know better, Lord bless you: and am sure I could (with a pair of Scissors) launch old Richardson again: we shouldn’t go off the stocks easy (pardon nautical metaphors), but stick by the way, amid the jeers of Reviewers who had never read the original: but we should float at last. Only I don’t want to spend a lot of money to be hooted at, without having time to wait for the floating.
I have spent lots of money on my Herring-lugger, which has made but a poor Season. So now we are going (like wise men) to lay out a lot more for Mackerel; and my Captain (a dear Fellow) is got ill, which is much worst of all: so hey for 1868! Which is wishing you better luck next time, Sir, etc.
Spedding at last found and sent me his delightful little Paper about Twelfth Night. I was glad to be set right about Viola: but I think he makes too much of the whole play, ‘finest of Comedies,’ etc. It seems to me quite a light, slight, sketch—for Twelfth Night—What you will, etc. What else does the Name mean? Have I uttered these Impieties! No more! Nameless as shameless.
To E. B. Cowell.
Woodbridge: May 28/68.
My dear Cowell,
I was just about to post you your own Calcutta Review when your Letter came, asking about some Euphranors. Oh yes! I have a Lot of them:
returned from Parker’s when they were going to dissolve their House; I would not be at the Bother of any further negociation with any other Bookseller, about half a dozen little Books which so few wanted: so had them all sent here. I will therefore send you six copies. I had supposed that you didn’t like the second Edition so well as the first: and had a suspicion myself that, though I improved it in some respects, I had done more harm than good: and so I have never had courage to look into it since I sent it to you at Oxford. Perhaps Tennyson [104] only praised the first Edition and I don’t know where to lay my hands on that. I wonder he should have thought twice about it. Not but I think the Truth is told: only, a Truth every one knows! And told in a shape of Dialogue really something Platonic: but I doubt rather affectedly too. However, such as it is, I send it you. I remember being anxious about it twenty years ago, because I thought it was the Truth (as if my telling it could mend the matter!): and I cannot but think that the Generation that has grown up in these twenty years has not profited by the Fifty Thousand Copies of this great work!
I am sorry to trouble you about Macmillan; I should not have done so had I kept my Copy with your corrections as well as my own. As Lamb said of himself, so I say; that I never had any Luck with
printing: I certainly don’t mean that I have had much cause to complain: but, for instance, I know that Livy and Napier, put into good Verse, are just worth a corner in one of the swarm of Shilling Monthlies. [105]