. . . As to myself, and my diet, about which you give such excellent
advice: I am still determined to give the diet I have proposed a good
trial: a year's trial. I agree with you about vegetables, and soups: but
my diet is chiefly _bread_: which is only a little less nourishing than
flesh: and, being compact, and baked, and dry, has none of the washy,
diluent effects of green vegetables. I scarcely ever touch the latter:
but only pears, apples, etc. I have found no benefit yet; except, as I
think, in more lightness of spirits: which is a great good. But I shall
see in time.
I am living in London in the quarter of the town which I have noticed
above: in a very happy bachelor-like way. Would you would come up here
for a few days. I can give you bed, board, etc. Do have some business
in town, please. Spedding is here: taking lessons of drawing, before he
goes for good into Cumberland: whither, for my sake and that of all his
friends, I wish he never would go: for there are few such men, as far
[as] I know. He and I have been theatricalizing lately. We saw an awful
Hamlet the other night--a Mr. Serle--and a very good Wolsey, in Macready:
and a very bad Queen Catherine, in Mrs. Sloman, whom you must remember. I
am going to-night to see Macready in Macbeth: I have seen him before in
it: and I go for the sake of his two last acts, which are amazingly fine,
I think. . . . I am close to the British Museum, in which I take great
pleasure in reading in my rambling way. I hear of Kemble lately that he
has been making some discoveries in Anglo-Saxon MSS. at Cambridge that,
they say, are important to the interests of the church: and there is talk
of publishing them, I believe. He is a strange fellow for that fiery
industry of his: and, I am sure, deserves some steady recompense.
Tennyson has been in town for some time: he has been making fresh poems,
which are finer, they say, than any he has done. But I believe he is
chiefly meditating on the purging and subliming of what he has already
done: and repents that he has published at all yet. It is fine to see
how in each succeeding poem the smaller ornaments and fancies drop away,
and leave the grand ideas single. . . .
I have lately bought a little pamphlet which is very difficult to be got,
called The Songs of Innocence, written and adorned with drawings by W.
Blake (if you know his name) who was quite mad, but of a madness that was
really the elements of great genius ill-sorted: in fact, a genius with a
screw loose, as we used to say. I shall shew you this book when I see
you: to me there is particular interest in this man's writing and
drawing, from the strangeness of the constitution of his mind. He was a
man that used to see visions: and make drawings and paintings of
Alexander the Great, Caesar, etc., who, he declared, stood before him
while he drew. . .
Your very affectionate friend,