I am just back this evening from hearing Matthew Arnold read some of his poems to a great hallful of undergraduates and others, in place of a lecture which he was to give, but, poor man! was prevented by his agent, who seems to be rather his master. He was well received; but one cannot say that he is a very graceful or a good reader to an audience of eight hundred or a thousand people.
He tells me you offered him an introduction to me, which he thought he hardly needed, as we had met him and Mrs. Arnold at a lunch given by Miss North. We are sorry to hear of the determining reason of his visit and lecturing tour.... He will succeed in this, no doubt; but it is a sort of dog’s life, this lecturing all over the country, four times a week, at the beck of an agent, who controls all his movements, often to audiences that will not appreciate him, the more as what he tells me is true, that he has no gift as a speaker. But he is pleasant, and will be most kindly received.
Your Lord Chief Justice was most kindly cared for and made a most pleasant impression. But in Boston, besides coming when every one was away who should have attended to him, he fell, unwisely, into the hands of ... Governor Butler, and saw a side of American life and manners which may be well enough for him to see, though we should desire the contrary, and will add to his rich repertory of stories, which they say he can tell so well. The day he was shown over our university he called here, and took a cup of tea with us. He had recently been visiting our good friend Lord Justice Fry at Failand, and spoke of Lord Blachford as his friend and neighbor....
March 31, 1884.
... I have, moreover, another reason for sending you this line, to thank you for the proof-sheets of the “Bacon.” I read it at a sitting, one day when I was too ill for my daily task. I enjoyed the book greatly, all the more, probably, from my freshness, not having read anything upon the subject that I now recall since Macaulay’s essay, ages ago. It is like reading a tragedy.
What a great failure Bacon was, whenever he was tried! Poor Essex, hunted to death merely for “getting up a row,” and Bacon sacrificing him without compunction, and without seeing that he was probably made a tool of, merely to serve his personal advantage! Then the poetical justice, as they call it,—very prosaic justice,—of his own destruction, by a bolt out of a clear sky, which an enemy was adroit enough to direct to his ruin. And poor Bacon with conscience enough to feel that he deserved it, but not spirit enough to make a fight. No, if Pope’s fling was undeserved, as you say, it was because of the mean and ignoble set around him.
Almost as pitiable and tragic in its way, pitiable in its true sense, was the upshot of Bacon’s higher and nobler life, conceiving vaguely and laboring all his days over that which he was unable and incompetent to bring to the birth. His memory reaping a great reward of fame for a century or so, and then the conclusion reluctantly reached that nothing tangible in the advancement of Natural Science can be attributed to him. Altogether, what a solemn sermon! It might be preached from the pulpit of St. Paul’s.
Well, I seem to have attempted sermonizing myself, and it is time I stopped.
We join in the thanksgivings you are devoutly rendering,[126] and I am always,
Yours affectionately,
Asa Gray.