Where you could most assist me would be in a droll account of life at Aranjuez or la Granja, which I never saw. I am strong in Religion (you did not know that), Arts, and all except the Literature; but I have an excellent Spanish library, and could in six weeks write such an essay on the matter as would appear to be the result of a greater acquaintance with their authors than I have. I have, indeed, turned over a good many pages in Spain, but it has been odd out-of-the-way reading.
If you feel up to this task, it will be a very, very great obligation, and will keep my book correct, and, I hope, cut out all that is offensive. I hope not to insert anything on politics, which I neither like nor understand. I must wait and see Captain Cook’s book. It will be heavy and correct; no taste, much industry (the plates ought to be wood blocks): it will be very ligneous, no pyroligneous acid—as stiff and bolt-upright as a mainmast. I do not see any possibility of getting the book done before next spring; it will take a year to write. I care not for Captain Heaphy, who will sail over the surface in an ice-boat. Captain Cook will go down pondere suo.
It is a serious matter; but I have leisure, and nothing to do. This place is delicious: such a climate! such clotted cream! and an excellent public Library with all good books of reference.
Exeter, March 26, 1834.
You should look at Captain Cook’s book (Sketches in Spain: Boone, Bond Street), dry, painstaking and accurate, better than I had expected by far. He understands the people better than the pictures. There he breaks down lamentably. But he is without taste, and does not know a Murillo from a mainmast. You will see a splendid sentence on old Ferdinand’s patronage of the Arts in giving the pictures to the Museum. I have always heard that it was the deed of the Portuguesa and the Ms. de Santa Cruz, who was Major duomo. The D. of [?] told me that he and Santa Cruz spent days in rummaging them out. Ferdinand had sent them to the Devil to make room for some new French paper.
Exeter, April 20, 1834.
I enclose you a batch of MSS. which will remind you of the despatches of Mark.
The greatest act of real friendship you can show me is by not scrupling to use your pencil as freely as a surgeon would his knife, when he really thought the patient’s recovery required it. I write in haste always, and am more troubled to restrain and keep in matter, than for want of it.
I want the book to run easy, to read easy, to be light and pleasant, not dry and pedantic. I get on but slowly, and do not see land. I feel the matter grow upon my hands in proportion as I get on. It is like travelling in the Asturias; when you get up one mountain, you see five or six higher before you. However, the coast is clear, and that able circumnavigator, Cook, will be drier than the Mummy of Cheops before my sheets will be dampt for printing.
Do not forget to throw into an omnium-gatherum any odd remarks about Madrid. If you get a copybook, when any stray dyspeptic observation occurs, book it, and I will work it up, as a gipsy does the stolen children of a gentleman, so that the parent shall not recognise it.