[Boulge], Decr. 31/50.
My dear old Frederic,
If you knew how glad I am to hear from you, you would write to me oftener. You see I make a quick return whenever I get an epistle from you. I should indeed have begun to indite before, but I had not a
scrap of serviceable paper in the house: and I am only this minute returned from a wet walk to Woodbridge bringing home the sheet on which I am now writing, along with the rest of a half-quire, which may be filled to you, if we both live. I now count the number of sheets: there are nine. I do not think we average more than three letters a year each. Shall both of us, or either, live three years more, beginning with the year that opens to-morrow? I somehow believe not: which I say not as a doleful thing (indeed you may look at it as a very ludicrous one). Well, we shall see. I am all for the short and merry life. Last night I began the sixth Book of Lucretius in bed. You laugh grimly again? I have not looked into it for more than a year, and I took it up by mistake for one of Swift’s dirty volumes; and, having got into bed with it, did not care to get out to change it.
The delightful lady . . . is going to leave this neighbourhood and carry her young Husband [261] to Oxford, there to get him some Oriental Professorship one day. He is a delightful fellow, and, I say, will, if he live, be the best Scholar in England. Not that I think Oxford will be so helpful to his studies as his counting house at Ipswich was. However, being married he cannot at all events become Fellow, and, as so many do, dissolve all the promise of Scholarship in Sloth, Gluttony, and sham Dignity. I shall miss them both more than I can say, and must take to
Lucretius! to comfort me. I have entirely given up the Genteel Society here about; and scarce ever go anywhere but to the neighbouring Parson, [262a] with whom I discuss Paley’s Theology, and the Gorham Question. I am going to him to-night, by the help of a Lantern, in order to light out the Old Year with a Cigar. For he is a great Smoker, and a very fine fellow in all ways.
I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from any one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two days with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, [262b] in their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River side. Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say, in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume. For has he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some personal Beauty to boot? He explained to us one day about the laws of reflection in water: and I said then one never could look at the willow whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him. How beastly this reads! As if he gave us a lecture! But you know the man, how quietly it all came out; only because I petulantly denied his plain assertion. For I really often cross him only to draw him out; and vain as I may be, he is one of those that I am well content to make shine at my own expense.
Don’t suppose that this or any other ideal day with him effaces my days with you. Indeed, my dear Frederic, you also mark many times and many places in which I have been with you. Gravesend and its ανηριθμοι shrimps cannot be forgotten. You say I shall never go to see you at Florence. I have said to you before and I now repeat it, that if ever I go abroad it shall be to see you and my Godchild. I really cannot say if I should not have gone this winter (as I hinted in my last) in case you had answered my letter. But I really did not know if you had not left Florence; and a fortnight ago I thought to myself I would write to Horatio at Cheltenham and ask him for news of you. As to Alfred, I have heard of his marriage, etc., from Spedding, who also saw and was much pleased with her indeed. But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well satisfied to see one when one falls in his way. You will think I have a spite against him for some neglect, when I say this, and say besides that I cannot care for his In Memoriam. Not so, if I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical œstrus, is gone. . . It is the cursed inactivity
(very pleasant to me who am no Hero) of this 19th century which has spoiled Alfred, I mean spoiled him for the great work he ought now to be entering upon; the lovely and noble things he has done must remain. It is dangerous work this prophesying about great Men. . . . I beg you very much to send me your poems, the very first opportunity; as I want them very much. Nobody doubts that you ought to make a volume for Moxon. Send your poems to Spedding to advise on. No doubt Alfred would be best adviser of all: but then people would be stupid, and say that he had done all that was good in the Book—(wait till I take my tea, which has been lying on the table these ten minutes)—Now, animated by some very inferior Souchong from the village shop, I continue my letter, having reflected during my repast that I have seen two College men you remember since I last wrote, Thompson and Merivale. The former is just recovering of the water cure, looking blue: the latter, Merivale, is just recovering from—Marriage!—which he undertook this Midsummer, with a light-haired daughter of George Frere’s. Merivale lives just on the borders of Suffolk: and a week before his marriage he invited me to meet F. Pollock and his wife at the Rectory. There we spent two easy days, and I heard no more of Merivale till three weeks ago when he asked me to meet Thompson just before Christmas. . . . Have you seen Merivale’s History of Rome, beginning with the Empire? Two portly volumes are out, and are
approved of by Scholars, I believe. I have not read them, not having money to buy, nor any friend to lend.