I should leave out the passage. . . .
An answer from Carlyle’s Niece to my half-yearly enquiry tells me that he is well, and hardy, and reading Goethe which he never tires of: glancing over Reviews which he calls ‘Floods of Nonsense,’ etc. I sent them Groome’s ‘Only Darter,’ which I think so good that I shall get him to let me print it for others beside those of the Ipswich Journal: it seems to me a beautiful Suffolk ‘Idyll’ (why not
Eidyll?) and so it seemed to those at Chelsea. By the by, I will send you their Note, if Groome returns it to me.
To C. E. Norton.
July 2/78.
My dear Norton,
You wrote me a very kind Invitation—to your own home—in America! But it is all too late for that; more on account of habit than time of life: I will not repeat what I feel sure I have told you before on that subject. You will be more interested by the enclosed note: of which this is the simple Story. Some three weeks ago I wrote my half-yearly note of enquiry to Carlyle’s Niece; he was, she said, quite well; walking by the river before Breakfast: driving out of an Afternoon: constantly reading: just then reading Goethe of whom he never tired: and glancing over Magazines and Reviews which he called ‘Floods of Nonsense, Cataracts of Twaddle,’ etc. I had sent him the enclosed paper, [253] written by a Suffolk Archdeacon for his Son’s East Anglian Notes and Queries: and now reprinted, with his permission, by me, for the benefit of others, yourself among the number. Can you make out the lingo, and see what I think the pretty Idyll it tells of? If I were in America, at your home, I would recite it to you; nay, were the Telephone prepared across
the Atlantic! Well: it was sent, as I say, to Carlyle: who, by what his Niece replied, I suppose liked it too. And, by way of return, I suppose, he sends me a Volume of Norway Kings and Knox: which I was very glad to have, not only as a token of his Good Will, but also because Knox was, I believe, the only one of his works I had not read. And I was obliged to confess to him in my acknowledgment of his kindly Present, that I relished these two children of his old Age as much as any of his more fiery Manhood. I had previously asked if he knew anything of John Wesley’s Journal, which I was then re-perusing; as he his Goethe: yes, he knew that Wesley too, and ‘thought as I did about it’ his Niece said; and in reply to my Question if he knew anything of two ‘mountains’ (as English people called hills a hundred years ago) which Wesley says were called ‘The Peas’ at Dunbar [254]—why, here is his Answer: evincing the young Blood in the old Man still.
Wesley’s Journal is very well worth reading, and having; not only as an outline of his own singular character, but of the conditions of England, Ireland, and Scotland, in the last Century. Voilà par exemple un Livre dont Monsr Lowell pourrait faire une jolie critique, s’il en voudrait, mais il s’occupe de plus grandes choses, du Calderon, du Cervantes. I always wish to run on in bad French: but my friends would not care to read it. But pray make acquaintance
with this Wesley; if you cannot find a copy in America, I will send you one from here: I believe I have given it to half a dozen Friends. Had I any interest with Publishers, I would get them to reprint parts of it, as of my old Crabbe, who still sticks in my Throat.