The Old Place, Feb. 25/72.
. . . Aldis Wright must be right about ‘sear’ [135a]—French serre he says. What a pity that Spedding has not employed some of the forty years he has lost in washing his Blackamoor in helping an Edition of Shakespeare, though not in the way of these minute archæologic Questions! I never heard him read a page but he threw some new Light upon it. When you see him pray tell him I do not write to him, because I judge from experience that it is a labour to him to answer, unless it were to do me any service I asked of him except to tell me of himself.
My heart leaped when the Boy read me the Attorney General’s Quotation from A. T. [135b]
From T. Carlyle.
Chelsea, 15, June, 1872.
Dear FitzGerald,
I am glad that you are astir on the Naseby-Monument question; and that the auspices are so favourable. This welcome ‘Agent,’ so willing and beneficent, will
contrive, I hope, to spare you a good deal of the trouble,—except indeed that of seeing with your own eyes that the Stone is put in its right place, and the number of ‘yards rearward’ is exactly given.
I think the Inscription will do; and as to the shape, etc., of the monument, I have nothing to advise,—except that I think it ought to be of the most perfect simplicity, and should [136] go direct to its object and punctually stop there. A small block of Portland stone—(Portland excels all stones in the world for durability and capacity for taking an exact inscription)—block of Portland stone of size to contain the words and allow itself to be sunk firmly in the ground; to me it could have no other good quality whatever; and I should not care if the stone on three sides of it were squared with the hammer merely, and only polished on its front or fourth side where the letters are to be.
In short I wish you my dear friend to take charge of this pious act in all its details; considering me to be loyally passive to whatever you decide on respecting it. If on those terms you will let me bear half the expense and flatter myself that in this easy way I have gone halves with you in this small altogether genuine piece of patriotism, I shall be extremely obliged to you.