Letter to Mr. Bray, 9th Aug. 1853.
It would have been a satisfaction to your benevolence to see me sitting on the beach laughing at the Herald's many jokes, and sympathizing with your indignation against Judge Maule. It always helps me to be happy when I know that you are so; but I do not choose to vindicate myself against doubts of that, because it is unworthy of you to entertain them. I am going on as well as possible physically—really getting stout. I should like to have a good laugh with you immensely. How nice it would be to meet you and Cara on the beach this evening, and instead of sending you such a miserable interpreter of one's feelings as a letter, give you the look and the hand of warm affection! This British Channel really looks as blue as the Mediterranean to-day. What weather!
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Aug. 1853.
For the first time in my experience I am positively revelling in the Prospective. James Martineau transcends himself in beauty of imagery in the article on Sir William Hamilton, but I have not finished him yet. Yesterday it rained sans intermission, and of course I said cui bono? and found my troubles almost more than I could bear; but to-day the sun shines, and there is blue above and blue below, consequently I find life very glorious, and myself a particularly fortunate diavolessa. The landlord of my lodgings is a German, comes from Saxe-Weimar, knows well the Duchess of Orleans, and talked to me this morning of Mr. Schiller and Mr. Goethe. À propos of Goethe, there is a most true, discriminating passage about him in the article on Shakespeare in the Prospective. Mr. Goethe is one of my companions here, and I had felt some days before reading the passage the truth which it expresses.
Subjoined is the passage from the Prospective Review of August, 1853:
"Goethe's works are too much in the nature of literary studies; the mind is often deeply impressed by them, but one doubts if the author was. He saw them as he saw the houses of Weimar and the plants in the act of metamorphosis. He had a clear perception of their fixed condition and their successive transitions, but he did not really (at least so it seems to us) comprehend their motive power. In a word, he appreciated their life but not their liveliness.... And we trace this not to a defect in imaginative power—a defect which it would be a simple absurdity to impute to Goethe—but to the tone of his character and the habits of his mind. He moved hither and thither through life, but he was always a man apart. He mixed with unnumbered kinds of men, with courts and academies, students and women, camps and artists, but everywhere he was with them, yet not of them. In every scene he was there, and he made it clear that he was there with a reserve and as a stranger. He went there to experience. As a man of universal culture, and well skilled in the order and classification of human life, the fact of any one class or order being beyond his reach or comprehension seemed an absurdity; and it was an absurdity. He thought that he was equal to moving in any description of society, and he was equal to it; but then, on that account, he was absorbed in none."
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Sept. 1853.
As for me, I am in the best health and spirits. I have had a letter from Mr. Combe to-day, urging me to go to Edinburgh, but I have made an engagement with Mr. Chapman to do work which will oblige me to remain in London. Mrs. P. is a very bonny, pleasant-looking woman, with a smart drawing-room and liberal opinions—in short, such a friend as self-interest, well understood, would induce one to cultivate. I find it difficult to meet with any lodgings at once tolerable and cheap. My theory is to live entirely—that is, pay rent and find food—out of my positive income, and then work for as large a surplus as I can get. The next number of the Review will be better than usual. Froude writes on the "Book of Job"! He at first talked of an article on the three great subjective poems—Job, Faust, and Hamlet—an admirable subject—but it has shrunk to the Book of Job alone.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Oct. 1853.
I have been busied about my lodgings all afternoon. I am not going to Albion Street, but to 21 Cambridge Street, Hyde Park Square. I hope you will be pleased with our present number. If you don't think the "Universal Postulate" first-rate, I shall renounce you as a critic. Why don't you write grumbling letters to me when you are out of humor with life, instead of making me ashamed of myself for ever having grumbled to you? I have been a more good-for-nothing correspondent than usual lately; this affair of getting lodgings, added to my other matters, has taken up my time and thoughts. I have promised to do some work to-night and to-morrow for a person[41] who is rather more idle than myself, so I have not a moment to spare.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Oct. 1853.