To F. Tennyson.
Geldestone Hall, Beccles.
[? 1843.]
Dear Frederic,
I am glad you are back, and perhaps sorry. But glad let it be, for I shall be in London, as proposed, in another fortnight—more or less—and shall pig there
in a garret for two months. We will go to picture sales and buy bad pictures: though I have scarce money left. But I am really at last going to settle in some spooney quarters in the country, and would fain carry down some better forms and colours to put about me. I cannot get the second or third best: but I can get the imitations of the best: and that is enough for me.
What is become of Alfred? He never writes—nor is heard of.
Your letter found me poring over Harrington’s Oceana: a long-shelved book—its doctrine of Government I am no judge of: but what English those fellows wrote! I cannot read the modern mechanique after them. ‘This free-born Nation lives not upon the dole or Bounty of One Man, but distributing her Annual Magistracies and Honours with her own hand is herself King People.’ Harrington must be a better writer than Milton. One finds books of this kind in these country houses: and it is pleasant to look them over at midnight in the kitchen, where I retire to smoke. . . .
Farewell till I see you one of these days.
To S. Laurence.
Dublin, July 11/43