I got our Woodbridge Bookseller to enquire for your Mr. Child’s Ballad-book; but could only hear, and indeed be shown a specimen, of a large Quarto Edition, de luxe I believe, and would not meddle with that. I do not love any unwieldy Book, even a Dictionary; and I believe that I am contented enough with such Knowledge as I have of the old Ballads in many a handy Edition. Not but I admire
Mr. Child for such an undertaking as his; but I think his Book will be more for Great Libraries, Public or Private, than for my scanty Shelves at my age of seventy-five. I have already given away to Friends all that I had of any rarity or value, especially if over octavo.
By the way there was one good observation, I think, in Mrs. Oliphant’s superficial, or hasty, History of English 18th Century Literature, viz., that when the Beatties, Blacks, and other recognized Poets of the Day were all writing in a ‘classical’ way, and tried to persuade Burns to do the like, it was certain Old Ladies who wrote so many of the Ballads, which, many of them, have passed as ancient, ‘Sir Patrick Spence’ for one, I think.
Our Spring flowers have been almost all spoilt by Winter weather, and the Trees before my window only just now beginning to
Stand in a mist of Green,
as Tennyson sings. Let us hope their Verdure, late arrayed, will last the longer. I continue pretty well, with occasional reminders from Bronchitis, who is my established Brownie.
Woodbridge. Tuesday,
[June 12, 1883].
My dear Laurence,
It is very kind of you to remember one who does so little to remind you of himself. Your drawing of Allen always seemed to me excellent, for which reason it was that I thought his Wife should have it, as being the Record of her husband in his younger days. So of the portrait of Tennyson which I gave his Wife. Not that I did not value them myself, but because I did value them, as the most agreeable Portraits I knew of the two men; and, for that very reason, presented them to those whom they were naturally dearer to than even to myself. I have never liked any Portrait of Tennyson since he grew a Beard; Allen, I suppose, has kept out of that.