While I was reading a volume of Ste. Beuve at Lowestoft a Fortnight ago, I wondered if you got on with him; j’avais envie de vous écrire une petite Lettre à ce sujet: but I let it go by. Now your Letter comes; and I will write: only a little about S. B. however, only that: the Volume I had with me was vol. iii. of my Edition (I don’t know if yours is the same), and I thought you [would] like all of three Causeries in it: Rousseau, Frederick the Great, and Daguesseau: the rest you might not so much care for: nor I neither.
Hare’s Spain was agreeable to hear read: I have forgot all about it. His ‘Memorials’ were insufferably
tiresome to me. You don’t speak of Tichborne, which I never tire of: only wondering that the Lord Chief Justice sets so much Brains to work against so foolish a Bird. [170] The Spectator on Carlyle is very good, I think. As to Politics I scarce meddle with them. I have been glad to revert to Don Quixote, which I read easily enough in the Spanish: it is so delightful that I don’t grudge looking into a Dictionary for the words I forget. It won’t do in English; or has not done as yet: the English colloquial is not the Spanish do. It struck me oddly that—of all things in the world!—Sir Thomas Browne’s Language might suit.
They now sell at the Railway Stalls Milnes’ Life of Keats for half a crown, as well worth the money as any Book. I would send you a Copy if you liked: as I bought three or four to give away.
You may see that I have changed my Address: obliged to leave the Lodging where I had been thirteen years: and to come here to my own house, while another Lodging is getting ready, which I doubt I shall not inhabit, as it will entail Housekeeping on me. But I like to keep my house for my Nieces: it is not my fault they do not make it their home.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
Grange Farm, Woodbridge.
February 26/74.
My dear Laurence,
. . . I am not very solicitous about the Likeness [171] as I might be of some dear Friend; but I was willing to have a Portrait of the Poet whom I am afraid I read more than any other of late and with whose Family (as you know) I am kindly connected. The other Portrait, which you wanted to see, and I hope have not seen, is by Phillips; and just represents what I least wanted, Crabbe’s company look; whereas Pickersgill represents the Thinker. So I fancy, at least.