. . . I hope you don’t think I have forgotten you. Your visit gave me a sad sort of Pleasure, dashed with the Memory of other Days; I now
see so few People, and those all of the common sort, with whom I never talk of our old Subjects; so I get in some measure unfitted for such converse, and am almost saddened with the remembrance of an old contrast when it comes. And there is something besides; a Shadow of Death: but I won’t talk of such things: only believe I don’t forget you, nor wish to be forgotten by you. Indeed, your kindness touched me.
I have been reading Juvenal with Translation, etc., in my Boat. Nearly the best things seem to me what one may call Epistles, rather than Satires: viii. To Ponticus: xi. To Persicus: and xii. xiii. and xiv to several others: and, in these, leaving out the directly satirical Parts. Satires iii and x, like Horace’s Poems, are prostituted by Parliamentary and vulgar use, and should lie by for a while. One sees Lucretius, I think, in many parts; but Juvenal can’t rise to Lucretius, who is, after all, the true sublime Satirist of poor Man, and of something deeper than his Corruptions and Vices: and he looks on all, too, with ‘a Countenance more in Sorrow than in Anger.’ By the way, I want you to tell me the name and Title of that Essay on Lucretius [58] which you said was enlarged and reprinted by the Author from the original Cambridge and Oxford Essays. I want much to get it.
There is a fine Passage in Juvenal’s 6th Satire on Women: beginning line 634, ‘Fingimus hæc, etc.’ to 650: but (as I think) leaving out lines 639, 640; because one can understand without them, and they jingle sadly with their one vowel ending. I mention this because it occurs in a Satire which, from its Subject, you may perhaps have little cared for.
Another Book I have had is Wesley’s Journal, which I used to read, but gave away my Copy—to you? or Robert Groome [59a] was it? If you don’t know it, do know it; it is curious to think of this Diary of his running almost coevally with Walpole’s Letter-Diary; the two men born and dying too within a few years of one another, and with such different Lives to record. And it is remarkable to read pure, unaffected, and undying, English, while Addison and Johnson are tainted with a Style, which all the world imitated! Remember me to all. Ever yours E. F. G.
‘Sed genus humanum damnat caligo Futuri’—a Lucretian line from Juvenal. [59b]
Market hill: Woodbridge.
Nov. 11/64.
My dear Cowell,
Let me hear of you whenever you have something to tell of yourself: or indeed whenever you
have a few spare minutes, and happen, to think—of me. I don’t forget you: and ‘out of sight’ is not ‘out of mind’ with you, and three or four more in the World. I hope you see Donne at times: and you must look out for old Spedding, that melancholy Ruin of the 19th Century, with his half-white-washed Bacon. Perhaps you will see another Ruin—the Author of Enoch Arden. Compare that with the Spontaneous Go of Palace of Art, Mort d’Arthur, Gardener’s Daughter, Locksley Hall, Will Waterproof, Sleeping Palace, Talking Oak, and indeed, one may say, all the two volumes of 1842. As to Maud, I think it the best Poem, as a whole, after 1842.