“I now send you a political O’D. on L. N., not over civil; but I detest the man, and I suspect I know him and read him aright. Banting I did without waiting for his book; but if it comes I will perhaps squeeze something out of it.
“I am crippled with gout, and can scarcely hold a pen. The bit on doctors is simply padding, and don’t put it in if you don’t like; but the No. for December will, I think, be a strong one.
“Sir Jas. Hudson is with me, but I am too low even for his glorious companionship—and he has no equal. Wolff is here, and all to stay for the winter.
“What do you think of my advertising O’D. at the end of the Banting paper? Does it not remind you of the epitaph to the French hosier, where, after the enumeration of his virtues as husband and father, the widow announces that she ‘continues the business at the old estab., Rue Neuve des Petits Champs,’ &c. &c.?”
To Dr Burbidge.
“Florence, Nov. 3, 1864.
“Bulwer the Great has stayed here, and will not leave till to-morrow, and if you see Rice, will you please to tell him so. I am so primed that I think I could write a great paper on the present state and future prospects of Turkey.
“He has been very agreeable, and with all his affectations—legion that they are—very amusing.
“Layard I don’t like at all; he is the complete stamp to represent a (metropolitan) constituency—overbearing, loud, self-opinionated, and half-informed, if so much. Bulwer appeared to great advantage in his company.
“In my desire to see how far you were just or unjust to Georgina, I set to work to read over again the scenes she occurs in, and went from end to end of ‘Tony Butler,’ and at last came in despair to ask Julia to find her out for me! So much for the gift of constructiveness, and that power of concentration without which, Sir E. B. Lytton says, there is no success in fiction-writing.”