fault that your wishes were not then fulfilled, though perhaps I was wanting in due energy about the matter. Thus, however, it was; that when you wrote in 1855, we had just sold Naseby to the Trustees of Lord Clifden: and, as there was some hitch in the Business (Lord Carlisle being one of the Trustees), I was told I had better not put in my oar. So the matter dropt. Since then Lord Clifden is dead: and I do not know if the Estate belongs to his Family. But, on receiving your last Letter, I wrote to the Lawyers who had managed for Lord Clifden to know about it: but up to this hour I have had no answer. Thus much I have done. If I get the Lawyer’s and Agent’s consent, I should be very glad indeed to have the stone cut, and lettered, as you wished. But whether I should pluck up spirit to go myself and set it up on the proper spot, I am not so sure; and I cannot be sure that any one else could do it for me. Those who were with me when I dug up the bones are dead, or gone; and I suppose the Plough has long ago obliterated the traces of sepulture, in these days of improved Agriculture; and perhaps even the Tradition is lost from the Memory of the Generation that has sprung up since I, and the old Parson, and the Scotch Tenant, turned up the ground. You will think me very base to hesitate about such a little feat as a Journey into Northamptonshire for this purpose. But you know that one does not generally grow more active in Travel as one gets older: and I have been a bad Traveller all my life.
So I will promise nothing that I am not sure of doing. Only, if you continue to desire this strongly, when next Summer comes, I will resolve upon it if I can.
These Naseby Letters of yours—they are all yours I have preserved, because (as in the case of Tennyson and Thackeray) I would not leave anything of private personal history behind me, lest it should fall into some unscrupulous hand. Even these Naseby letters—would you wish them returned to you? Only in case you should desire this, trouble yourself to answer me now.
To W. F. Pollock.
Woodbridge, Dec. 24, [1871]
My dear Pollock,
. . . The Pirate is, I know, not one of Scott’s best: the Women, Minna, Brenda, Norna, are poor theatrical figures. But Magnus and Jack Bunce and Claud Halcro (though the latter rather wearisome) are substantial enough: how wholesomely they swear! and no one ever thinks of blaming Scott for it. There is a passage where the Company at Burgh Westra are summoned by Magnus to go down to the Shore to see the Boats go off to the Deep Sea fishing, and ‘they followed his stately step to the Shore as the Herd of Deer follows the leading Stag, with all manner of respectful Observance.’ This, coming in at the close of the preceding unaffected Narrative is
to me like Homer, whom Scott really resembles in the simplicity and ease of his Story. This is far more poetical in my Eyes than all the Effort of ---, ---, etc. And which of them has written such a Lyric as ‘Farewell to Northmaven’? I finished the Book with Sadness; thinking I might never read it again. . . .
P.S. Can’t you send me your Paper about the Novelists? As to which is the best of all I can’t say: that Richardson (with all his twaddle) is better than Fielding, I am quite certain. There is nothing at all comparable to Lovelace in all Fielding, whose Characters are common and vulgar types; of Squires, Ostlers, Lady’s maids, etc., very easily drawn. I am equally sure that Miss Austen cannot be third, any more than first or second: I think you were rather drawn away by a fashion when you put her there: and really old Spedding seems to me to have been the Stag whom so many followed in that fashion. She is capital as far as she goes: but she never goes out of the Parlour; if but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or even one of Fielding’s Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility and swear a round Oath or two! I must think the ‘Woman in White,’ with her Count Fosco, far beyond all that. Cowell constantly reads Miss Austen at night after his Sanskrit Philology is done: it composes him, like Gruel: or like Paisiello’s Music, which Napoleon liked above all other, because he said it didn’t interrupt his Thoughts.