A thousand thanks for your kind letter and all the kind things it
contains. I am glad that you like my friend the Gipsey, because your
approval is worth much and though I think it tolerable myself, yet I
have attributed a great part of its success to the name. In answer to
the question you put, I do not think he was drowned; but I do not know
with certainty. I have told all I do know and farther this deponent
sayeth not. I have long been thinking of writing to you to tell you
that the name of Chaucer appears in the Scroop and Grosvenor roll in
the year 1386 but all that I dare say you know. The best sketch of the
real events of Chaucer’s life is certainly that in Sir H. Nicholas’
comments on that roll, Vol. II., page 404, wherein he probably states
all that can be learned with certainty of his life and proceedings. I
tell you all this, although I dare say you are already acquainted with
it because you asked me if I found any thing concerning our poet to
let you know. The _Black Prince_ comes on but slowly. So much
examination and research is necessary that it is a most laborious and
very expensive work. It has already cost me in journeys,
transcriptions, books, MSS., &c., many hundred pounds without at all
calculating my individual labour and do you know, my dear Allan, what
I expect as my reward. Clear loss; and two or three reviews written by
ignorant blockheads upon a subject they do not understand, for the
purpose of damning a work which throws some new light upon English
History. I am very much out of spirits in regard to historical
literature and though I would willingly devote my time and even my
money to elucidate the dark points of our own history yet
encouragement from the public is small and from the Government does
not exist, so that I lay down the pen in despair of ever seeing
English history any thing but what it is—a farrago of falsehoods and
hypotheses covered over with the tinsel of specious reasoning from
wrong data. And so you tell Lord Melbourne when you see him. But to
speak of a personage, you are more likely to see namely Mr. Chantry.
There is a bust which I wish him very much to see and wish you would
take a look at it first as I have not seen the original myself. I have
a cast of it given me by my Banker at Florence, to whom the original
belongs, and if the head be equal to the cast it is the most beautiful
antique I have ever seen. It is to be seen at Mr. Brown’s in
University Street, Gower Street _marble works_. Ask to see the antique
head belonging to Mr. Johnstone and write me but three lines to tell
me what you think of it. He paid, I believe, two hundred pounds for it
and would take I believe three or four. If it be as I think, it
(pedestal and all) is worth double.