There is a duller Memoir than the ‘Lady of Quality,’ Miss Lucy Aitken’s Letters, etc. You will find the Private Life of an Eastern Queen a good little Book. I have now got Carlyle’s two last volumes of Frederick: of which I have only read the latter Part; I don’t know whether I can read through the Wars and Battles, which are said to be very fine.
The piece of Literature I really could benefit Posterity with, I do believe, is an edition of that wonderful and aggravating Clarissa Harlowe; and this I would effect with a pair of Scissors only. It would not be a bit too long as it is, if it were all equally good; but pedantry comes in, and might, I think, be cleared away, leaving the remainder one of the great, original, Works of the World! in this Line. Lovelace is the wonderful character, for Wit: and there is some grand Tragedy too. And nobody reads it! Ever yours,
E. F. G.
[1865].
My dear Lady,
I answer you thus directly because I would stick in a Bit of a Letter from Thompson of Cambridge: which relates to a question I asked him weeks ago, as I told E. B. C. I would.
You must not think I was in a hurry to have my Play praised: I was really fearful of its being bombastic. You are so enthusiastic in your old and kind Regards and Memories that I can scarce rely on you for a cool Judgment in the matter. But I gather from E. B. C. that he was not struck with what I doubted: and I am very glad, at any rate, that you are very well pleased, both of you.
E. B. C. is quite right about obscurity of Phrase: which is inexcusable unless where the Passion of the Speakers makes such utterance natural. This is very often not the case in the Plays, I know: and the Language, as he says, becomes obscure from elaborate Brevity.
What you tell of the Music in the Air at your Father’s Death—Oh, how Frederic Tennyson would open all his Eyes at this! For he lives in a World of Spirits—Swedenborg’s World, which you would not approve; which I cannot sympathize with: but yet I admire the Titanic old Soul so resolutely blind to the Philosophy of the Day.