To R. C. Trench. [23a]
Market-Hill, Woodbridge.
July 3/61.
Dear Doctor Trench,
Thank you sincerely for the delightful little Journal [23b] which I had from you yesterday, and only wished to be a dozen times as long. The beautiful note at p. 73 speaks of much yet unprinted! It is a pity Mrs. Kemble had not read p. 79. I thought in the Night of ‘the subdued Voice of Good Sense’ and ‘The Eye that invites you to look into it.’ I doubt I can read, more or less attentively, most personal Memoirs: but I am equally sure of the superiority of this, in its Shrewdness, Humour, natural Taste, and Good Breeding. One is sorry for the account of Lord Nelson: but one cannot doubt it. It was at the time when he was intoxicated, I suppose, with Glory and Lady Hamilton. What your Mother says of the Dresden Madonna reminds me of what Tennyson once said: that the Attitude of The Child was that of a Man: but perhaps not the less right for all that. As to the Countenance, he said that scarce any Man’s Face could look so grave and rapt as a Baby’s could at times. He once said of his own Child’s, ‘He was a whole hour this morning worshipping the Sunshine
playing on the Bedpost.’ He never writes Letters or Journals: but I hope People will be found to remember some of the things he has said as naturally as your Mother wrote them. [24]
To W. H. Thompson.
Market-Hill, Woodbridge.
July 15/61.
My dear Thompson,
I was very glad to hear of you again. You need never take it to Conscience, not answering my Letters, further than that I really do want to hear you are well, and where you are, and what doing, from time to time. I have absolutely nothing to tell about myself, not having moved from this place since I last wrote, unless to our Sea coast at Aldbro’, whither I run, or sail, from time to time to idle with the Sailors in their Boats or on their Beach. I love their childish ways: but they too degenerate. As to reading, my Studies have lain chiefly in some back Volumes of the New Monthly Magazine and some French Memoirs. Trench was good enough to send me a little unpublished Journal by his Mother: a
very pretty thing indeed. I suppose he did this in return for one or two Papers on Oriental Literature which Cowell had sent me from India, and which I thought might interest Trench. I am very glad to hear old Spedding is really getting his Share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it will be half as good as the ‘Evenings,’ where Spedding was in the Passion which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage.