I am glad you are back, and perhaps sorry. But glad let it be, for I
shall be in London, as proposed, in another fortnight--more or less--and
shall pig there in a garret for two months. We will go to picture sales
and buy bad pictures: though I have scarce money left. But I am really
at last going to settle in some spooney quarters in the country, and
would fain carry down some better forms and colours to put about me. I
cannot get the second or third best: but I can get the imitations of the
best: and that is enough for me.
What is become of Alfred? He never writes--nor is heard of.
Your letter found me poring over Harrington's Oceana: a long-shelved
book--its doctrine of Government I am no judge of: but what English those
fellows wrote! I cannot read the modern mechanique after them. 'This
free-born Nation lives not upon the dole or Bounty of One Man, but
distributing her Annual Magistracies and Honours with her own hand is
herself King People.' Harrington must be a better writer than Milton.
One finds books of this kind in these country houses: and it is pleasant
to look them over at midnight in the kitchen, where I retire to smoke. .
. .
Farewell till I see you one of these days.
_To S. Laurence_.