31 Gt Portland St. London.
Jan. 22/57.
My dearest Cowell,
As usual I blunder. I have been taking for granted all this while that of course we could not write to you till you had written to us! Else how several times I could have written! could have sent you some Lines of Hafiz or Jámí or Nizámí that I
thought wanted Comment of some kind: so as the Atlantic should have been no greater Bar between us than the two hours rail to Oxford. And now I have forgot many things, or have left the Books scattered in divers places; or, if I had all here, ’twould be too much to send. So I must e’en take up with what the present Hour turns up.
It was only yesterday I heard from your Brother of a Letter from you, telling of your safe Arrival; of the Dark Faces about you at your Calcutta Caravanserai! Methinks how I should like to be there! Perhaps should not, though, were the Journey only half its length! Write to me one day. . . .
I have now been five weeks alone at my old Lodgings in London where you came this time last year! My wife in Norfolk. She came up yesterday; and we have taken Lodgings for two months in the Regent’s Park. And I positively stay behind here in the old Place on purpose to write to you in the same condition you knew me in and I you! I believe there are new Channels fretted in my Cheeks with many unmanly Tears since then, ‘remembering the Days that are no more,’ in which you two are so mixt up. Well, well; I have no news to tell you. Public Matters you know I don’t meddle with; and I have seen scarce any Friends even while in London here. Carlyle but once; Thackeray not once; Spedding and Donne pretty often. Spedding’s first volume of Bacon is out; some seven hundred pages; and the Reviews already begin to think it over-commentaried.
How interested would you be in it! and from you I should get a good Judgment, which perhaps I can’t make for myself. I hear Tennyson goes on with King Arthur; but I have not seen or heard from him for a long long while.
Oddly enough, as I finished the last sentence, Thackeray was announced; he came in looking gray, grand, and good-humoured; and I held up this Letter and told him whom it was written to and he sends his Love! He goes Lecturing all over England; has fifty pounds for each Lecture: and says he is ashamed of the Fortune he is making. But he deserves it.
And now for my poor Studies. I have read really very little except Persian since you went: and yet, from want of Eyes, not very much of that. I have gone carefully over two-thirds of Hafiz again with Dictionary and Von Hammer: and gone on with Jámí and Nizámí. But my great Performance all lies in the last five weeks since I have been alone here; when I wrote to Napoleon Newton to ask him to lend me his MS. of Attár’s Mantic uttair; and, with the help of Garcin de Tassy [311] have nearly made out about two-thirds of it. For it has greatly interested me, though I confess it is always an old Story. The Germans make a Fuss about the Súfi Doctrine; but, as far as I understand, it is not very abstruse
Pantheism, and always the same. One becomes as wearied of the man-i and du-i in their Philosophy as of the bulbul, etc., in their Songs. Attár’s Doctrine seems to me only Jámí and Jeláleddín (of whom I have poked out a little from the MS. you bought for me), but his Mantic has, like Salámán, the advantage of having a Story to hang all upon; and some of his illustrative Stories are very agreeable: better than any of the others I have seen. He has not so much Fancy or Imagination as Jámí, nor I dare say, so much depth as Jeláleddín; but his touch is lighter. I mean to make a Poetic Abstract of the Mantic, I think: neither De Tassy nor Von Hammer [312] gives these Stories which are by far the best part, though there are so many childish and silly ones. Shah Máhmúd figures in the best. I am very pleased at having got on so well with this MS. though I doubt at more cost of Eyesight than it is worth. I have exchanged several Letters with Mr. Newton, though by various mischances we have not yet met; he has however introduced me to Mr. Dowson of the Asiatic, with whom, or with a certain Seyd Abdúllah recommended by Allen, I mean (I think) to read a little. No need of this had you remained behind! Oh! how I should like to read the Mantic with you! It is very easy in the main. But I believe I shall never see you again; I really do believe that. And my Paper is gradually overcome as I write this: and I must say Good Bye. Good Bye, my dear dear