Now I enclose you a little work of mine [242] which I hope does no irreverence to the Man it talks of. It is meant quite otherwise. I often got puzzled, in reading Lamb’s Letters, about some Data in his Life to which the Letters referred: so I drew up the enclosed for my own behoof, and then thought that others might be glad of it also. If I set down his Miseries, and the one Failing for which those Miseries are such a Justification, I only set down what has been long and publickly known, and what, except in a Noodle’s eyes, must enhance the dear Fellow’s
character, instead of lessening it. ‘Saint Charles!’ said Thackeray to me thirty years ago, putting one of C. L.’s letters [243] to his forehead; and old Wordsworth said of him: ‘If there be a Good Man, Charles Lamb is one.’
I have been interested in the Memoir and Letters of C. Sumner: a thoroughly sincere, able, and (I should think) affectionate man to a few; without Humour, I suppose, or much artistic Feeling. You might like to look over a slight, and probably partial, Memoir of A. de Musset, by his Brother, who (whether well or ill) leaves out the Absinthe, which is generally supposed to have shortened the Life of that man of Genius. Think of Clarissa being one of his favourite Books; he could not endure the modern Parisian Romance. It reminded me of our Tennyson (who has some likeness, ‘mutatis mutandis’ of French Morals, Absinthe, etc., to the Frenchman)—of his once saying to me of Clarissa, ‘I love those large, still, Books.’
I parted from Doudan with regret; that is, from two volumes of him; all I had: but I think I see four quoted. That is pretty, his writing to his Brother, who is dwelling (1870-1) in some fortified Town, on whose ramparts, now mounted with cannon, ‘I used to gather Violets.’ And I cannot forget what he says to a Friend at that crisis, ‘Engage in some long course of Study to drown Trouble in:’
and he quotes Ste. Beuve saying, one long Summer Day in the Country, ‘Lisons tout Madame de Sévigné.’ You may have to advise me to some such course before long. I will avoid speaking, or, so far as I can, thinking, of what I cannot prevent, or alter. You say you like my Letters: which I say is liking what comes from this old Country, more yours than mine. I have heard that some of your People would even secure a Brick, or Stone, from some old Church here to imbed in some new Church a-building over the Atlantic. Plenty of such materials might be had, for this foolish People are restoring, and rebuilding, old Village Churches that have grown together in their Fields for Centuries. Only yesterday I wrote to decline helping such a work on a poor little Church I remember these sixty years. Well, you like my Letters; I think there is too much of this one; but I will end, as I believe I began, in praying you not to be at any trouble in answering it, or any other, from
Yours sincerely,
E. F. G.
Pray read the Scene at Mrs. MacCandlish’s Inn when Colonel Mannering returns from India to Ellangowan. It is Shakespeare.
Woodbridge. April 16/1878.
Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire-Carlyle from you: and a kind long letter from Mr.
Lowell: and—and the first Nightingale, who sang in my Garden the same song as in Shakespeare’s days: and, before the Day had closed, Dandie Dinmont came into my room on his visit to young Bertram in Portanferry Gaol-house.