We have also Memoirs of Godwin, very dry, I think; indeed with very little worth reading, except two or three Letters of dear Charles Lamb, ‘Saint Charles,’ as Thackeray once called him, while looking at one of his half-mad Letters, and remember[ing] his Devotion to that quite mad Sister. I must say I think his Letters infinitely better than his Essays; and Patmore says his Conversation, when just enough animated by Gin and Water, was better than either: which I believe too. Procter said he was far beyond the Coleridges, Wordsworths, Southeys, etc. And I am afraid I believe that also.
I am afraid too this is a long letter nearly [all] about my own Likes and Dislikes. ‘The Great Twalmley’s.’ [198] But I began only thinking about Wordsworth. Pray do believe that I do not wish
you to write unless you care to answer on that score. And now for the Garden and the Don: always in a common old Spanish Edition. Their coarse prints always make him look more of the Gentleman than the better Artists of other Countries have hitherto done.
Carlyle, I hear, is pretty well, though somewhat shrunk: scolding away at Darwin, The Turk, etc.
Little Grange, Woodbridge,
Septr. 10/76.
My dear Sir,
When your Letter reached me a few days ago I looked up Gillies: and found the Wordsworth Letters so good, kindly, sincere, and modest, that I thought you and Mr. Lowell should have the Volume they are in at once. So it travels by Post along with this Letter. The other two volumes shall go one day in some parcel of Quaritch’s if he will do me that Courtesy; but there is, I think, little you would care for, unless a little more of ‘Walter Scott’s’ generosity and kindness to Gillies in the midst of his own Ruin; a stretch of Goodness that Wordsworth would not, I think, have reached. However, these Letters of his make me think I ought to feel more filially to my Daddy: I must dip myself again in Mr. Lowell’s excellent Account of him with a more reverent Spirit. Do you remember the fine Picture that Haydon gives of him sitting with his grey head in the free Benches of some London Church? [199] I wonder
that more of such Letters as these to Gillies are not preserved or produced; perhaps Mr. Lowell will make use of them on some future occasion; some new Edition, perhaps, of his last volume. I can assure you and him that I read that volume with that Interest and Pleasure that made me sure I should often return to it: as indeed I did more than once till—lent out to three several Friends! It is now in the hands of a very civilized, well-lettered, and agreeable Archdeacon, [200] of this District.
I bought Mr. Ticknor’s Memoirs in an Edition published, I hope with due Licence, by Sampson Low. What a just, sincere, kindly, modest Man he too! With more shrewd perception of the many fine folks he mixed with than he cared to indulge in or set down on Paper, I fancy: judging from some sketchy touches of Macaulay, Talfourd, Bulwer, etc. His account of his Lord Fitzwilliam’s is surely very creditable to English Nobility. Macaulay’s Memoirs were less interesting to me; though I quite believe in him as a brave, honest, affectionate man, as well (of course) as a very powerful one. It is wonderful how he, Hallam and Mackintosh could roar and bawl at one another over such Questions as Which is the Greatest Poet? Which is the greatest Work of that Greatest Poet? etc., like Boys at some Debating Society.
You can imagine the little dull Country town on whose Border I live; our one merit is an Estuary