To Mrs. Cowell.
12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft.
April 8/76.
. . . If you go to Brittany you must go to my dear Sévigné’s ‘Rochers.’ If I had the ‘Go’ in me, I should get there this Summer too: as to Abbotsford and Stratford. She has been my Companion here; quite alive in the Room with me. I sometimes lament I did not know her before: but perhaps such an Acquaintance comes in best to cheer one toward the End.
To C. E. Norton.
Little Grange, Woodbridge.
June 10 [196], [1876].
My dear Sir,
I don’t know that I should trouble you so soon again—(only, don’t trouble yourself to answer for
form’s sake only)—but that there is a good deal of Wordsworth in the late Memoir of Haydon by his Son. All this you might like to see; as also Mr. Lowell. And do you, or he, know of some dozen very good Letters of Wordsworth’s addressed to a Mr. Gillies who published them in what he calls the Life of a Literary Veteran some thirty years ago, [197] I think? This Book, of scarce any value except for those few Letters, and a few Notices of Sir Walter Scott, all good, is now not very common, I think. If you or Mr. Lowell would like to have a Copy, I can send you one, through Quaritch, if not per Post: I have the Letters separately bound up from another Copy of long ago. There is also a favorable account of a meeting between Wordsworth and Foscolo in an otherwise rather valueless Memoir of Bewick the Painter. I tell you of all this Wordsworth, because you have, I think, a more religious regard for him than we on this side the water: he is not so much honoured in his own Country, I mean, his Poetry. I, for one, feel all his lofty aspiration, and occasional Inspiration, but I cannot say that, on the whole, he makes much of it; his little pastoral pieces seem to me his best: less than a Quarter of him. But I may be wrong.
I am very much obliged to you for wishing me to see Mr. Ticknor’s Life, etc. I hope to make sure of that through our Briareus-handed Mudie; and have
marked the Book for my next Order. For I suppose that it finds its way to English Publishers, or Librarians. I remember his Spanish Literature coming out, and being for a long time in the hands of my friend Professor Cowell, who taught me what I know of Spanish. Only a week ago I began my dear Don Quixote over again; as welcome and fresh as the Flowers of May. The Second Part is my favorite, in spite of what Lamb and Coleridge (I think) say; when, as old Hallam says, Cervantes has fallen in Love with the Hero whom he began by ridiculing. When this Letter is done I shall get out into my Garden with him, Sunday though it be.