I like to think of you and Mrs. Blackwood taking your daughter to Rome. It will be a delightful way of reviving memories, to mingle and compare them with her fresh impressions, and in a spiritual sense to have what Shakespeare says is the joy of having offspring—"to see your blood warm while you feel it cold." I wish that and all other prospects were not marred by the threat of widening war.
Last night I finished reading Principal Tulloch's small but full volume on "Pascal"—a present for which I am much obliged. It is admirably fair and dispassionate, and I should think will be an acceptable piece of instruction to many readers. The brief and graphic way in which he has made present and intelligible the position of the Port Royalists is an example of just what is needed in such a series as the Foreign Classics. But of course they are the most fortunate contributors who have to write about the authors, less commonly treated of, and especially when they are prepared to write by an early liking and long familiarity—as in the present case. I have read every line of appreciation with interest. My first acquaintance with Pascal came from his "Pensées" being given to me, as a school prize, when I was fourteen; and I am continually turning to them now to revive my sense of their deep though broken wisdom. It is a pity that "La Bruyère" cannot be done justice to by any merely English presentation. There is a sentence of his which touches with the finest point the diseased spot in the literary culture of our time—"Le plaisir de la critique nous ôté celui d'être vivement touchés de tres belles choses." We see that our present fashions are old, but there is this difference, that they are followed by a greater multitude.
You may be sure I was very much cheered by your last despatch—the solid unmistakable proof that my books are not yet superfluous.
Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 23d March, 1878.
As to my enjoyment of the "Two Grenadiers," it would have been impossible but for the complete reduction of it to symbolism in my own mind, and my belief that it really touches nobody now, as enthusiasm for the execrable Napoleon I. But I feel that the devotion of the common soldier to his leader (the sign for him of hard duty) is the type of all higher devotedness, and is full of promise to other and better generations.
Letter to Mrs. Bray, 7th June, 1878.
The royalties did themselves much credit.[33] The Crown Prince is really a grand-looking man, whose name you would ask for with expectation, if you imagined him no royalty. He is like a grand antique bust—cordial and simple in manners withal, shaking hands, and insisting that I should let him know when we next came to Berlin, just as if he had been a Professor Gruppe, living au troisième. She is equally good-natured and unpretending, liking best to talk of nursing soldiers, and of what her father's taste was in literature. She opened the talk by saying, "You know my sister Louise"—just as any other slightly embarrassed mortal might have done. We had a picked party to dinner—Dean of Westminster, Bishop of Peterborough, Lord and Lady Ripon, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Kinglake (you remember "Eothen"—the old gentleman is a good friend of mine), Froude, Mrs. Ponsonby (Lord Grey's granddaughter), and two or three more "illustrations;" then a small detachment coming in after dinner. It was really an interesting occasion.
We go to Oxford to-morrow (to the Master of Balliol).
Letter to John Blackwood, 27th June, 1878, from Witley.