of a few Data to refer the letters to. Pollock calls my Paper ‘Côtelette d’Agneau à la minute.’
As to my little Dialogue, I can’t send it: so pretty in Form, I think, and with some such pretty parts: but then some odious smart writing, which I had forgotten till I looked it over again before sending to you. But I will send you the Calderon which you already like.
And, if you would send me any samples of Spanish, send me some Playbill (of the old Drama, if now played), or some public Advertisement, or Newspaper; this is what I should really like. As to Books, I dare say Quaritch has pretty well ferreted them out of Spain. Give a look, if you can, at a Memoir of Alfred de Musset written by his Brother. Making allowance for French morals, and Absinthe (which latter is not mentioned in the Book) Alfred appears to me a fine Fellow, very un-French in some respects. He did not at all relish the new Romantic School, beginning with V. Hugo, and now alive in --- and Co.—(what I call The Gurgoyle School of Art, whether in Poetry, Painting, or Music)—he detested the modern ‘feuilleton’ Novel, and read Clarissa! . . . Many years before A. de M. died he had a bad, long, illness, and was attended by a Sister of Charity. When she left she gave him a Pen with ‘Pensez à vos promesses’ worked about in coloured silks: as also a little worsted ‘Amphore’ she had knitted at his Bed side. When he came to die, some seventeen years after, he had these two little things put with him in his Coffin.
Ecce iterum—Crispin! I think you will soon call me ‘Les FitzGeralds’ as Madame de Sévigné called her too officious friend ‘Les Hacquevilles.’ However, I will risk that in sending you a Copy of that first Draught of an opening to Hyperion. I have got it from that Finsbury Circus Houghton, who gave me the first Copy, which I keep: so you shall have this, if you please; I know no one more worthy of it; and indeed I told Lord H. I wanted it for you; so you see he bears no malice. He is in truth a very good natured fellow. . . .
Well, to leave that, he writes me that he had the original MS.: it was stolen from him. Fortunately, a friend of his (Edmund Lushington) had taken a MS. copy, and from that was printed what I send you. The corrections are from Lushington. I do not understand why Lord H. does not publish it. He says he has just written to Bendizzy to do something from the state purse for an aged Sister of Keats, now surviving in great Poverty. Her name is ‘Fanny.’ Ben might do much worse: some say he is about worse, now: I do not know; I cannot help: and I distress myself as little as I can. ‘Lisons tout Madame de Sévigné,’ said Ste. Beuve one day to some Friends in the Country; and Doudan (whom Mr. Norton admires, as I do) bids a Friend take that advice in 1871. One may be glad of it here in England ere 1879.
A short while ago we were reading the xith Chapter of Guy Mannering, where Colonel Mannering returns to Ellangowan after seventeen years. A long gap in a Story, Scott says: but scarcely so in Life, to any one who looks back so far. And, at the end of the Novel, we found a pencil note of mine, ‘Finished 10½ p.m. Tuesday Decr. 17/1861.’ Not on this account, but on account of its excellence, pray do read the Chapter if you can get the Book: it is altogether admirable—Cervantes—Shakespeare. I mean that Chapter of the Colonel’s return to Mrs. MacCandlish’s Inn at Kippletringan.
We are now reading ‘Among the Spanish People,’ by the Mr. Rose who wrote ‘Untrodden Spain’; a really honest, good-hearted, fellow, I think: with some sentimentality amid his Manhood, and (I suppose) rather too rose-coloured in his Estimate of the People he has long lived among. But he can’t help recalling Don Quixote. He has a really delightful account of a Visit he pays to a pueblo he calls Baños up the Sierra Morena: one would expect Don and Sancho there, by one of the old Houses with Arms over the Door. Pray get hold of this Book also if you can: else ‘les Hacquevilles’ will have to buy it second hand from Mudie and send—‘Coals to Newcastle.’
With Keats I shall send you an Athenæum with a rather humorous account of a Cockney squabble about whether Shelley called his Lark an ‘un-bodied,’ or ‘em-bodied,’ Spirit. I really forget which way was
settled by MS. Shelley is now the rage in Cockayne; but he is too unsubstantial for me.