I and Drew sat up at your Father’s till 3 (a.m.) last Tuesday: at the old affair of Calvinism, etc. It amuses them: else one would think it odd they did not see how they keep on fighting with Shadows, and slaying the slain.
I am really going next week from home, towards that famous expedition to Shropshire [274] which I mean to perform one day. I write after walking to Woodbridge: and hear that Mr. Cana has called in my absence to announce that ‘the Hall’ is let; to a Mr. Cobbold, from Saxmundham, I think, who has a farm at Sutton. I met Tom (young Tom) Churchyard in Woodbridge, who tells me he is going to America on Monday! He makes less fuss about it than I do about going to Shropshire.
Ham, June 2/52.
My dear George,
. . . Order into your Book Club ‘Trench on the Study of Words’; a delightful, good, book, not at all dry (unless to fools); one I am sure you will like.
Price but three and sixpence and well worth a guinea at least.
In spite of my anti-London prejudices, I find this Limb of London (for such it is) very beautiful: the Thames with its Swans upon it, and its wooded sides garnished with the Villas of Poets, Wits, and Courtiers, of a Time which (I am sorry to say) has more charms to me than the Middle Ages, or the Heroic.
I have seen scarce any of the living London Wits; Spedding and Donne most: Thackeray but twice for a few minutes. He finished his Novel [275] last Saturday and is gone, I believe, to the Continent.
To F. Tennyson.
Goldington, Bedford,
June 8/52.