I read, or was told, they wouldn’t let old Alfred’s Bust into your Trinity. They are right, I think, to let no one in there (as it should be in Westminster Abbey) till a Hundred Years are past; when, after too much Admiration (perhaps) and then a Reaction of undue Dis-esteem, Men have settled into some steady Opinion on the subject: supposing always that the Hero survives so long, which of itself goes so far to decide the Question. No doubt A. T. will do that.
To W. F. Pollock.
10 Marine Terrace,
Lowestoft.
Febr. 23/60.
My dear Pollock,
‘Me voilà ici’ still! having weathered it out so long. No bad Place, I assure you, though you who are accustomed to Pall Mall, Clubs, etc., wouldn’t like it. Mudie finds one out easily: and the London Library too: and altogether I can’t complain of not getting such drowsy Books as I want. Hakluyt lasted a long while: then came Captain Cook, whom
I hadn’t read since I was a Boy, and whom I was very glad to see again. But he soon evaporates in his large Type Quartos. I can hardly manage Emerson Tennent’s Ceylon: a very dry Catalogue Raisonnée of the Place. A little Essay of De Quincey’s gave me a better Idea of it (as I suppose) in some twenty or thirty pages. Anyhow, I prefer Lowestoft, considering the Snakes, Sand-leaches, Mosquitos, etc. I suppose Russell’s Indian Diary is over-coloured: but I feel sure it’s true in the Main: and he has the Art to make one feel in the thick of it; quite enough in the Thick, however. Sir C. Napier came here to try and get the Beachmen to enlist in the Naval Reserve. Not one would go: they won’t give up their Independence: and so really half starve here during Winter. Then Spring comes and they go and catch the Herrings which, if left alone, would multiply by Millions by Autumn: and so kill their Golden Goose. They are a strange set of Fellows. I think a Law ought to be made against their Spring Fishing: more important, for their own sakes, than Game Laws.
I laid out half a crown on your Fraser [13]: and liked much of it very much: especially the Beginning about the Advantage the Novelist has over the Play-writer. A little too much always about Miss Austen, whom yet I think quite capital in a Circle I have found quite unendurable to walk in. Thackeray’s first Number was famous, I thought: his own little Roundabout
Paper so pleasant: but the Second Number, I say, lets the Cockney in already: about Hogarth: Lewes is vulgar: and I don’t think one can care much for Thackeray’s Novel. He is always talking so of himself, too. I have been very glad to find I could take to a Novel again, in Trollope’s Barchester Towers, etc.: not perfect, like Miss Austen: but then so much wider Scope: and perfect enough to make me feel I know the People though caricatured or carelessly drawn. I doubt if you can read my writing here: or whether it will be worth your Pains to do so. If you can, or can not, one Day write me a Line, which I will read. I suppose when the Fields and Hedges begin to grow green I shall move a little further inland to be among them.
To Mrs. Charles Allen.
Farlingay: Woodbridge,
June 2/60.