As for the modern Poetry, I have cared for none of the last thirty years, not even Tennyson, except in parts: pure, lofty and noble as he always is. Much less can I endure the Gurgoyle school (I call it) begun, I suppose, by V. Hugo. . . . I do think you will find something better than that in the discarded Crabbe; whose writings Wordsworth (not given to compliment any man on any occasion) wrote to Crabbe’s Son and Editor would continue as long at least as any Poetry written since, on account of its mingled ‘Truth and Poetry.’ And this includes Wordsworth’s own. So I must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be popular.
This reminds me that just after I had written to you, Crabbe’s Grandson, one of the best, most amiable, and most agreeable, of my friends, paid me a two days’ Visit, and told me that a Nephew of yours was learning to farm with a Steward of Lord Walsingham at Merton in Norfolk, George Crabbe’s own parish; I mean the living George, who spoke of your Nephew as a very gentlemanly young man indeed. I think he will not gainsay what I write to you of his ‘Parson.’
Your kind Letter has encouraged me to write all this. I felt some hesitation in addressing you again after an interval of some fifteen years, I think; and now I think I shall venture on writing to you once again before another year be gone, if we both live to see 1881 in, and out.
To Charles Keene.
Woodbridge. Sunday.
My dear Keene,
Your Letter reached me yesterday when I was just finishing my Sévigné; I mean, reading it over. I have plenty of Notes for an Introductory Argument and List of Dramatis Personæ, and a clue to the course of her Letters, so as to set a new reader off on the right tack, with some previous acquaintance with the People and Places she lives among. But I shrink from trying to put such Notes into shape; all writing always distasteful to me, and now very difficult, at seventy odd. Some such Introduction would be very useful: people being in general puzzled with Persons, Dates, etc., if not revolted by the eternal, though quite sincere, fuss about her Daughter, which the Eye gradually learns to skim over, and get to the fun. I felt a pang when arriving at—
Ci git
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
Marquise de Sévigné
Décédée le 18 Avril 1696
still to be found, I believe, on a Tablet in the Church of Grignan in Provence. I have been half minded to run over to Brittany just to see Les Rochers; but a French ‘Murray’ informed me that the present owner will not let it be seen by Strangers attracted by all those ‘paperasses,’ as he calls her Letters. Probably I should not have gone in any case when it came to proof. . . .
I did not forget Waterloo Day. Just as I and my Reader Boy were going into the Pantry for some grub, I thought of young Ensign Leeke, not 18, who carried the Colours of that famous 52nd which gave the ‘coup de grace’ to the Imperial Guard about 8 p.m. and then marched to Rossomme, seeing the Battle was won: and the Colour-serjeant found some bread in some French Soldier’s knapsack, and brought a bit to his Ensign, ‘You must want a bit, Sir, and I am sure you have deserved it.’ That was a Compliment worth having!