I was at this time, if I remember rightly, preparing some lectures on
Hogarth for a course at Cambridge.
[_Swanston, June 1875._]
MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am a devil certainly; but write I cannot. Look here,
you had better get hold of G. C. Lichtenberg's _Ausfuerliche Erklarung
der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche_: Goettingen, 1794 to 1816 (it was
published in numbers seemingly). Douglas the publisher lent it to me:
and tho' I hate the damned tongue too cordially to do more than dip into
it, I have seen some shrewd things. If you cannot get it for yourself,
(it seems scarce), I dare say I could negotiate with Douglas for a loan.
This adorable spring has made me quite drunken, drunken with green
colour and golden sound. We have the best blackbird here that we have
had for years; we have two; but the other is but an average performer.
Anything so rich and clear as the pipe of our first fiddle, it never
entered into the heart of man to fancy. How the years slip away, Colvin;
and we walk little cycles, and turn in little abortive spirals, and come
out again, hot and weary, to find the same view before us, the same hill
barring the road. Only, bless God for it, we have still the same eye to
see with, and if the scene be not altogether unsightly, we can enjoy it
whether or no. I feel quite happy, but curiously inert and passive,
something for the winds to blow over, and the sun to glimpse on and go
off again, as it might be a tree or a gravestone. All this willing and
wishing and striving leads a man nowhere after all. Here I am back again
in my old humour of a sunny equanimity; to see the world fleet about me;
and the days chase each other like sun patches, and the nights like
cloud-shadows, on a windy day; content to see them go and no wise
reluctant for the cool evening, with its dew and stars and fading strain
of tragic red. And I ask myself why I ever leave this humour? What I
have gained? And the winds blow in the trees with a sustained "Pish"!
and the birds answer me in a long derisive whistle.
So that for health, happiness, and indifferent literature, apply
to--Ever yours,