John, {50b} who is going down into Suffolk, will I hope take this letter
and despatch it to you properly. I write more on account of this
opportunity than of anything I have to say: for I am very heavy indeed
with a kind of Influenza, which has blocked up most of my senses, and put
a wet blanket over my brains. This state of head has not been improved
by trying to get through a new book much in fashion--Carlyle's French
Revolution--written in a German style. An Englishman writes of French
Revolutions in a German style. People say the book is very deep: but it
appears to me that the meaning _seems_ deep from lying under mystical
language. There is no repose, nor equable movement in it: all cut up
into short sentences half reflective, half narrative; so that one labours
through it as vessels do through what is called a short sea--small,
contrary going waves caused by shallows, and straits, and meeting tides,
etc. I like to sail before the wind over the surface of an even-rolling
eloquence, like that of Bacon or the Opium Eater. There is also pleasant
fresh water sailing with such writers as Addison; is there any _pond_-
sailing in literature? that is, drowsy, slow, and of small compass?
Perhaps we may say, some Sermons. But this is only conjecture. Certainly
Jeremy Taylor rolls along as majestically as any of them. We have had
Alfred Tennyson here; very droll, and very wayward: and much sitting up
of nights till two and three in the morning with pipes in our mouths: at
which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some of his magic music,
which he does between growling and smoking; and so to bed. All this has
not cured my Influenza as you may imagine: but these hours shall be
remembered long after the Influenza is forgotten.
I have bought scarce any new books or prints: and am not sorry to see
that I want so little more. One large purchase I have made however, the
Biographie Universelle, 53 Octavo Volumes. It contains everything, and
is the very best thing of its kind, and so referred to by all historians,
etc. Surely nothing is more pleasant than, when some name crosses one,
to go and get acquainted with the owner of the name: and this Biographie
really has found places for people whom one would have thought almost too
small for so comprehensive a work--which sounds like a solecism, or Bull,
does it not?
Now I must finish my letter: and a very stupid one it is. Here is a
sentence of Warburton's that, I think, is very wittily expressed: though
why I put it in here is not very discoverable. 'The Church, like the Ark
of Noah, is worth saving: not for the sake of the unclean beasts that
almost filled it, and probably made most noise and clamour in it, but for
the little corner of rationality, that was as much distressed by the
stink within, as by the tempest without.' Is it not good? It is out of
his letters: {52} and the best thing in them. It is also the best thing
in mine.
With kind remembrances to Miss Barton, believe me, Yours very
affectionately