I believe that I must leave Part II. for the present, being rather wearied with the present stupendous Effort, at Ætat. 71.  If I live another year, and am still free from the ills incident to my Time, I will make an end of it, and of all my Doings in that way.

To C. E. Norton.

May 1, 1880.

My dear Norton,

Early he rose, and look’d with many a sigh,
On the red Light that fill’d the Eastern sky, etc.

One thing more I will say, that I do not know where old Wordsworth condemned Crabbe as un-poetical (except in the truly ‘priggish’ candle case) though I doubt not that Mr. Woodberry does know.  We all know that of Crabbe’s ‘Village’ one passage was one of the first that struck young Wordsworth: and when Crabbe’s son was editing his Father’s Poems in 1834, old Wordsworth wrote to him that, because of their combined Truth and Poetry, those Poems would last as long at least as any that had been written since, including Wordsworth’s own.  And Wordsworth was too honest, as well as too exclusive, to write so much even to a Son of the dead Poet, without meaning all he said.

I should not have written all this were it not that I think so much of Mr. Woodberry’s Paper; but I doubt I could not persuade him to think more of my old Man than he sees good to think for himself.  I rejoice that he thinks even so well of the Poet: even if his modified Praise does not induce others to try and think likewise.  The verses he quotes—

When Vice and Insolence in triumph rode, etc.

which is, of course, only for myself, and you, it seems: for I never mentioned that, and some scores of such impudencies.

To R. C. Trench.

Little Grange, Woodbridge.
May 9/80.

My dear Lord,

Woodbridge.  May 18/80.

My dear Lord,

I should have sent a line before now to thank you for your Calderon, had I not waited for some tidings of Donne from Mowbray, to whom I wrote some days ago.  Not hearing from him, I suppose that he is out holyday-making somewhere; and therefore I will delay no longer.

As for the modern Poetry, I have cared for none of the last thirty years, not even Tennyson, except in parts: pure, lofty and noble as he always is.  Much less can I endure the Gurgoyle school (I call it) begun, I suppose, by V. Hugo. . . .  I do think you will find something better than that in the discarded Crabbe; whose writings Wordsworth (not given to compliment any man on any occasion) wrote to Crabbe’s Son and Editor would continue as long at least as any Poetry written since, on account of its mingled ‘Truth and Poetry.’  And this includes Wordsworth’s own.  So I must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be popular.

This reminds me that just after I had written to you, Crabbe’s Grandson, one of the best, most amiable, and most agreeable, of my friends, paid me a two days’ Visit, and told me that a Nephew of yours was learning to farm with a Steward of Lord Walsingham at Merton in Norfolk, George Crabbe’s own parish; I mean the living George, who spoke of your Nephew as a very gentlemanly young man indeed.  I think he will not gainsay what I write to you of his ‘Parson.’

To Charles Keene.

Woodbridge.  Sunday.

My dear Keene,

Your Letter reached me yesterday when I was just finishing my Sévigné; I mean, reading it over.  I have plenty of Notes for an Introductory Argument and List of Dramatis Personæ, and a clue to the course of her Letters, so as to set a new reader off on the right tack, with some previous acquaintance with the People and Places she lives among.  But I shrink from trying to put such Notes into shape; all writing always distasteful to me, and now very difficult, at seventy odd.  Some such Introduction would be very useful: people being in general puzzled with Persons, Dates, etc., if not revolted by the eternal, though quite sincere, fuss about her Daughter, which the Eye gradually learns to skim over, and get to the fun.  I felt a pang when arriving at—

Ci git
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
Marquise de Sévigné
Décédée le 18 Avril 1696

I did not forget Waterloo Day.  Just as I and my Reader Boy were going into the Pantry for some grub, I thought of young Ensign Leeke, not 18, who carried the Colours of that famous 52nd which gave the ‘coup de grace’ to the Imperial Guard about 8 p.m. and then marched to Rossomme, seeing the Battle was won: and the Colour-serjeant found some bread in some French Soldier’s knapsack, and brought a bit to his Ensign, ‘You must want a bit, Sir, and I am sure you have deserved it.’  That was a Compliment worth having!

I have, like you, always have, and from a Child had, a mysterious feeling about that ‘Sizewell Gap.’  There were reports of kegs of Hollands found under the Altar Cloth of Theberton Church near by: and we Children looked with awe on the ‘Revenue Cutters’ which passed Aldbro’, especially remembering one that went down with all hands, ‘The Ranger.’

Here is a good Warwickshire word—‘I sheered my Eyes round the room.’  So good, that it explains itself.

White Lion, Aldeburgh.
July 7/80.

My dear Keene,

I shall worry you with Letters: here is one, however, which will call for no answer.  It is written indeed in acknowledgement of your packet of Drawings, received by me yesterday at Woodbridge.

I do not suppose, or wish, that you should make over to me all these Drawings, which I suppose are the originals from which the Wood was cut.  I say I do not ‘wish,’ because I am in my 72nd year: and I now give away rather than accept.  But I wished for one at least of your hand; for its own sake, and as a remembrance, for what short time is left me, of one whom I can sincerely say I regard greatly for himself, as also for those Dunwich days in which I first became known to him.  ‘Violà qui est dit.’

And I wish you were here, not for your own sake, for it is dull enough.  No Sun, no Ship, a perpetual drizzle; and to me the melancholy of another Aldbro’ of years gone by.  Out of that window there ‘le petit’ Churchyard sketched Thorpe headland under an angry Sunset of Oct. 55 which heralded a memorable Gale that washed up a poor Woman with a Babe in her arms: and old Mitford had them buried with an inscribed Stone in the old Churchyard, peopled with dead ‘Mariners’; and Inscription and Stone are now gone.  Yesterday I got out in a Boat, drizzly as it was: but to-day there is too much Sea to put off.  I am to be home by the week’s end, if not before.  The melancholy of Slaughden last night, with the same Sloops sticking sidelong in the mud as sixty years ago!  And I the venerable Remembrancer.

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge.  Nov. 3, 1880.

My dear Norton,

. . . With all your knowledge, and all the use you can make of it, I wonder that you can think twice of such things as I can offer you in return for what you send me: but I take you at your word, and shall perhaps send you the last half of Œdipus, if I can prepare him for the Printer; a rather hard business to me now, when turned of seventy, and reminded by some intimations about the Heart that I am not likely to exceed the time which those of my Family have stopped going at.  But this is no great Regret to me.

I have sent you a better Book than any I can send you of my own: or of any one else’s in the way of Verse, I think: the Sonnets of Alfred Tennyson’s Brother Charles.  Two thirds of them I do not care for: but there is scarce one without some fine thought or expression: some of them quite beautiful to me: all pure, true, and original.  I think you in America may like these leaves from the Life of a quiet Lincolnshire Parson.

To Miss Anna Biddell.

Nov. 30, 1880.

One day I went into the Abbey at 3½ p.m. while a beautiful anthem was beautifully sung, and then the prayers and collects, not less beautiful, well intoned on one single note by the Minister.  And when I looked up and about me, I thought that Abbey a wonderful structure for Monkeys to have raised.  The last night, Mesdames Kemble and Edwards had each of them company, so I went into my old Opera House in the Haymarket, where I remembered the very place where Pasta stood as Medea on the Stage, and Rubini singing his return to his Betrothed in the Puritani, and Taglioni floating everywhere about: and the several Boxes in which sat the several Ranks and Beauties of forty and fifty years ago: my Mother’s Box on the third Tier, in which I often figured as a Specimen of both.  The Audience all changed much for the worse, I thought: and Opera and Singers also; only one of them who could sing at all, and she sang very well indeed; Trebelli, her name.  The opera by a Frenchman on the Wagner plan: excellent instrumentation, but not one new or melodious idea through the whole.

Littlegrange: Woodbridge.
Decr. 15 [1880].

My dear Master,

I have not written to you this very long while, simply because I did not wish to trouble you: Aldis Wright will tell you that I have not neglected to enquire about you.  I drew him out of Jerusalem Chamber for five minutes three weeks ago: this I did to ask primarily about Mr. Furness on behalf of Mrs. Kemble: but also I asked about you, and was told you were still improving, and prepared to abide the winter here.  I saw nobody in London except my two Widows, my dear old Donne, and some coeval Suffolk Friends.  I was half tempted to jump into a Bus and just leave my name at Carlyle’s Door!  But I did not.  I should of course have asked and heard how he was: which I can find no one now to tell me.  For his Niece has a Child, if only one, to attend to, and I do not like to trouble.  I heard from vague Information in London that he is almost confined to his house.

I hope you know Charles Tennyson’s Sonnets; three times too many, and some rather puerile: but scarce one but with something good in Thought or Expression: all original: and some delightful: I think, to live with Alfred’s, and no one else’s.  Old Fred might have made one of Three Brothers, I think, could he have compressed himself into something of Sonnet Compass: but he couldn’t.  He says, Charles makes one regard and love little things more than any other Poet.

My Nephew De Soyres seems to have made a good Edition of Pascal’s Letters: I should have thought they had been quite well enough edited before; and yet a more ‘exhaustive’ Edition is to follow the House that Jack built, he tells us.

Groome had proposed a month ago that he would visit me about this time: but I have heard no more of him: and am always afraid to write, for fear of those poor Eyes of his.

I was very glad to meet Merivale on Lowestoft Pier for some days.  Mrs. M. writes to me of an enlarged Photo of him whose Negative will be destroyed in a month unless subscribed for by Friends, etc.  ‘Will I ask Friends, etc.’  No: I will not do that, though I will take a copy if wanted to complete a number: though, if it be life size, having no where to hang it up: my own Mother, by Sir T. Lawrence, being put away in a cupboard for want of room.

E. Fitz.

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge.  February 20, 1881.

My dear Norton,

. . . I have little to say about Carlyle, but that my heart did follow him to Ecclefechan, from which place I have, or had, several letters dated by him.  I think it was fine that he should anticipate all Westminster Abbey honours, and determine to be laid where he was born, among his own kindred, and with all the simple and dignified obsequies of (I suppose) his own old Puritan Church.  The Care of his Posthumous Memory will be left in good hands, I believe, if in those of Mr. Froude.  His Niece, who had not answered a Note of Enquiry I wrote her some two months ago, answered it a few days after his Death: she had told him, she said, of my letter, and he said, ‘You must answer that.’

To Mrs. Kemble.

[March, 1881].

My dear Lady,

Directly that I heard from Wright, I wrote to Mowbray Donne to send me just a Post Card daily, if he or his Wife could, with but one or two words on it, ‘Better,’ ‘Less well,’ or whatever it might be.  This morning I hear that all is going on even better than could be expected, according to Miss Spedding.  But I suppose the Crisis, which you tell me of, is not yet come; and I have always a terror of that French Adage, ‘Monsieur se porte mal—Monsieur se porte mieux—Monsieur est—!’  Ah, you know, or you guess, the rest.

My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these twenty years and more, and probably should never see again; but he lives, his old Self, in my heart of hearts; and all I hear of him does but embellish the recollection of him, if it could be embellished; for he is but the same that he was from a Boy, all that is best in Heart and Head, a man that would be incredible had one not known him.

I think, from what Mowbray also says, that you may have seen our other old friend Donne in somewhat worse plight than usual because of his being much shocked at this accident.  He would feel it indeed!—as you do.

I had even thought of writing to tell you all this, but could not but suppose that you were more likely to know of it than myself; though sometimes one is greatly mistaken with these ‘of course you knows, etc.’  But you have known it all: and have very kindly written of it to me, whom you might also have supposed already informed of it: but you took the trouble to write, not relying on ‘of course you know, etc.’

I have thought lately that I ought to make some enquiry about Arthur Malkin, who was always very kind to me.  I had meant to send him my Crabbe, who was a great favourite of his Father’s, ‘an excellent Companion for Old Age’ he told—Donne, I think.  But I do not know if I ever did send him the Book; and now, judging by what you tell me, it is too late to do so, unless for Compliment.

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge.  March 13, [1881].

My dear Norton,

I send you along with this Letter Part II. of Œdipus, with some corrections or suggestions which I have been obliged to make in Pencil, because of the Paper blotting under the lightest Penwork.  And, along with it, a preliminary Letter, which I believe I told you of also, addressed to your Initial: for I did not wish to compromise you even with yourself in such a Business.  I know you will like it probably more than it deserves, and excuse its inroads on the Original, though you may, and probably will, think I might better have left it alone, or followed it more faithfully.  As to those Students you tell me of who are meditating, or by this time may have accomplisht, their Representation, they could only look on me as a Blasphemer. . . .

To S. Laurence.

March 13/81.

My dear Laurence,

By the by, I began to think my own Eyes, which were blazed away by Paraffin some dozen years ago, were going out of me just before Christmas.  So for the two dreary months which followed I could scarce read or write.  And as yet I am obliged to use them tenderly: only too glad to find that they are better; and not quite going (as I hope) yet.  I think they will light me out of this world with care.  On March 31 I shall enter on my seventy-third year: and none of my Family reaches over seventy-five.

When I was in London I was all but tempted to jump into a Cab and just knock at Carlyle’s door, and ask after him, and give my card, and—run away. . . .

The cold wind will not leave us, and my Crocuses do not like it.  Still I manage to sit on one of those Benches you may remember under the lee side of the hedge, and still my seventy-third year approaches.

To Miss Anna Biddell.

March 1881.

I did not know that I should feel Spedding’s Loss as I do, after an interval of more than twenty years [since] meeting him.  But I knew that I could always get the Word I wanted of him by Letter, and also that from time to time I should meet with some of his wise and delightful Papers in some Quarter or other.  He talked of Shakespeare, I am told, when his Mind wandered.  I wake almost every morning feeling as if I had lost something, as one does in a Dream: and truly enough, I have lost him.  ‘Matthew is in his Grave, etc.’

To Mrs. Kemble.

[20 March, 1881.]

My dear Lady,

You have, I suppose, the Carlyle Reminiscences: of which I will say nothing except that much as we outsiders gain by them, I think that, on the whole, they had better have been kept unpublished, for some while at least.

To W. F. Pollock.

[1881.]

My dear Pollock,

Thank you for your kind Letter; which I forwarded, with its enclosure, to Thompson, as you desired.

If Spedding’s Letters, or parts of them, would not suit the Public, they would surely be a very welcome treasure to his Friends.  Two or three pages of Biography would be enough to introduce them to those who knew him less long and less intimately than ourselves: and all who read would be the better, and the happier, for reading them.

Dear old Jem!  His Loss makes one’s Life more dreary, and ‘en revanche’ the end of it less regretful.

To Mrs. Kemble.

[April, 1881.]

My dear Mrs. Kemble,

My dear old Spedding sent me back to old Wordsworth too, who sings (his best songs I think) about the Mountains and Lakes they were both associated with: and with a quiet feeling he sings that somehow comes home to me more now than ever it did before.

And now I have written more than enough for yourself and me: whose Eyes may be the worse for it to-morrow.  I still go about in Blue Glasses, and flinch from Lamp and Candle.  Pray let me know about your own Eyes, and your own Self; and believe me always sincerely yours

Littlegrange.
May 8, [1881].

If still at Leamington, you look upon a sight which I used to like well; that is, the blue Avon (as in this weather it will be) roaming through buttercup meadows all the way to Warwick; unless those meadows are all built over since I was there some forty years ago. . . .

From another Letter in the same year.

Woodbridge: July 31, [1881].

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge.  August 5/81.

My dear Norton,

I am sorry that you felt bound to write me so fully about the Play when, as you tell me, you had so much other work on your hands.  Any how, do not trouble yourself to write more.  If you think my Version does as well, or better, without any introduction, why, tear that out; all, except (if you like the Verse well enough to adopt it) the first sentence of Dedication to yourself: adding your full name and Collegiate Honours whenever you care so to do.

I believe I told you that thirty years ago at least I advised our Trinity’s Master, then only Greek Professor, to do the like with one of the Greek Tragedies, in what they call their Senate-house, well fitted for such a purpose.  But our Cambridge is too well fed, and slow to stir; and I not important enough to set it a-going.

By the way, I have been there for two days; not having seen the place for those same thirty years, except in passing through some ten years ago to Naseby Field, for the purpose of doing Carlyle’s will in setting up a memorial Stone with his Inscription upon it.  But the present owners of the Place would not consent: and so that simple thing came to nothing.

By the by, I had meant to send you an emendation of a passage in my Tyrannus which you found fault with.  I mean where Œdipus, after putting out his eyes, talks of seeing those in Hades he does not wish to see.  I knew it was not Greek: but I thought that a note would be necessary to explain what the Greek was: and I confess I do not care enough for their Mythology for that.  But, if you please, the passage (as I remember it) might run:

            Eyes, etc.,
Which, having seen such things, henceforth, he said,
Should never by the light of day behold
Those whom he loved, nor in the after-dark
Of Hades, those he loathed, to look upon.

All this has run me into a third screed, you see: a word we used at School, only calling it ‘screet’—‘I say, do lend me a screet of paper,’ meaning, a quarter of a foolscap sheet.

Woodbridge.  Jan. 18/82.

My dear Norton,

I scarcely know what I have written, but I know it must be bad MS.; all which I ought in good manners to rectify, or re-write.  I think you in America think more of Calligraphy than we here do: a really polite accomplishment, I always maintain: and yet ‘deteriora sequor.’  But you know that my eyes are not very active: and now my hand is less than usually so, possessed as I am with a Devil of a Chill (in spite, or in consequence, of warm wet weather) attended with something of Bronchitis, I think. . . .

To Mrs. Kemble.

[Jan. 1882.]

To C. E. Norton.

Woodbridge.  Jan. 25/82.

My dear Norton,

I forgot in my last letter to beg you not to write for the mere purpose of acknowledging the revised Œdipus who was to travel along with it.  You know that I am glad to hear from you at any time when you are at leisure, not otherwise; and I shall take for granted that you think my alterations are improvements, so far as they go.  And that is enough.

Browning told Mrs. Kemble he knew there was ‘a grotesque side’ to his Society, etc., but he could not refuse the kind solicitations of his Friends, Furnivall and Co.  Mrs. K. had been asked to join: but declined, because of her somewhat admiring him; nay, much admiring what he might have done.