurts? Why the Moorish Aljebro = the setting of Fractions, etc. So said my dear Pundit at once. Ah! you would like to be with us, for the sake of him, rather than of yours sincerely E. F. G.
Lowestoft. Sept. 3/79.
My dear Norton,
I must write you a few lines, on my knee (not, on my knees, however), in return for your kind letter. As to my thinking you could be ‘importunate’ in asking again for my two Sophocles Abstracts, you must know that such importunity cannot but be grateful. I am only rather ashamed that you should have to repeat it. I laid the Plays by after looking them over some months ago, meaning to wait till another year to clear up some parts, if not all. Thus do my little works arrive at such form as they result in, good or bad; so as, however I may be blamed for the liberties I take with the Great, I cannot be accused of over haste in doing so, though blamed I may be for rashness in meddling with them at all. Anyhow, I would not send you any but a fair MS. if I sent MS. at all; and may perhaps print it in a small way, not to publish, but so as to ensure a final Revision, such as will also be more fitting for you to read. It is positively the last of my Works! having been by me these dozen years, I believe, occasionally looked at. So much for that.
Now, you would like to be here along with me and my delightful Cowell, when we read the Second Part of Don Quixote together of a morning. This we have been doing for three weeks; and shall continue to do for some ten days more, I suppose: and then he will be returning to his Cambridge. If we read very continuously we should be almost through the Book by this time: but, as you may imagine we play as well as work; some passage in the dear Book leads Cowell off into Sanskrit, Persian, or Goody Two Shoes, for all comes within the compass of his Memory and Application. Job came in to the help of Sancho a few days ago: and the Duenna Rodriguez’ age brought up a story Cowell recollected of an old Lady who persisted in remaining at 50; till being told (by his Mother) that she could not be elected to a Charity because of not being 64, she said ‘She thought she could manage it’; and the Professor shakes with Laughter not loud but deep, from the centre. . . .
Pray read in our Athenæum some letters of Severn’s about Keats, full of Love and intelligent Admiration, all the better for coming straight from the heart without any style at all. If I thought that Mr. Lowell would not find these Athenæums somewhere in Madrid, I would send them to him, as I would also to you in a like predicament. . . .
This letter has run on further than I expected: and I am now going to see Sancho off to his Island, under convoy of my Professor.
11 Marine
Terrace, Lowestoft.
Septr. 22/79.
My dear Laurence,
Your letter found me here this morning: here, where I have now been near six weeks, for a month of which Edward Cowell and his Wife were my neighbours; and we had two or three hours of Don Quixote’s company of a morning, and only ourselves for company at night. They are gone, however; and I might have gone to my own home also, but that some Nephews and Nieces wished to see a little more of me; and I thought also that Lowestoft would be more amusing than Woodbridge to a young London Clerk, a Nephew of the Cowells, who comes to me for a short Holyday, when he can get away from his Desk. But early in October I shall be back at my old routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people should die at 70.
Yes: though Edwards was comparatively a Friend of late growth—he, and his brave wife—they encountered me down in my own country here, and we somehow suited one another; and I feel sad thinking of the pleasant days at Dunwich, which the Tide now rolling up here will soon reach. [277] . . .
I am here re-reading Forster’s Life of Dickens, which seems to me a very good Book, though people say, I believe, there is too much Forster in it. At any rate, there is enough to show the wonderful Dæmonic Dickens: as pure an instance of Genius as ever lived; and, it seems to me, a Man I can love also.