Max Müller’s Darwin Paper reminded me of an Observation in Bacon’s Sylva; [160] that Apes and Monkeys, with Organs of Speech so much like Man’s have never been taught to speak an Articulate word: whereas Parrots and Starlings, with organs so unlike Man’s, are easily taught to do so. Do you know if Darwin, or any of his Followers, or Antagonists, advert to this?
I have been a wonderful Journey—for me—even to Naseby in Northamptonshire; to authenticate the spot where I dug up some bones of those slain there, for Gurlyle thirty years ago. We are to put up a Stone there to record the fact, if we can get leave of the present Owners of the Field; a permission, one would think, easy enough to obtain; but I have been more than a Year trying to obtain it, notwithstanding; and do not know that I am nearer the point after all. The Owner is a Minor: and three Trustees must sanction the thing for him; and these three Trustees are all great People, all living in different
parts of England; and, I suppose, forgetful of such a little matter, though their Estate-agent, and Lawyer, represented it to them long ago.
I stayed at Cambridge some three hours on my way, so as to look at some of the Old, and New, Buildings, which I had not seen these dozen years and more. The Hall of Trinity looked to me very fine; and Sir Joshua’s Duke of Gloucester the most beautiful thing in it. I looked into the Chapel, where they were at work: the Roof seemed to me being overdone: and Roubiliac’s Newton is now nowhere, between the Statues of Bacon and Barrow which are executed on a larger scale. [161] And what does Spedding say to Macaulay in that Company? I never saw Cambridge so empty, but not the less pleasant.
[1873.]
My dear Pollock,
Two or three years ago I had three or four of my Master-pieces done up together for admiring Friends. It has occurred to me to send you one of these instead of the single Dialogue which I was looking in the Box for. I think you have seen, or had, all the
things but the last, [162] which is the most impudent of all. It was, however, not meant for Scholars: mainly for Mrs. Kemble: but as I can’t read myself, nor expect others of my age to read a long MS. I had it printed by a cheap friend (to the bane of other Friends), and here it is. You will see by the notice that Æschylus is left ‘nowhere,’ and why; a modest proviso. Still I think the Story is well compacted: the Dialogue good, (with one single little originality; of riding into Rhyme as Passion grows) and the Choruses (mostly ‘rot’ quoad Poetry) still serving to carry on the subject of the Story in the way of Inter-act. Try one or two Women with a dose of it one day; not Lady Pollock, who knows better. . . . When I look over the little Prose Dialogue, I see lots that might be weeded. I wonder at one word which is already crossed—‘Emergency.’ ‘An Emergency!’ I think Blake could have made a Picture of it as he did of the Flea. Something of the same disgusting Shape too. . . . Blake seems to me to have fine things: but as by random, like those of a Child, or a Madman, of Genius. Is there one good whole Piece, of ever so few lines? . . .
What do you think of a French saying quoted by Heine, that when ‘Le bon Dieu’ gets rather bored in Heaven, he opens the windows, and takes a look at the Boulevards? Heine’s account of the Cholera in France is wonderful.