“Aldis Wright has been spending his Easter here; and goes on to Beccles, where he is to examine and report on the Books and MSS. of the late George Borrow at Oulton.”
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The handwriting is shaky in this letter, and it is the last of the series. It should have closed this article, but that I want still to quote one more letter to my father, and a poem:—
“Woodbridge, March 16, 1878.
[‘Letters,’ pp. 410, 418.]
“My dear Groome,—I have not had any Academies that seemed to call for sending severally: here are some, however (as also Athenæums), which shall go in a parcel to you, if you care to see them. Also, Munro’s Catullus, which has much interested me, bad Scholar as I am: though not touching on some of his best Poems. However, I never cared so much for him as has been the fashion to do for the last half century, I think. I had a letter from Donne two days ago: it did not speak of himself as other than well; but I thought it indicated feebleness.
“Eh! voilà que j’ai déjà dit tout ce que vient au bout de ma plume. Je ne bouge pas d’ici; cependant, l’année va son train. Toujours à vous et à les vôtres, E. F. G.
“By the by, I enclose a Paper of some stepping-stones
in ‘Dear Charles Lamb’—drawn up for my own use in reading his Letters, and printed, you see, for my Friends—one of my best Works; though not exact about Book Dates, which indeed one does not care for.
“The Paper is meant to paste in as Flyleaf before any Volume of the Letters, as now printed. But it is not a ‘Venerable’ Book, I doubt. Daddy Wordsworth said, indeed, ‘Charles Lamb is a good man if ever good man was’—as I had wished to quote at the End of my Paper, but could not find the printed passage.”
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