Pray come; and write and let me know. I said in my last—Nil mihi rescribas, attamen ipse veni. But Latin is of course to be taken rhetorically and figuratively, and ‘nil mihi rescribas’ means only—Come, if you can, before your letter.
To J. N. Simpkinson, Esq.
Oxford: Die Celeberrimi Laurentii Sheriffii, 1839.
I wish you would recommend me some book to give Gell before he goes to Tasmania. I should not like to give him anything ephemeral, which is a fault attaching itself, I suppose, even to ‘Carlyle’s Essays,’ which are just published though I admire him extremely in general, and these essays even more than the ‘Revolution.’ Has he got a ‘Boswell’s Johnson’? I suppose so. Carlyle says Johnson is the last of the English Tories; all since him have been but Toryish men. He has got an article on Boswell which is extremely beautiful; likewise on Burns, which is so too. He is certainly, however, somewhat heathenish; but that, it seems to me, is the case with all literature, old and new, English and foreign, worth calling literature, which comes in one’s way.
I truly hope to escape the vortex of philosophism and discussion (whereof Ward is the centre), as it is the most exhausting exercise in the world; and I assure you I quite makarise you at Cambridge for your liberty from it.
To the same.
Tuesday, December 21, 1839.
Q——‘s Newmanistic tendencies are, I am afraid, as certain if not as strong as you represent. He is so determined on having a conscious system that these tendencies are, I think, not unnatural. I hope you do not think me much perverted. The resistance, when there is occasion for it, against proselytisers is of the most vague unsystematic kind, resting in the most unstable way on intuitions, idealities, &c. &c., but I am not conscious of being in any wise leavened by them.
What do you think I have been bestowing the firstfruits of Christmas idleness upon? The first part of ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werthers,’ and really with more satisfaction and admiration than I expected; or rather, I have found all the power and little of the extravagance I looked for. I have read, too, with great pleasure, Schiller’s ‘Votiv-Tafeln’; at least, about half of them. Here is one—
Hast du etwas? so theile mir’s mit, und ich zahle was recht ist.