And—(this Letter is to be all about myself)—by this post I send you my Handbook of Crabbe’s Tales of the Hall, of which I am so doubtful that I do not yet care to publish it. I wished to draw a few readers to a Book which nobody reads, by an Abstract of the most readable Parts connected with as little of my Prose as would tell the story of much prosaic Verse, but that very amount of prosy Verse may help to soak the story into the mind (as Richardson, etc.) in a way that my more readable Abstract does not. So it may only serve to remind any one of a Book—which he never read! The Original must be more obsolete in America than here in England; however, I should like to know what you make of it: and you see that you may tell me very plainly, for it is not as an Author, but only as Author’s Showman that I appear.
It is rather shameful to take another Sheet because of almost filling the first with myself. And I have but little to tell in it. Carlyle I have not heard of for these six months: nor Tennyson: I must write to hear how they have weathered this mortal Winter. Tennyson’s elder, not eldest, Brother Charles is dead: and I was writing only yesterday to persuade Spedding to insist on Macmillan publishing a complete edition of Charles’ Sonnets: graceful, tender, beautiful, and quite original, little things. Two thirds of them would be enough: but no one can select
in such a case, you know. I have been reading again your Hawthorne’s Journal in England when he was Consul here; this I have: I cannot get his ‘Our old Home,’ nor his Foreign Notes: can you send me any small, handy, Edition of these two last? I delight in them because of their fearless Truthfulness as well as for their Genius. I have just taken down his Novels, or Romances, to read again, and try to relish more than I have yet done; but I feel sure the fault must be with me, as I feel about Goethe, who is yet as sealed a Book to me as ever. . . . I have (alas!) got through all Sir Walter’s Scotch Novels this winter, even venturing further on Kenilworth: which is wonderful for Plot: and one scene, Elizabeth reconciling her Rival Earls at Greenwich, seeming to me as good as Shakespeare’s Henry VIII., which is mainly Fletcher’s, I am told. I have heard nothing of Mr. Lowell since I heard of you, and do think that I will pitch him a Crabbe into the midst of Madrid, if he be still there. (N.B. Some of Crabbe is not in the Text but from MS. first (and best) readings printed in the Son’s edition.)
The Nightingale is now telling me that he is not dead.
Woodbridge. May 20/79.
My dear Sir,
By this post I send you a bit of a Book, in which you see that I only play very second Fiddle. It is not published yet, as I wait for a few friends to tell me if it be worth publishing, or better kept among ourselves, who know Crabbe as well as myself. You could tell me better than any one, only that I doubt if any Transatlantic Man can care, even if he knows of a Writer whose Books are all but unread by his own Countrymen, so obsolete has become his Subject (in this Book) as well as his way of treating it. So I think I may exonerate you from giving an opinion, and will only send it to you for such amusement as it may afford you in your Exile. I fancied I could make a pleasant Abstract of a much too long and clumsy Book, and draw a few Readers to the well-nigh forgotten Author. But, on looking over my little work, I doubt that my short and readable Handybook will not leave any such impression as the long, rather un-readable, original; mere length having, you know, the inherent Virtue of soaking it in: so as my Book will scarce do but as a reminder of the original, which nobody reads! . . .
Voilà assez sur ce sujet là. I think that you
will one day give us an account of your Spanish Consulship, as Hawthorne did of his English: a noble Book which I have just been reading over again. His ‘Our old Home’ is out of print here; and I have asked Mr. Norton to send me any handy Edition of it, as also of the Italian Journal, my Copies having been lent out past recovery. I am going to begin again with his Scarlet Letter and Seven Gables; which (oddly to myself) I did not take to. And yet I think they are not out of my line, or reach, I ought to say.