I think that the fatal two months have elapsed, by which a letter shall
become due to me from you. Ask Mrs. Allen if this is not so. Mind, I
don't speak this upbraidingly, because I know that you didn't know where
I was. I will tell you all about this by degrees. In the first place, I
staid at Mirehouse till the beginning of May, and then, going homeward,
spent a week at Ambleside, which, perhaps you don't know, is on the
shores of Winandermere. It was very pleasant there: though it was to be
wished that the weather had been a little better. I have scarce done
anything since I saw you but abuse the weather: but these four last days
have made amends for all: and are, I hope, the beginning of summer at
last. Alfred Tennyson staid with me at Ambleside: Spedding was forced to
go home, till the last two days of my stay there. I will say no more of
Tennyson than that the more I have seen of him, the more cause I have to
think him great. His little humours and grumpinesses were so droll, that
I was always laughing: and was often put in mind (strange to say) of my
little unknown friend, Undine--I must however say, further, that I felt
what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of depression at times from the
overshadowing of a so much more lofty intellect than my own: this (though
it may seem vain to say so) I never experienced before, though I have
often been with much greater intellects: but I could not be mistaken in
the universality of his mind; and perhaps I have received some benefit in
the now more distinct consciousness of my dwarfishness. I think that you
should keep all this to yourself, my dear Allen: I mean, that it is only
to you that I would write so freely about myself. You know most of my
secrets, and I am not afraid of entrusting even my vanities to so true a
man. . . .
Pray, do not forget to say how the Freestone party are. My heart jumped
to them, when I read in a guide book at Ambleside, that from Scawfell (a
mountain in Westmoreland) you could see Snowdon. Perhaps you will not
see the chain of ideas: but I suppose there was one, else I don't know
how it was that I tumbled, as it were, from the very summit of Scawfell,
upon the threshold of Freestone. The mind soon traverses Wales. I have
not been reading very much--(as if you ever expected that I did!)--but I
mean, not very much for me--some Dante, by the aid of a Dictionary: and
some Milton--and some Wordsworth--and some Selections from Jeremy Taylor,
Barrow, etc., compiled by Basil Montagu--of course you know the book: it
is published by Pickering. I do not think that it is very well done: but
it has served to delight, and, I think, to instruct me much. Do you know
South? He must be very great, I think. It seems to me that our old
Divines will hereafter be considered our Classics--(in Prose, I mean)--I
am not aware that any other nations have such books. A single selection
from Jeremy Taylor is fine: but it requires a skilful hand to put many
detached bits from him together: for a common editor only picks out the
flowery, metaphorical, morsels: and so rather cloys: and gives quite a
wrong estimate of the Author, to those who had no previous acquaintance
with him: for, rich as Taylor's illustrations, and grotesque as his
images, are, no one keeps a grander proportion: he never huddles
illustration upon the matter so as to overlay it, nor crowds images too
thick together: which these Selections might make one unacquainted with
him to suppose. This is always the fault of Selections: but Taylor is
particularly liable to injury on this score. What a man he is! He has
such a knowledge of the nature of man, and such powers of expressing its
properties, that I sometimes feel as if he had had some exact counterpart
of my own individual character under his eye, when he lays open the
depths of the heart, or traces some sin to its root. The eye of his
portrait expresses this keen intuition: and I think I should less like to
have stood with a lie on my tongue before him, than before any other I
know of. . . .
I beg you to give my best remembrances to your lady, who may be always
sure that in all I wish of well for you, she is included: so that I take
less care to make mention of her separately. . . .
WHERSTEAD, _July_ 4, 1835.