old God save the King style: the common chords, those truisms of music, like other truisms so little understood in the full. Just look at the mechanism of Robin Adair.

Now pray write to me again when you can. You don’t know how much I rejoice in your letters.

To S. Laurence.

Bedford, Thursday,
[August, 1842.]

Dear Laurence,

. . . I have heard from Morton and F. Tennyson; the letter of the latter very descriptive and fine. He is summering at Castellamare, and Morton at Sorrento. What must Italy be if we are complaining of heat here!

I have just been naming all Mr. Browne’s pictures for him. This he has insisted on for three years, and at last this very hot day after an early dinner pens and paper were brought out and I have been writing down awful calumnies about Cuyp, Both, etc. Who could have painted Catharine of Medicis, do you know? We are afraid to call it Vandyke, as he lived (I believe) a century after her: and Mr. B. won’t give up its being Catharine’s portrait. So here we are in a fix. I went to see Lord Northampton’s place Castle Ashby a week ago: expected pictures, and saw very bad ones. The house is very handsome, built by Inigo Jones.

I weigh 14 stone—fact.

To John Allen.

[Keysoe, August 1842.]