Wilful Woman!—And so you have got a great, large,

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big Shacklewell house, and a garden, and good-natured trees in it (like those in my Choice)—

And Clarke and Mr. Holmes are seen Peeping from forth their alleys green;

and you are looking after the “things,” and you are all to be gay and merry, and I am not to be there. Well, I don’t deserve it, whatever Fate may say, and it shall go hard but I’ll have my revenge, and my house, and my garden and things, all at Florence; and friends, fair and brown too, will come to see me there, though you won’t; and I’ll peep, without being seen, from forth my alleys green.

We go off to-morrow, and I shall send you such accounts as shall make you ready to ask Clara’s help (she being the bigger) to toss you all, as she threatened, “out of the windows.” There is nobody that will do it with so proper and grave a face. So there’s for your Shacklewell house and your never-not-coming-at-all to Italy. And now you shan’t get a word more out of me for the present, excepting that I am your old, grateful, and affectionate friend,

Mrs. Hunt joins in love to all the old circle.

My dear Novello,—You must not imagine I am going to send you all the pleasant people I may happen to meet with; but I could not resist the chance of introducing you to the grand-daughter of Dr. Burney, daughter of Captain Cooke’s Burney, niece of Evelina’s and Camilla’s Burney, friend of Charles and Mary Lamb, and a most lively, refreshing, intelligent, good-humoured person to boot, who is also a singer and pianoforte-player. All this, at least, she seems to me, in my gratitude for having met with a countrywoman who could talk to me of my old friends. I cannot write farther, for I hear the voices of gentlemen who have come to go with me, to take leave of her and her husband: but whether she happens to bring this letter or not, I could not help giving you the chance I speak of, nor her that of know-

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ing you and yours, your music, &c., which is the best return I can make her for the recreation she has afforded me: and, besides, this will show you we were going on well. Florence, besides its other goods, has libraries, bookstalls, and Cockney meadows; and we begin to breathe again. I hope by this time you and Mrs. Shelley have shaken cordial hands.

Vincenzo  mio, I have at length found out the secret of making you write a whole letter. It is to set you upon some painful task for your friends; so having the prospect now before me of getting out of my troubles, I think I must contrive to fall into some others, purely in order that you may be epistolary. Dear Novello, how heartily I thank you! I must tell you that I had written a long letter to my brother in answer to his second one, in which I had agreed to submit the whole matter to arbitration, and had called upon your friendship to enter into it, especially in case you had any fears that you should be obliged in impartiality to be less for me than you wished. His third letter has done away with the necessity of sending this, and he will show you the letter I have written to him instead. All will now proceed amicably; but if you think me a little too inordinate and haggling, I beg you first of all to count the heads of seven of your children with their mother besides them. I have no other arithmetic in my calculations. But I will not return to my melancholy now that you have helped to brighten life for me again. I assure you it was new-burnished on New Year’s Day, for then I received all your letters at once. . . . But enough. Judge only from what a load of care you have helped to relieve me, and take your pride and pleasure accordingly, you, you—you Vincent, you. Observe, however:—all this is not to hinder from the absolute necessity and sworn duty of coming to see us as you promised. It will be sheer inhumanity if you do not;

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always excepting it would make you ill to be away from home (Mary Shelley will laugh to hear this); but then you are to have companions, who will also be very inhuman to all of us, if they do not do their duty. The cheating of the Italians in conjunction with all the other circumstances have made us frightened, or rather agreeably economical (a little difference!). We have taken wood, oil, and every possible thing out of the hands of the servants, locking it up and doling it out, and even (oh, new and odd paradise of sensation!) chuckling over the crazie and quattrini that we save. I tell you this to show you how well we prepare for visitors. But wine, and very pleasant wine too, and wholesome, is as cheap in this country as small beer; and then there will be ourselves, and your selves, and beautiful walks and weather, and novelty, and God knows how many pleasures besides, for all are comprised in the thought of seeing friends from England. So mind—I will not hear of the least shadow of the remotest approach to the smallest possible distant hint of a put-off. All the “Gods in Council” would rise up and say, “This is a shame!” So in your next tell me when you are coming. I must only premise that it must be when the snows are well off the mountain road. You see by this how early, as well as how certainly, I expect you. I must leave off and rest a little; for I have had much letter-writing after much other writing, and I am going to have much other writing. But my head and spirits have both bettered with my prospects; at least the latter have, and I have every reason to believe the former will, though I shall have more original composition to do than of late. But I shall work with certainties upon me, in my old paper, and not be tied down to particular dimensions. As you have seen all my infirmities, I must tell you of a virtue of mine, which is, that having no pianoforte at present, I lent, with rage and benevolence in my heart, all the new music you sent me to a lady who is going to Rome. It is very safe, or you may believe my benevolence would not have gone so far. Besides, it was to be played and sung by the Pope’s own musicians. Think of that, thou chorister. I shall have it back before you come, and shall lay aside a particular hoard to hire an instrument for your playing it.

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Thank Charles Clarke for his letter, and tell him that he will be as welcome in Italy as he was in my less romantic prison of Horsemonger Gaol. I am truly obliged to him, also, for his kindness to Miss Kent’s book, and shall write to tell him so after I have despatched a few articles for the Examiner—all which articles, observe also, are written to my friends.

Oh thou wilful—for art thou not wilful? Charles Clarke says no, and that your name is Brougham; “but I, Mr., calls him Bruffam”—but art thou not always wilful woman, and oughtest thou not for ever to remain so, seeing that thy will is bent upon “inditing a good matter,” and that thou sittest up at midnight with an infinitely virtuous profligacy to write long and kind and delightful letters to exiles on their birthdays? Do not think me ungrateful for not having answered it sooner. It is not, as you might suppose, my troubles that have hindered me, saving and except that the quantity of writing that I have had, or rather the effect which writing day after day has upon me, made me put off an answer which I wished to be a very long one. Had I not wished that, I should have written sooner; and wishing it or not, I ought to have done so; but your last letter shows that you can afford to forgive me. Latterly, I will confess that the pitch of trouble to which my feelings had been wrought made it more difficult for me than usual to come into the company of my friends, with the air they have always inspired me with; but I bring as well as receive a pleasure now, and wish I could find some means of showing you how grateful I am for all your sendings, those in the box included. Good God! I have never yet thanked you even for that. But you know how late it must have come. My wife has been brilliant ever since in the steel bracelets, which she finds equally useful and ornamental. They were the joy and amazement of an American artist (now in Rome), who had never been in England, and who is wise enough to be proud of the superior workmanship of his cousins the English,

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though a sturdy Republican. (Speaking of Rome, pray tell Novello to send me the name of the musical work which he wanted there, which I have put away in some place so very safe that it is undiscoverable.) The needles also were more than welcome. As to the pencils, I made a legitimate use of my despotic right as a father of a family, and appropriated them almost all to myself. “Consider the value of such timber here.” Here the needles don’t prick, and the pencils do: and as to elastic bracelets, you may go to a ball, if you please, in a couple of rusty iron hoops made to fit. Do you know that I had half a mind to accept your offer of coming over to take us to England, purely that you might go back without us—including your stay in the meantime. You must not raise such images to exiles without realizing them. I hope some day or other to be able to take some opportunity of running over during a summer, though Mary Shelley will laugh at this, and I know not what Marianne Hunt would say to it. Profligate fellow that I am! I never slept out of my bed ever since I was married, but two nights at Sydenham. As to coming to England to stay, it is quite out of the question for either of us at present. The winters would kill her side and my head. On the other hand, the vessel in her side is absolutely closing again here in winter-time, and our happier prospects in other respects render the prospect happier in this. Cannot you as well as C. C. come with Novello? Bring some of the children with you. Why cannot you all come—you and Statia, and Mrs. Williams, and Mary S., and Miss Kent, and Holmes (to study), and every other possible and impossible body? Write me another good, kind, long letter, to show that you forgive me heartily for not writing myself, and tell me all these and a thousand other things. I think of you all every day more or less, but particularly on such days as birthdays and Twelfthdays. We drank your health the other night sitting in our country solitude, and longing infinitely, as we often do, for a larger party—but always a party from home. What a birthnight you gave me! These are laurels indeed! Tell me in your next how all the children are, not forgetting Clara, who threatened in a voice of tender acquiescence to throw us all

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out of the window, herself included. All our children continue extremely well, little Vincent among them, who is one of the liveliest yet gentlest creatures in the world.

Oh, Wilful!—Am I to expect another birthday letter? If so (but two such birthdays can hardly come together), I will do my best to be grateful, and send you a mirth-day letter. Do you know that however differently-shaped you may regard yourself at present at Shacklewell, here at Florence you are a square? and that I am writing at present in one of your second stories at Mrs. Brown’s lodgings, who can only find me this half-sheet of paper to write upon? I should have thought better of you, considering you have the literary interest so much at heart. Your name is Sancta Maria Novella, and there is a church in a corner of you, which makes a figure in the opening of Boccaccio’s “Decameron.” So adieu, dear Sancta.—Ever yours, sick or merry,

The Ladies first—To Mrs. Novello.

Madam,—My patience is not so easily worn out as your Wilfulship imagines. I allow you have seen me impatient of late on one subject; but I beg you to believe I confine my want of philosophy to that single point. That is the wolf in my harmony. On all other matters (a three-years-and-a-half’s dilapidation excepted) you will find me the same man I was ever—half melancholy and half mirth—and gratefully ready to forego the one whenever in the company of my friends.

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So, madam, I’d have you to know that I am extremely patient, and that if I do not take courage it is because I have it already; and you must farther know, madam, that we do not mean to live at Plymouth, but at a reasonable distance from town; and also that if we cannot get a cottage to go into immediately we shall go for a month or two into metropolitan lodgings: item, that we shall all be glad to hear of any cottage twenty or twenty-five miles off, or any lodgings in any quiet and cheap street in London; farthermore, that, besides taking courage, we have taken the coach from Florence to Calais; and finally, that we set off next Saturday, the 10th instant, and by the time you receive this shall be at the foot of the Alps. “I think here be proofs.” We go by Parma, Turin, Mont Cenis, Lyons, and Paris. Mrs. Shelley will be better able to tell you where a letter can reach us than I can—yet a calculation, too, might be made, for we travel forty miles a day, and stop four days out of the thirty-one allotted to us: one at Modena, one at Turin, one at Lyons, one at Paris. Can we do anything for you? I wish I could bring you some bottled sunshine for your fruit-trees. It is a drug we are tired of here. Mud—mud—is our object; cold weather out of doors, and warm hearts within. By the way, as you know nothing about it, I must tell you that somebody has been dedicating a book to me under the title of “A Day in Stowe Gardens” (send and buy it for my sake), and it is a very pretty book, though with the airs natural to a dedicatee, I have picked some verbal faults with it here and there. What I like least is the story larded with French cookery. Some of the others made me shed tears, which is very hard upon me, from an Old Boy (for such on inspection you will find the author to be); I should not have minded it had it been a woman. The Spanish Tale ends with a truly dramatic surprise; and the Magdalen Story made me long to hug all the parties concerned, the writer included. So get the book, and like it, as you regard the sympathies and honours of yours, ever cordially,

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To Mrs. Gliddon.

Dear Mr. Arthur,—I am called off in the midst of my oriental description, and have only time to say that I thank you heartily for your zeal and kindness in my behalf, and am sure Novello could not have chosen a second more agreeable to myself, whatever the persons concerned may resolve upon. I hope soon to shake you by the hand.

Dear Friends,—I can write you but a word. We shall

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be in London next Thursday, provided there is room in the steamboat, as we understand there certainly will be; but we are not certain of the hour of arrival. They talk here at the agency office of the boats leaving Calais at two in the morning (night-time). If so, we ought to be in town at one. This, however, is not to be depended on; and there will not be time to write to you again. The best way, I think, would be to send a note for us (by the night post) to the place where the boat puts up, stating where the lodgings are. The lodgings you will be kind enough to take for us (if there is time) in the quietest and airiest situation you have met with. We prefer, for instance, the street in the Hampstead Road, or thereabouts, to the one in London Street, to which said street I happen to have a particular objection; said particular objection, however, being of no account, if it cannot be helped. Should any circumstance prevent our having a note at the boat-office we shall put up in the neighbourhood for the night, and communicate with you as fast as possible. . . . . I write in ill spirits, which the sight of your faces, and the firm work I have to set about, will do away. I feel that the only way to settle these things is to meet and get through them, sword in hand, as stoutly as I may. If I delayed I might be pinned for ever to a distance, like a fluttering bird to a wall, and so die in that helpless yearning. I have been mistaken. During my strength my weakness, perhaps, only was apparent; now that I am weaker, indignation has given a fillip to my strength. But how am I digressing! I said I should only write a word, and I certainly did not intend that that word should be upon any less agreeable subject than a steamboat. Yet I must add, that I remember the memorandum you allude to about the balance. I laid it to a very different account! Lord! Lord! Well, my dear Vincent, you have a considerable fool for your friend, but one who is nevertheless wise enough to be, very truly yours,

P.S.—Thanks to the two Marys for their kind letters. I

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must bring them the answers myself. This is what women ought to do. They ought to be very kind and write, and read books, and go about through the mud for their friends.

My dear Novello,—I expected you at Harry Robertson’s, and I looked for you last fine Wednesday at Highgate, and I have been to seek you to-day at Shacklewell. I thought we were sometimes to have two Sabbaths, always one, and I find we have none. How is this? If you are not well enough to meet me at Highgate, and will not make yourself better by coming and living near your friends somewhere, why I must come to you at Shacklewell on a Wednesday, that’s all; and come I will, unless you will have none of me. I should begin to have fears on that score, when I hear that you are in town twice a week, and yet never come near me; but in truth, coxcomb as I have been called, and as I sometimes fear I show myself when I talk of prevailing on my friends to do this and that, this is a blow which would really be too hard for the vanity of, and let me add, the affection of your ever true friend,

My dear Novello,—As I am not sure that you were at Mrs. Shelley’s last night, I write this to let you know that a violent cold, which I am afraid of tampering with any longer, has kept me at home the two last evenings, and will do the same on this. I defied it for some nights, but found myself

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under the necessity, on every account, of doing so no longer. You know how bad it was on Wednesday; but Wednesday night’s return home made it worse. I repent this the more, because I wish to see you very much. I want to chat with you on the musical and other matters, and to assent to my privilege of a friend in doing all I can to make you adopt certain measures I have in view equally useful to both of us, for the recovery of your health. I said equally pleasant, and I trust and feel certain they would be so in the long-run; but undoubtedly in the first instance you might find them painful. However, as I never yet found an obstacle like this stand in your way when a friend was to be obliged, I give you notice that you have spoilt me in that matter, and that I shall not expect it now.

“Hunt, you are very kind, but—” Novello, so are you; and therefore I do not expect to be put off with words. Besides, did I not have a long conversation the other evening with Mary? And did she not promise me, like a good wife as she was, not to listen to a word you had to say? I mean, against putting yourself in the best possible position for recovering your health. Or rather, did she not say, with good wifely tears in her eyes, that she would let you do all you pleased, which of course ties up your hands—only she hoped you would think as I did, if it was really as much for your good as I supposed—which of course ties them up more? And does not all that she has said, and all that I have said, and all that I mean to say, (which is quite convincing, I assure you, in case you are not convinced already, as you ought to be,) prove to you that you must leave that dirty Shacklewell, that wet Shacklewell, that flat, floundering and foggy Shacklewell, that distant, out-of-the-way, dreary, unfriendly, unheard-of, melancholy, moping, unsocial, unmusical, unmeeting, uneveningy, un-Hunt-helping, unimproper, un-Gliddony, un-Kentish-towny, un-Hampsteady, un-Hadlowincial, far, foolish, faint, fantastical, sloppy, hoppy, moppy, brickfieldy, bothery, mothery, misty, muddling, meagre, megrim, Muggletonian, dim, dosy, booty, cold-arboury, plashy, mashy, squashy, Old-Street-Roady, Balls-Pondy, Hoxtony, hurtful, horrid, lowering, lax, languid, musty, sepulchral, shameful,

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washy, dim, cold, sulky, subterraneous, sub-and-supralapsarian, whity-brown, clammy, sick, silent, cheap, expensive, blameable, gritty, hot, cold, wheezy, vapourish, inconsequential, what-next?-y, go-to-beddy, lumpish, glumpish, mumpish, frumpish, pumpish, odd, thievish, coining, close-keeping, chandlering, drizzling, mizzling, duck-weedy, rotting, perjured, forsaking, flitting, bad, objected-to, false, cold-potatoey, inoperative, dabby, draggle-tailed, shambling, huddling, indifferent, spiteful, meek, milk-and-watery, inconvenient, lopsided, dull, doleful, damnable Shacklewell. Come, “I think here be proofs.”

P.S.—I know not what Holmes thinks of Shacklewell; but he can hardly have an opinion in favour of it after this Rabelais argument. Clarke is bound to side with all friends at a distance.

My dear Novello,—Pray do not think that I did, or shall, or ever can feel angry at my friend’s ill-health. I have suffered bitterly from ill-health myself; and know too well, even now, what it is. If I have plagued you at all about Shacklewell, or anything else, I can do so no more when you talk to me thus; especially when I see you doing what you so much dislike, to gratify your friends. I recognize there my old friend triumphant, however he may suffer for a time. That you suffer extremely I doubt not, being in the agony of the passage from one mode of diet and living to another—a voyage enough to shake the most Ancient Mariner. But believe one who speaks from experience—that these things have an end. A little medicine will, I doubt not, do you good, especially if you follow it up with some appeals to natural remedies—such as walking, early rising, etc. Upon early rising (always speaking from experience) I think the very greatest stress ought to be laid, and I reserve this one subject to plague you upon—always provided that you get up to a warm fire and speedy and good breakfast. Do not

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plague yourself till you are better about coming to me. I will, in the meantime, come to you on your own Sundays as well as mine, and I am sorry I cannot do so on Sunday next. Suffer not a moment’s uneasiness about the Lambs. They will set all down to the very best account, depend upon it; and, besides, you were as cheerful, and more so, than anybody could reasonably expect from a sick man; and your going away was no more than what Lamb does himself.

The necessity of being heroical under nervousness, tensions of the head, and “other gentilities” (as Metastasio has it) is, says he, a great nuisance. But he got over them: so have I, and so will you; so have hundreds of others. The thing is common when people come to compare notes. Lady Suffolk, who had a head of this sort, and lived to see a tranquil old age, said she never knew a head without them “that was worth anything.” Think of that; and she knew the wits and poets of two generations. Love to dear Mary and dear Vincent.

Gypsy,—I know not what there is in this word gypsy, but somehow or other it makes me very tender, and if I were near you, I should be obliged to turn round and ask Vincent’s permission to give you a considerable thump on the blade-bone. I believe it is the association of ideas with tents, green fields, and black eyes—a sort of Mahomedan heaven upon earth—very touching to my unsophisticated notions. I wish we were all of us gypsies; I mean all of us who have a value for one another; and that we could go seeking health and happiness without a care up all the green lanes in England, half gypsy and half gentry, with books instead of pedlary. I should prefer working for three or four hours of a

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morning, if it were only to give the rest of the day a greater zest; then we would dine early, chat or read under the trees, tea early (I think we must have some tea), and so to stray about by starlight if it is fine, and sit and hug ourselves with the thought of being well sheltered from the rain on a dripping night. I don’t think we would have candles. Our hours should be too good. Up with the lark, fresh air, green bowers, russetin-apple cheeks—why the devil doesn’t the world live in this manner, or allow honest people to do so that would? Oh, but we must wait a long while first, if ever; and meanwhile we must have a great number of children (“Leigh Hunt for instance—just so”), purely to worry ourselves about more than will ever do them any good; and we must have a vast number of fine clothes, and visitors, and cooks (to provide us with all the fever we have not got already), and Doctors, and gossips, and tabernacles, and cheese-cakes, and other calamities; and we must all sacrifice ourselves for our children, and they must all sacrifice themselves for theirs, and they for theirs, and so on to the third and fourth generation of them that worry us, wondering all the while (poor devils! both we and they) how it is that so much good love and good will (for there the sting lies, that the unhappiness should arise out of the very love on all sides) does not hit upon modes of existence a little discreeter. Only let the world come to me—leave me alone with him, as the lady said; and I’d teach him how to make his children grateful, what pleasures to substitute for his cookery, and how he should cultivate mind and muscle by a pleasing alternation. But I am getting moral, and I am sure I didn’t intend to be so. Don’t think ill of me. I intended in this letter to be all full of pleasure, as I should be if we could do as I say. As to the cookery and all that, I sometimes fear that the theories of Vincent’s friends (which, between you and my conscience, are much better than their practice) set him upon an extreme of diet which has done him no good, and which it might be to his advantage to contradict a little more. He did himself harm by great sudden gulps of dinner and tea (no man being less of a gourmand than he was), rendered more hurtful by long fasting and overwork; and I sometimes fear

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he too suddenly went counter to all this. Well, patience is a rascally necessity, as the poet said, and he has enough of it; but patience is rewarded at last. We have such miraculous accounts in the newspapers of cures of the spirits as well as body effected by the gymnastic exercises now spreading abroad, that I cannot help wishing Vincent would give them a trial when he returns; especially as in spite of the fat he had, I remember he used to be very active, and a vaulter over gates. So now, gypsy, stand in awe of me and my knowledge (which is what I like on the part of the sex), and then, suspecting me nevertheless to be not a jot more awful than yourself (rather the reverse, if you knew all), give me the most insolent pinch of the cheek you can think of (which is what I like much better), and in spite of all my airs and assumptions, keep for me one of the little corners that a large heart like yours possesses, and there let me occupy it when I please, with “dear Mr. Arthur,” and dearer Statia, and one or two others who would willingly hold the rest of it, and its inmate among them, in their affectionate arms, till he got well and made us all happy again.

P.S.—Pray write again speedily, and we will be better boys and girls, and rewrite instantly. . . . Oh, the letters of Lady Suffolk and the Genlis which you ought to have had long ago. I send them now, with one or two other works which I think may amuse you, and a proof-sheet of an article of mine (the Dictionary of Love and Beauty), which you must take with all its mistakes of the press on its head. . . . Marianne begs her kindest remembrances. She is very well and in excellent spirits, with the exception of a swollen eye, given her by that mysterious personage called a Blight. I tell her it looks very conjugal; and yet I am sure I ought not to tell her so, but I may tell her that it is “all my eye.” Do you remember the Merry Wives of Tavistock? Statia and she are at present the Merry Wives of Highgate. We only want the other Tavistock one in good spirits again to beat the Windsor ones hollow.

My dear Vincent,—Tho’ it is very proper that people should go out in cold weather to see their friends, it does not appear to me quite so proper that they should go out after dinner as before; ergo, this comes to say that I hope, in consideration of the frost and snow, you will come at three to-morrow instead of five. I will treat you exactly as you treated me, therefore there is to be no excuse on that score. If anybody prefers it, I will not treat them so well; they shall have a cold potatoe at a sideboard, with their feet in a pail of water. So pray come. Our meeting will be two hours the earlier; and not to dine with me, under all the circumstances, would be indecent.

COME AT 3 (a placard yell, or Clarke whisper).

P.S.—I find that my exactly is not quite exact. There is to be a piece of boiled beef to-morrow; but then we have mutton to-day, which will be conveniently cold for those who prefer the worse fare. By the way I hope you all like boiled beef. I think I recollect that you and Mary do, but not so sure of the Clarkes. I must presume, with them, upon the ground of its being generally liked.

Dear Mary,—By a miraculous chance I slept from home on Monday night, and did not get your letter till the night following; so that you must consider this as an answer by return of post. I shall come with the greatest pleasure to-

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morrow at three and pay my respects to you all, and to my old friend Bacchus senior. Is there any Septuor? However, that is not necessary. There will at all events be a Quatuor (you and Vincent, Charles Clarke and Victorinella), and any two of you would make a good duet, to say nothing of a soul-o. I am glad you like my verses so well. Marianne begs her love and hopes to see you soon. It is lucky that I had not time to be tempted into the Requiem, for besides what you say, there are too many thoughts on certain subjects pass thro’ my mind on these occasions, and put me into a state unsuitable both to the dignity of my philosophy and the cheerfulness of my hopes; so there is a pretty sound period for you. I shall compliment myself by saying that I should have felt the Requiem too much as Mozart did himself; and greatly for the same reason; to wit, that my liver is not in good condition. If it be thought too vain to have even a liver in common with Mozart, tell Vincent it is owing to his flattery of me in the postscript. To be serious I never see his hand but it seems to come with a blessing upon me, like that of one of your Catholic priests,—only sincere:—a Thais, only not vicious. You remember, I suppose, whose pleasant passage this last sentence alludes to.

Dear Mary,—You have seen by the Tatler how acceptable your critical epistle was; but how you must have wondered, with all your breakfast-table, at the signature “Manthele”! I have fancied you have been saying fifty times in your heart, “What the devil does he mean by ‘Manthele’”?—for ladies, you know, do say “what the devil” in their hearts, though it may not be quite bad enough for their tongues. (There; that is a dramatic surprise for you, very ingenious; for you thought I was going to say “not quite good enough,” which I own would have been less proper.) Well, Manthele should have been Melanthe (dark flower): I

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thought “an amateur” not so well, because it is pretty to see ladies’ letters distinguished by ladies’ names, and so I thought I would give you a nice horticultural one, such as you would like; and I wrote or rather printed it in capitals, that there might be no mistake; and Mr. Reynolds tells me that he saw it right in the proof. He says the letters must have subsequently fallen out, when going to press, and been huddled back loosely. Never apologize, dear Mary, about books: for then what am I to do? Keep them, an you love me, and I shall think I am obliging somebody. Do you know there is somebody in the world, who owes me tenpence? It is a woman at Finchley. I bought two-pennyworth of milk of her one day, to give a draught to Marianne; and she hadn’t change; so I left a shilling with her, and cunningly said I should call. Now I never shall call, improvident as you may think it: so that upon the principle of compound interest, her great-great-grandchildren or their great-great, or whichever great it is, will owe my posterity several millions of money. This, I hope, will give you a lively sense of the shrewdness which experience has taught me. Love, love, and ten times love, to dear Vincent.

Dear Victoria,—(For I have been used to call you so, Mary being your name in heaven, but Victoria that upon earth—

In heaven yclept “my own Mary,” But on earth heart-easing Vic.)

I conclude from Charles’ letter and your own searching eyes, that you saw the announcement of the verses in the Tatler. Be good enough therefore to inspire your husband, if you please, with some of his best rhymes on the spot, for a reason which he will tell you; and believe me,

Dear Novella,—Many thanks for your lemons, and many more for your inquiries and kind attentions. We have had some heart-tugging work since I saw Novello in the streets. Both Mary and baby have been in danger, the former for a short time, the latter moaning for two nights and a day with the anguish of acute inflammatory fever:—but you know all this sort of trouble, and more: nor would I say anything to bring any more tears into your eyes, but that I owe you a true account how we go on; and even tears are good things in this world, after a time:—they help to melt us all into one heart. God bless you and all our friends. I hope to enjoy them again shortly, and still reckon myself getting better.

Thou Cowden,—Will you vouchsafe to step down here, and confer with me half an hour or so respecting a certain unborn acquaintance of yours yclept the Companion?—and if you cannot come directly, will you say at what hour before 8 o’clock you can come; or whether you can or cannot come at all this afternoon?—for time presses upon a project I have in my head, because of the New Year.

My dear Clarke,—I beg your acceptance of a copy of my book. I do not send one to Vincent, because tho’ he is one of the few friends to whom one of my few copies, sent in this manner, would otherwise have gone, he is among its patrons and purchasers, and therefore, I must, even out of my sense of his kindness, omit him. But tho’ it is not altogether out of his power to stretch a point for me in this way with his purse, I dare to tell you that I know it to be yours and that your generosity, equally real with his but unequal to show itself in the same manner, will give me credit for understanding you thoroughly and believing that you understand me. I appeal to it also, with hand on heart, for giving me entire credit when I say, that the sonnet in which you were mentioned, and the one mentioning himself, were omitted solely in consequence of the severe law I had laid down for myself in selecting my verses (as you will see in the Preface), and which, much against my will, forced me to throw out others

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relating to a variety of my friends. I am still, however, to be inspired with better ones, if they insist upon overwhelming me with amiableness and being illustrious. Pray tell him all this. Now let me tell you that there is real poetry in some of the verses you have sent me, and that I have read them over and over again. There are one or two points which might be amended perhaps, in point of construction, and it is a pity, I think, that you have made the Fairy so entirely serious at the close of his song,1 as to say “Oh, misery!” He should have

1 We append the following copy of this “Song.” THE LAST OF THE FAIRIES. Gone are all the merry band! Gone Is my Lord—my Oberon! Gone is Titania! Moonlight song And roundel now no more Shall patter on the grassy floor. And Robin too! the wild bee of our throng, Has wound his last recheat— Oh fate unmeet! The roosted cock, with answering crow, No longer starts to his “Ho! ho! ho!” For low he lies in death, With violet, and muskrose breath Woven into his winding-sheet. And now I wander through the night, An old and solitary sprite! No laughing sister meets me; No friendly chirping greets me; But the glow-worm shuns me, And the mouse outruns me. And every hare-bell Rings my knell; For I am old, And my heart is cold. Oh misery! Alone to die!

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died like Suet, between sorrow, astonishment, and jest, and he might have perished of frost, because there was no longer any fireside for him. But the idea of a “Last of the fairies,” is excellent, and the treatment of it too, especially down to the words I have quoted, from the line beginning “the roosted cock.”

“Robin Goodfellow’s winding-sheet” is worthy of Keats. I admire also the first eight lines of the sonnet beginning “I feel my spirit humbled,” only you should not have said “small as is the love I bear you:” you want to say such as is the value of it; and this is not what the other words can be made to imply. At least I think so. The allusion to the “room” is good. How good is truth, and how sure it is to tell! I have always admired, my dear Clarke, the way in which you took your fortunes, and the wise-heartedness with which you found out the jewel of good at the core of them, and known how to cherish it. It has made you superior to them, and gives you an advantage which many richer persons might envy. God bless you both, and all of you, and believe me,

Ever Dear Clarke and Vincent,—I have been going to write to Frith St. not only for the last ten days, but for the last ten weeks; but my health is so unceasingly tried by my pen, that when necessity allows me to lay it down, it costs me such efforts to resume it, as must throw themselves on the indulgence of kind friends. I rejoiced to hear of the intention about Chaucer, but so far from wondering at your leaving out the passages you speak of, I may perhaps bespeak,

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your astonishment in return when I tell you, that I am not sure I have ever entirely read even the stories in question; I mean those in which Swift is horribly mixed up with La Fontaine; so much do I revolt from those kind of degrading impertinences, in proportion to the voluptuousness I am prepared to license. And yet I ought to beg pardon of divine Chaucer for using such words; for his sociality condescended to the grossness of the time, and was doubtless superior to it, in a certain sense, at the moment it included it in his good-natured universality. They may even have been salutary, for what I know, by reason of certain subtle meetings of extremes between grossness and refinement, which I cannot now speak of.

What good things they were, Clarke, in some of those verses you sent me; and yet what a strange fellow you are, who with such a feeling of the poetical, and a nice sense of music, can never write a dozen lines together without committing a false quantity—leaving out some crotchets of your bar. You almost make me begin to think that Chaucer wrote in the same manner, and not, as I have fondly imagined, with syllabical perfection. I am glad you did not dislike my criticism; and you too, dear Vincent. I send Clarke one or two more, which I have cut out of periodicals. Item, another True Sun, merely because it contains a mention of him, and may amuse him in the rest. He will see by it that Christianity is getting on, and that Blackwood and I, poetically, are becoming the best friends in the world. The other day, there was an Ode in Blackwood in honour of the memory of Shelley; and I look for one to Keats. I hope this will give you faith in glimpses of the golden age.

You may have seen a popular edition of the “Indicator” advertised; I mean with omissions. It is not mine, but Colburn’s, or I should have had copies to load my friends with, whereas I have been obliged to be silent about it to some of my oldest and nearest. What am I then to do in your house? I must, for the present (for I still hope to do better), cut the gentlemen, and confine myself, with a pleasing narrowness, to the lady—I beg pardon, to Mary, to whom I beg kindest remembrances, and her acceptance of the book

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she christened. Dear Vin, I think of you all, be assured, quite as often as you think of me. What have I to do, sitting, as I do, evening after evening by myself in my study, but to think of old times and friends, and attempt the consolation of a verse? May you all be very happy is the constant wish of

I was much obliged to you for your letter, and rejoice to see that you continue to like the journal; but as to prejudice, thou Cowden, against “the Siddons,” I disclaim it, and do accuse thee (proof not being brought) of prejudice thyself in the accusation. The prejudice is nature’s;—what think you of that?—for I have no pique against the Kembles, excepting that they were an artificial generation, and their sister, with all her superiority, a sort of “mankind woman” as the old writers phrase it.

But now to better things,—Chaucer and first love; and first of the first; for love forbid that love should not go before Chaucer, seeing that love made Chaucer himself, or ought to have done so, and certainly made him a poet. I have read it twice, and both times with emotion. The only fault I find is that the uncle, under the circumstances, would not have stuck to his vow. He would at the utmost have gone to his rector or bishop with a case of conscience, and the bishop would have told him it was a wicked thing to stick to such a vow. As to the rest, all I say is, that the writer deserves to be a man’s first love and his last.

What you say about Lyonnet makes me “pause and wonder;” yet I cannot help thinking that it was unworthy of “his greatness” to put himself into such a state of fume and energy for such an object. What need had he to prove his energy, and by rope-dancing? Conceive the time it must have taken, and the grave daily joltering practice, an immortal soul (as an old divine or Johnson might have phrased it) bobbing up and down every day, with a grave face, and with

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nothing better before it to warrant its saliences than the hope of beating a fellow at a fair! Sir, he had much better have taken Mrs. Lyonnet by the hand, and danced a pas-de-deux with her.

Can you lend me for a day or two your copy of “Adam the Gardener”? I want to extract the description of the rainstorm for next Wednesday week.

P.S.—I have omitted to speak of the Chaucer MS. after all. But you will see I had not forgotten him, either in MS. or letter. I need not repeat how I like your project, and as little, I am sure, need I apologize for the little corrections suggested in the preface.

What shall I say to dear Mary for being so long before I reply to her kind letter? What but that I have a bruised head, and am always full of work and trouble, and always desiring to write such very long answers to kind letters, that seem as if I should never write any. I once heard Hobhouse say a good thing—much better than any he ever said in Parliament—to wit, that the only real thing in life was to be always doing wrong, and always be forgiven for it. Is not that pretty and Christian? For my part I cannot always be doing wrong; I have no such luck; on the contrary, I am obliged to waste a great deal of time in doing much which is absolutely right,—nay, I am generally occupied with it all day, so strange and unpardonable is my existence. And yet this putting off of letters is a very bad thing; I grant my friends have much to forgive in it, so I hope they will forgive me accordingly, and think I am not so very bad and virtuous after all. As to being “venerable,” however, I defy anybody to accuse me of that, and they will find some difficulty in persuading me that you are so. Venerable! why it’s an Archdeacon that’s venerable, or Bede, the oldest historian—“Venerable Bede”—or the oldest Duke or Viscount living, whoever he is, the “venerable Duke” of the newspapers. What time may do with me I cannot say, but it shall at any rate be with no consent of mine that I become even aged, much less venerable, and therefore I have resolved not to fear being so, lest fear make me what I fear. Alas! I fear I am not wholly without misgivings while I say it, for white hairs are fast and fearfully mingling with my black, and I fear that my juvenility is all brag. I have told Clarke that I have none remaining, and I fear that is more like the truth than these ostentations, that is to say, in point of matter of fact, for as to matter of fancy I love and desire just the same things as I did of old, read the same books, long for the same fields, love the same friends (whatever some of these may think), and will come and hear dear little Clara sing (great Clara now) whenever you give me notice that you have an evening for me; for here I sit, work, work, work,

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and headache, headache, headache, at the mercy of “Copy” and Printer’s Devils, and am not blissful enough to be able to risk the loss of an evening by finding you from home. With love to dear Vincent,

My dear Victoria,—Though my head is so beaten with work just at this instant as to be no better than a mashed turnip, and though I am not aware that I have any thorough right to make you pay threepence because I am grateful, yet being apt to obey impulses to that effect, I am unable to forbear thanking you for your very nice and kind letter, so well written because you have a brain, and so warmly felt because you have a heart. I love your love of your mother, and of your husband, and of all other loveable things, and as a lover of them all myself shall think it no impertinence, especially as they give me leave, to beg you to continue to keep a little corner in your heart for the love of

P.S.—I enjoy heartily your Italian’s “perfection of playful sophistry.” Happily do you describe it; and yet see what a really different thing he makes a fog from those who do nothing but grumble at it, for everything is nothing but a result of our sensations, and the more pleasant we can make this, how lucky we! There is a poor hand-pianoforte playing at my window this moment the song of “Jenny Jones,” and now “The Light of Other Days,” I believe it is

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called. But I have got such a delicious abstract idea of a “Jenny Jones” of my own (which I intend to embody in words), and there is something which falls so sweetly on some part of my feelings from the other air too, that tears between sadness and pleasure come into my eyes. God bless you nice hearty people, you Clarkes; and so no more at present from yours till death.

My dear Clarke,—I want you both particularly tonight to stand by me in my readings to some new friends (very cordial people nevertheless). This is my second reading of my play, and I am to have a third, and I mix up new and old friends together when I read, though indeed of dear old friends I retain very few out of the claws of Death or distance, and those in Dean Street, despite of the perplexities of this beautiful world (which keep apart sometimes those who sympathize most), have ever been among the dearest to your affectionate friend,

My dear Victoria—Do not think me ungrateful for

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either of your kind and most welcome notes in having thus hitherto delayed to answer them. The conclusion of the first brought the tears into my eyes, which, I assure you, the exclamations it speaks of, delightful as they were, did not; such a difference is there between a public idea and “the distinct and ascertained affection of a private one. But I have not even yet recovered from the hurry and perplexity of an exquisitely overwhelming correspondence, and I delayed copies of the play to your father and you two (for I am not yet rich enough to offer it the only desirable divorce between you, that of giving you a book apiece) till I could send the second edition, which contains the proper acknowledgment of the music he was so kind as to send me, and which I expect to be out every day, and the MS. of the act you so naturally prefer shall come at the same time. Meanwhile (with Charles’ leave) pray let me give you in imagination the half dozen kisses which you would certainly have had to undergo, as others did, had you been near me on that occasion. I suppose your mother does not care for them, or for me, as she does not send me a word. Well, never mind, I’ll sulk and try to do without her. And yet, somehow, give her my love to vex her; and to everybody else that is loving, and grasp Charles’ hand for me till he cries out.

Cowdenia mia,—I am afraid you must have thought it very strange, my not sooner answering your kind and most welcome letter with its good news about the Concordance; but we have all been in such a state here with influenza and measles, etc., that a sort of cordon sanitaire was drawn round us, and even the people in Church St. (naturally enough, Heaven knows, considering how they have suffered) were afraid of having anything to do with us, or receiving even a book from us at their doors; so it made us take ourselves for a set of the most plaguey invalids possible, people wholly to be eschewed and eschewing. The girls, however, being at length about and Vincent himself, who has been longest in bed of any, I think we may venture to think of a remote knock at some person’s door; and the consequence is, that here comes to you

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and Carlo mio a little book, which has been waiting for you these three weeks. It does not contain quite all that even I would have had inserted; and most unluckily the Nile, and the song which your father set, have got out of it purely by an accident of delay arising out of my wish to improve them. Au reste, I have always regretted that I could not retain that Sonnet to Keats in which Charles was mentioned, because it really was unworthy of both of them; so I have taken an opportunity of mentioning en passant your dear good husband in the Preface. Tell him, if he never saw my Sonnet on the Fish and Man before, I bespeak his regard for it. How rejoiced I was to see the specimen of the Concordance! Item, to hear of the admirable impulse felt by the lady when she heard the Sonnet about the lock of hair. Vide the Rondeau at page 155, for the impulse turned into fact,—a very pretty example, let me tell you, for all honest female friends, especially Cowdenians. I say no more. Verbum sat.; which means a word to the womanly.

Vittoria mia,—(For you know I always claim a little bit of right in you, Caroli gratiâ) I think I have repeated the remark you speak of more than once, and yet I cannot remember anything more like it at present than in some passages in the accompanying “Recollections of a dead body” in the Monthly Repository, pages 218, 219; which book I accordingly send you. I still think, however, there must be a passage somewhere else, and I will look for it, and if I find it, send it off directly. With love to dear Clarke, Believe me, ever affectionately yours,

My dear Victoria,—I send you overleaf the manifest passage. Your clue (“the end of a paragraph”) enabled me

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to find it almost instantly at p. 20 of the London Journal. Sempre Clarke-issimo.

“We see in the news from Scotland, that at the interment of the venerable widow of Burns (Bonnie Jeannie Armour, who we believe made him a very kind and considerate wife) the poet’s body was for a short time exposed to view, and his aspect found in singular preservation. An awful and affecting sight! We should have felt, if we had been among the bye-standers, as if we had found him in some bed, in the night of Time and space, and as if he might have said something! grave but kind words of course, befitting his spirit and that of the wise placidity of Death, for so the aspect of death looks. A corpse seems as if it suddenly knew everything, and was profoundly at peace in consequence.”

Victorianina Diavolina,—Friday by all means. I will be with you all on ditto at 2 o’clock. Greatly pleased am I at hearing that Charles is to be at home, for I began to think I should never see him till this time next century. Herewith come the woodcuts I spoke of. We will talk farther of the subject when we meet, and then I will put down, on the spot, any memorandums you like. I shall quite look forward to Friday.

Cara Vittoria mia,—I address this to you, because I conclude it is more likely to find you at home, and because being so much of a one-ness with your husband I suppose you could act for him as well as if he were on the spot, and send me the little book I ask for in case he happens to possess a copy. It is the Literary Pocket-book (if you remember such a thing) containing the collection of the sayings of

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poor Beau Brummel, under the title of “Brummelliana.” A gentleman who is writing a life of him has sent to me to borrow it, and my own copy has disappeared. I need not say, that I should stipulate with the gentleman to take every care of it, and that at all events I would become personally responsible for its return. And so with best blessings to both of you (for tho’ not a Papist I am Catholic in all benedictory articles) I am ever, dear Victoria,

Victorianellina carina, buonina,—You must have thought me a strange dilatory monster all this while; but in the first place, my Keatses (as usual) were all borrowed, so that I had to wait till I could get one of them back. In the second place, I did so, the fullest (Galignani’s); when lo! and behold, there was no Nile Sonnet! ergo, in the third place we commenced a search amongst boxes and papers, Mrs. Hunt being pretty sure that she had got it “somewhere;” but unfortunately, after long and repeated ransacking, the somewhere has proved a nowhere. Now what is to be done? I have an impression on my memory that all the three Sonnets were published in the Examiner, and as your father has got an Examiner (which I have not) perhaps you will find it there. I regret extremely that I cannot meet with it, particularly as I was to be so much honoured. Shelley’s comes on the next page. Oh, what memories they recall! I am obliged to shut them up with a great sigh, and turn my thoughts elsewhere. The Brummelliana came back with many thanks. There is to be a book respecting the poor Beau, which doubtless we shall all see. Tell Charles I have been getting up a volume called “True Poetry,” with a prefatory essay on the nature of ditto, and extracts, with comments, from Spenser, Marlow, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. I know he will be glad to hear this. It is a book of veritable pickles and preserves; rather say, nectar and ambrosia; and there is not a man in England

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who will relish or understand the Divine bill of fare better than he. With kindest love ever his and yours,

Victorianellinuccia,—You would have heard from me earlier in the week than this, had I not been suffering under a cold and cough of such severity, that it affected the very muscles of my neck to a degree which rendered it painful for me to do anything with my head but to let it lie back on the top of an armchair, and so direct its eyes on a book and read. Of all kinds of approbations of my scribblements—nay, I will call them writings in consideration of their sincerity and their approvers—there is none that ever pleases me so much as those like Mr. Peacock’s; and I beg you to make him my grateful acknowledgments, as well as to accept them yourself for sending them to me in a letter so delightful. As to any violation of modesty in your showing me what he says of you, in the first place there is no such violation; and secondly, if there could be, it is the privilege of women so really modest (and the wicked exquisites know it) to be able to set this modesty aside on occasions gloriously appropriate, and so make us love it the more on all others. With cordial remembrances to your traveller,

My dear Vincent,—Lēmŭrĕs sometimes called Lēmŭrs (as in Milton, Ode to Nativity,—
“The Lārs and Lēmurs moan with midnight plaint”) is accented on the first syllable. The Lemurs were the departed souls of the wicked, as the Lars or Lares were those of the good; so the former came and bothered people, while the latter befriended them. A fellow who leaves us his malediction, and does not leave us his money, is a Lemur. An

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old lady, who was tiresome in her life, and who says that her spirit will watch over the premises to see we behave properly is a sort of fair Lemur; for she candidly gives us notice to quit.

My dear Vincent,—I am so hard driven just at this moment, that I can but afford a hasty word of thanks even for such presents as yours and dear Mary’s (to whom pray give an embracing word for me); but I need not entreat you to believe, that that word contains a thousand kind thoughts. As to coming to see you, it is what I long for; but with the exception of one unavoidable engagement for next Saturday week, I have been obliged to “cut” all my friends, as far as visiting them goes, till my new play is finished (don’t you feel a particularly great gash? for the “cutting” is of necessity proportioned to the love). On the other hand, I take it particularly kind of them, if they in the meantime come to see me, while resting of an evening after my work (for the going out to visit after dinner knocks me up for the next day). Impudently, nay lovingly then, let me request you to do so, and Clarke also, and dear Vic, if they, or she, or all of you, or each, or either, will come (I have two loves of the name of “Vic” now, Clarke and Prince Albert permitting!) Tea will be always ready for you any time between six and eight, and hearty thanks. From your affectionate friend,

P.S. The moment my play is finished, I will come, and

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come again, as fast as possible. Tell Clarke my new study is very snug and nice, and that I have a bit of vine over my window. Bid him make haste and see it.

My dear Mary,—Your letter, full of warm and most welcome old friendship, to say nothing (which means much) of the box of my favourite sweetmeats, came like a beam of sunshine upon a house full of trouble; for your husband’s namesake had been taken suddenly ill. . . . . But we have all experienced these sorrows in the course of our lives, so I will say no more of them.

Truly, in spite of anxiety, did I rejoice to think of your southern rest, and our patient’s condition has made us doubly desirous to hear more of a place, where you so naturally wish to have more old friends near you, and where we should be so willing to find ourselves. . . . We might pass some months perhaps at Nice, or some longer time, as cheaply as we live in this neighbourhood (where, by the way, I have not yet seen the exhibition, so anxious have I been!) . . . . . A thousand recollections of past times often spring up in my mind, connected with yourselves and other friends, all loving, and wishing I could have made them all happy for ever. But some day I believe we shall be so, in some Heavenly and kindly place. Meantime, just now, I shall dry my eyes, and fancy myself with you at Nice, imitating some happy old evening in Percy Street. We would have a little supper, precisely of the old sort, and fancy ourselves not a bit older in years; and “Victoria” if she were there, should put on a pinafore to help the illusion; and we would repeat the old jokes, and at all events love one another and so deserve to have all the happiness we could. Now is not this a thing to look forward to, in case I can take the journey? Marianne, who sends cordialest greetings, looks up with a bright eye at what

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you say about rheumatism, and asks me if it is possible we could go? “Possible.” I do not know whether it is, till I hear and see further; but I will seriously hope it not otherwise; and at all events it is a thought with too many good things in it to give up before we must. Kindest remembrances to all around you, and a happy meeting somewhere still on earth, should Nice not allow it. What charming things are in your daughter’s Shakespearian books.

Dear Alfred,—Your letter has only this moment reached me. You will find the parody on the next leaf; at least it is all which I recollect, and to the best of my recollection there was really nothing more. It is not masterly, tho’ not unamusing. I don’t know the author.

GENTLY STIR AND BLOW THE FIRE. Gently stir and blow the fire, Lay the mutton down to roast; Dress it quickly, I desire; In the dripping put a toast; Hunger that I may remove; Mutton is the meat I love.

On the dresser see it lie; Oh, the charming white and red! Finer meat ne’er met my eye; On the sweetest grass it fed. Let the jack go swiftly round; Let me have it nicely brown’d.

My dear Alfred—(For, notwithstanding your jovial proportions and fine bass voice, I have danced you on my knee when a child, and Christmas topics and dear old memories will not allow me, out of very regard, to call you “sir”) I enjoyed exceedingly your kind recollection of me and the place which you gave that Christmas effusion of mine in the midst of all those harmonious advertisements. I seemed to be made the centre of some great musical party. I see also my dear old friend “C. C. C.” as touching and cordial as ever.

I need not say how heartily I return your Christmas wishes. I have had a great sorrow to endure of late years—one that often seemed all but unbearable—but it is softening, and I never, thank God, wished any other person’s happiness to be less during it, but greater. How desirable then to me must be the happiness of my friends.

My dear Clarke,—I have been thinking of the Hamlet and Midsummer Night’s Dream, hoping the lecture is going to be delivered at some reachable place, fearing I might not be able (owing to a cough and catarrh) and wondering whether it would be possible to hear it here some evening, in this my hut, between tea and supper, I being the sole poor, but grateful audience. Such things you must know have been, though I don’t at all assume that they can be in this

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instance, however great the good will. But if not, might I read it? I need not tell you that it would be perused in strictest confidence, except as far as you might allow me to speak of it.

Victorianellina amabile e carina,—Very pleasant to me was the sight of your handwriting, yet so much the more unpleasant it is to be forced to write to you briefly. The address of the London Library is 12, St. James’ Square. Circumstances have conspired to hamper me with three books at once, the “Kensington” aforesaid, a collection of my “Stories in verse” with revisals, new Preface and a continuation of my autobiography. The consequence is that

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I have been overworked in the midst of severe cold and cough (the latter the longer and rather severest I have yet had, for cough I always have) and thus I am able only to continue the reading of Charles’ lecture, attractive as it is, by driblets (availing myself of the additional time he gave me, though not all of it), and am forced still to postpone writing to Alfred. Give, pray, my kindest remembrances to him. Tell him I tried hard to write an article for the Musical Times by the 20th of December, but could not do it; that I wished very much to begin the New Year with him; that I still purpose to go on (having more than one special object in so doing); that I will recommence the very first moment I can; and that meantime I rejoice to see the honour done to my Christmas verses by Mr. Macfarren’s music. I have not heard it, for I have heard nothing but the voice of booksellers and the sound of my pen and my lungs; but I shall make the first acquaintance with it feasible, and look to it as a greeting at the close of some toilsome vista.

Dear Victoria, Mary, or whatsoever title best please thine ear, I am ever the sincere old friend of you and yours,

My dear friends—Dear Clarke and dear Mary Victoria,—(for you know I don’t like to part with the old word) the first letter from Nice came duly to hand; but for the reason kindly contemplated by itself, I could not answer it at the moment, and the same reason made me delay the answer, and now still makes me say almost equally little on that particular point, except that I sigh as I am wont to do from the bottom of my heart, and thank you with tears for the privilege of silence accorded me.

Were it not for dear friends and connexions still living, I should now feel as if I belonged wholly to the next world; but while they remain to me, or I to them, I must still do my best to make the most of the world I am in, in order to deserve their comfort of me during the remainder of my progress to that other; where I do believe that all the wants which hearts and natures yearn to be lovingly made up, will be made up, as surely as in this world fruits are sounded and perfected (final short-comings of any kind being not to be thought possible in God’s works) and where “all tears will be wiped from all faces.” Why was any text inconsistent with that, ever suffered to remain in the book that contains it? But I am talking when I thought to become mute. Be you mute for me. I shall take your silence for dumb and loving squeezes of the hand. Winter here has been as severe with us, after its severer kind, as it has been with you in the midst of its lemon-blossoms and green peas. I hope your summer has turned out as proportionately excellent, and then you will have had a summer indeed; for we have been astonished at our June without fires, and our continuously blue weather. Your walks are noble truly, and would be wonderful if you had not a companion; a thing which always makes me feel as if I could walk anywhere and for ever; that is to say, if anything like such a companion as yours, but doubtless stoppings would occasionally be found desirable, especially at inns, or where “si vende birra” “Strada Smollett” is delightful. By-and-by there will be

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such streets all over the world. People will know, not only the name of a street, but the reason for it, “and by the visions splendid,” be “on their way attended.” Let who else will live in “Smollett Street,” Matthew Brambles, and Randoms, and Bowlings will be met there by passengers, as long as the name endures. I see the last, turning a corner with little Roderick in his hand, hitching up his respectable, bad-fitting trousers, and jerking the tobacco out of his mouth at the thought of unfeeling old hunkses of grandfathers. Your finale respecting Burns was to good final purpose; and I do not wonder at its exciting the applause of the genial portion of his countrymen; for such only would be the portion to come to your lectures. They must have felt it like an utterance of their own hearts, let free for the first time; at least, thus publicly. To find fault with Burns is to find fault with the excess of geniality of Nature herself; which, tho’ like the sun it may do harm here and there, or seem to do it in its hottest places, is a universal beneficence, and could not be perhaps what it is without them. Nor are those irremediable to such as are in Nature’s secrets, or “to the matter born.” The life of Burns by Robert Chambers, a serene and sweet-minded philosophic kind of man, is undoubtedly, as you say, the best of all the lives of him. . . . . I long to see the fifteen famous women,1 and am truly obliged by the desire expressed to the publisher to send it me. It is impossible they should be in better hands than in those of the bringer-up of the women of Shakespeare; people, that make a Mormon of me; and, with your leave, a Molly—as well as a Polygamist. Indeed with the help of another l, the latter word might express both. You see you have made me a little wild, with the compliment paid to my portrait. But I am no less respectful at heart; as in truth you know; otherwise I should not be where you have put me. So I feel new times and old mingled beautifully together, with the champagne once more over my hair, and all kindly nights and mornings, and outpourings of heart as well as wine, and

1 In allusion to “World-noted Women,” written by M. C. C. for Messrs. Appleton, of New York, in 1857.

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laughters and tears too, that make such extremes meet as veritably seem to join heaven and earth and render the most transient joys foretastes of those that are to last for ever.

The other day I got news at last of the safe arrival of my box of books and manuscripts (for the American press) at Washington, Pennsylvania, which it had reached by a circuitous progress thro’ other Washingtons, caused by my ignorance of there being any other Washington than one, and so having omitted the Pennsylvania. One London, I thought, one Washington; forgetting that London is a word of unknown meaning, therefore who cares to repeat it? Whereas Washington was a man, of whom men are proud; and hence it seems, there are 70 Washingtons! All goes well with my “works” (grand sound!) and they are to come out, both in verse and prose, the former forthwith; and special direction shall be sent to Boston for all being forwarded duty free to Maison Quaglia, in return for my “fifteen women” (strange, impossible sound of payment!) so I do not send you the list you speak of, meantime; only I should be glad to know what prose works of mine you may happen to possess at present, in case, if the publication of them in America be comparatively delayed, I may be able to send you some of them, such as I think you would best like; for there is a talk of republishing those in England. Besides, I need room for an extract which I had got to make for Victoria from my friend Craik’s “English of Shakespeare.” I must not even stop to enjoy with you some quotations from Drayton and Jonson, but I must not omit to congratulate you both, and everybody else, on the new edition of Shakespeare, especially as I reckon upon her turning her unique knowledge of him to dainty account in her Preface, and would suggest to that end (if it be not already in her head) that she would let us know what particular flowers, feelings, pursuits, readings, and other things great and small he appears to have liked best. Other people might gather this from her Concordance, but who so well as she that made it? Therefore

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pray let her forestall those who might take it into their heads to avail themselves of the information afforded them by that marvellous piece of love and industry. But to the extract: . . . . Shall I send my copy of it to Nice? It would interest editorship and occasion would be found to say a grateful and deserved word for it in the introduction to Julius Caesar. I lend the “Iron Cousin” to all understanding persons, and they are unanimous in their praises. Item.—I trust to read and mark it again, myself, shortly. Loving friends, both, I am your ever loving friend,

My dear Friends,—Tho’ it was a very delightful moment to me when I was again received by the house in that manner—far more delightful, for reasons which you may guess, than when I was first received, (with such strange memories sometimes will the brain of a poor humanist be haunted) yet the crown of the crown of congratulation is, after all that which one receives from families and old friends; terrible nevertheless, as the absence is of that which one misses. Bitter was the moment, after that other moment, when on returning home, I could not go first of all, and swiftly, into one particular room. But I ought to give you none but glad thoughts, in return for the gladness which you have added to mine. I had several times reproached myself for not writing to thank certain most kind remembrances of me in Musical Times, and then (as always seems to be the retributive case) comes this loving congratulation, before I have spoken. But work is mine, you must know, still and ever, and must be so till my dying day, only leaving me too happy at last, if I do but render it as impossible for any one individual in private to mistake me, as it seems to be with the blessed public, for whom, as I sometimes feared, might be the case, I have not gone through my martyrdoms (such as they are) in vain. Great, great indeed was my joy when they seemed as it were, at that moment, to take me again, and in a special

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manner, into their arms, the warm arms of my fellow-creatures. And now come yours, my dear friends, about me as warmly. Imagine me returning them with an ardour of heart, which no snows on my head can extinguish.

A few weeks ago there came to me from a certain pleasant-named house in New York a most magnificent book, full of handsome ladies, and better comments upon them, which till this moment I have thanked neither publishers nor authoress for, having wished to read it thro’ first in order to thank properly. My acknowledgments for it go accordingly to Nice and New York at the same time. The ladies are somewhat too much of a family, and of a drawing-room family, especially in the instances of the divine peasant, Joan of Arc, of lovely-hearted Pocahontas, who must still have been a Cherokee or Chickasaw beauty, and of what ought to have been the “beautiful plain” face of your Sappho. What a pity the artist had not genius enough in him to anticipate the happy audacity of that praise! The finery of her company I think, (for she seems to have guessed what sort of a book the publishers would make of it) has seduced our dear Mary-Victoria into a style florider and more elaborate than when she poured her undressed heart out in the charming “Iron Cousin” (my copy of which by the way, has just come home to me again in beautiful relaxed and dignified condition from its many perusals); but still the heart as well as head is there, and I have read every bit of the book with interest; unbribed, I cannot add, seeing what abundant warm-hearted reminiscences of me it contains; too many for it, I should have feared a little while ago; but not just now, for the promised edition of my “poetical works” has come out at Boston, and being welcomed with as universal cordiality in America, as my play has been by the press in London (for such you must know in addition to my reception on the stage, is the fact: at least so I am told, and have reason to believe; for I possess upwards of twenty eulogies from daily and weekly newspapers and reviews, and I hear there are half as many more, which I am yet to see). What think you of this unexpected (for indeed I never looked for it) winter-flowering, and in the two

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hemispheres at once? An American friend of mine, who is one of the Secretaries of legation here, tells me, that there is but one exception to the applause in his country, and this in a penny paper; so at all events that amount of drawback is not worth twopence. No: it is not he who tells me,—first tho’ he was to give me the good news. I learn it from my other American friend, the editor of the “Works” who is going to feast the transatlantic half of my vanity with a collection of the praises; some of which, he adds, will make my “very heart leap within me.” Heaven be thanked for it.

And now you have seen a certain “Tapiser’s Tale,” which accompanies this letter—oh, but my vanity must not forget to add,—nay, my hope of solid good must not forget to add,—and unspeakable joys hanging thereon, that the manager anticipates a “long run” for the play, and says also, that he will, “carry it in triumph thro’ all the provinces.” Item, I have reason to hope, that he will bring out one, perhaps more, of certain MS. plays which I have by me, and for which I never expected any such chance; and furthermore I think there is playable stuff in them—and so—and then—why, it is not impossible, verily, that I may have a whole golden year of it; alas! that any sighs should mix with that thought, but it is wholesome that they should do so, to prepare me for disappointment. There would even be a certain sweet in them then. There are faces that in that case would not be so much missed.

But to return to the Tapiser. Here is a bold venture; bold to send to anybody and anywhere, but boldest of all to such Chaucerophilists as live at Nice. Luckily their love is equal to their knowledge; so extremes will meet in this as in other cases; and positively I trust to fare best where under less loving circumstances I might have had least reason to expect it. Besides, the subject is so beautiful in itself that a devout Chaucer student could not well take all interest out of it with the sympathetic.

So I shan’t fear that you will make any very heavy retaliations for what I have ventured to object up above; especially as in reference to the great poet, I am prepared to bow to any speeches of shortcoming that may be objected, saving

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something in behalf of the wet eyes with which the tale was written . . . . It has appeared in Fraser’s Magazine, and prospered.