Just as I shut up Catullus, I opened Keats’ Love Letters just published; and really felt no shock of change between the one Poet and the other. This Book will doubtless have been in America long before my Letter reaches it. Mr. Lowell, who justly writes (in his Keats) that there is much in a Name, will wish Keats’ mistress went by some other than ‘Fanny Brawne,’ which I cannot digest.
And Mr. Lowell himself? I do not like to write to him amid his diplomatic avocations; if I did, I should perhaps tell him that I did not like the style of his ‘Moosehead Journal,’ which has been sent me by I know not whom. I hope he is getting on with his Cervantes; which I know I shall like, if it be at all of the same Complexion as his other two Volumes, which I still think are best of their kind.
My dear Norton!
If Packet follows Packet duly, you will have received ere this a letter I wrote you, and posted, a few hours before yours reached me. You will have seen that I guessed at some Shadow as of Illness in your household: no wonderful conjecture in this World in any case; still less where a Life of eighty years is concerned. It is in vain to wish well: but I wish the best.
Your mention of your Mother reminded me of another Eighty years that I had forgotten to tell you of—Carlyle. I wrote to enquire about him of his Niece a month ago: he had been very poorly, she said, but was himself again; only going in Carriage, not on foot, for his daily Exercise: wrapt up in furry Dressing-gown, and wondering that any one else complained of Cold. He kept on reading assiduously, sometimes till past midnight, in spite of all endeavours to get him to bed. ‘Qu’est ce que cela fait si je m’amuse?’ as old Voltaire said on like occasions.
I have got down the Doudan [234] you recommended me: but have not yet begun with him. Pepys’ Diary and Sir Walter, read to me for two hours of a night, have made those two hours almost the best of the twenty-four for all these winter months. That Eve of Preston Battle, with the
old Baron’s Prayers to his Troop! He is tiresome afterwards, I know, with his Bootjack. But Sir Walter for ever! What a fine Picture would that make of Evan Dhu’s entrance into Tully Veolan Breakfast Hall, with a message from his Chief; he standing erect in his Tartan, while the Baron keeps his State, and pretty Rose at the Table. There is a subject for one of your Artists. Another very pretty one (I thought the other Day) would be that of the child Keats keeping guard with a drawn sword at his sick Mother’s Chamber door. Millais might do it over here: but I don’t know him. . . .
I will send you Carlyle’s Squire correspondence, which you will keep to yourself and Lowell: you being Carlyle’s personal friend as well as myself. Not that there is anything that should not be further divulged: but one must respect private Letters. Carlyle’s proves a droll instance of even so shrewd a man wholly mistaking a man’s character from his Letters: had now that Letter been two hundred years old! and no intelligent Friend to set C. right by ocular Demonstration.
To J. R. Lowell.