[1871].
My dear Pollock,
. . . A night or two ago I was reading old Thackeray’s Roundabouts; and (sign of a good book) heard him talking to me. I wonder at his being so fretted by what was said of him as some of these Papers show that he was: very unlike his old self, surely. Perhaps Ill Health (which Johnson said made every one a Scoundrel) had something to do with this. I don’t mean that W. M. T. went this length: but in this one respect he was not so good as he used to be.
Annie Thackeray in her yearly letter wrote that she had heard from Mrs. A. T. that the Laureate was still suffering. I judge from your Letter that he is better. . . . I never heard any of his coadjutor Sullivan’s Music. Is there a Tune, or originally melodious phrase, in any of it? That is what I always missed in Mendelssohn, except in two or three of his youthful Pieces; Fingal and Midsummer Night’s Dream overtures, and Meeresstille. Chorley [127] mentions as a great instance of M.’s candour, that when some of his Worshippers were sneering at Donizetti’s ‘Figlia,’ M. silenced them by saying ‘Do you [know] I should like to have written it myself.’ If he meant that he ever could have written it if he had pleased, he ought to have had his nose tweaked.
I have been reading Sir Walter’s Pirate again, and am very glad to find how much I like it—that is speaking far below the mark—I may say how I wonder and delight in it. I am rejoiced to find that this is so; and I am quite sure that it is not owing to my old prejudice, but to the intrinsic merit and beauty of the Book itself. With all its faults of detail, often mere carelessness, what a broad Shakespearian Daylight over it all, and all with no Effort, and—a lot else that one may be contented to feel without having to write an Essay about. They won’t beat Sir Walter in a hurry (I mean of course his earlier, Northern, Novels), and he was such a fine Fellow that I really don’t believe any one would wish to cast him in the Shade. [128]
To T. Carlyle.
Woodbridge, Dec. 20, [1871].
Dear Carlyle,
Do not be alarmed at another Letter from me this year. It will need no answer: and is only written to tell you that I have not wholly neglected the wish you expressed in your last about the Naseby stone. I was reading, some months ago, your letters about our Naseby exploits in 1842: as also one which you wrote in 1855 (I think) about that Stone, giving me an Inscription for it. And it was not wholly my