I think you mean never to write to me again. But you should, for I enjoy
your letters much for years after I have got them. They tell me all I
shall know of Italy, beside many other good things. I received one
letter from you from Florence, and as you gave me no particular
direction, I wrote to you at the Poste Restante there. I am now inditing
this letter on the same venture. As my location is much more permanent,
I command you to respond to me the very day you get this, warmed into
such faint inspiration as my turnip radiance can kindle. You have seen a
turnip lantern perhaps. Well, here I continue to exist: having broken my
rural vegetation by one month in London, where I saw all the old
faces--some only in passing, however--saw as few sights as possible,
leaving London two days before the Exhibition opened. This is not out of
moroseness or love of singularity: but I really supposed there could be
nothing new: and therefore the best way would [be] to come new to it
oneself after three or four years absence. I see in Punch a humorous
catalogue of supposed pictures; Prince Albert's favourite spaniel and
bootjack, the Queen's Macaw with a Muffin, etc., by Landseer, etc., in
which I recognize Thackeray's fancy. He is in full vigour play and pay
in London, writing in a dozen reviews, and a score of newspapers: and
while health lasts he sails before the wind. I have not heard of Alfred
since March. . . . Spedding devotes his days to Lord Bacon in the
British Museum: his nights to the usual profligacy. . . . My dear
Frederic, you must select some of your poems and publish them: we want
some bits of strong genuine imagination to help put to flight these--etc.
Publish a book of fragments, if nothing else but single lines, or else
the whole poems. When will you come to England and do it? I dare say I
should have stayed longer in London had you been there: but the wits were
too much for me. Not Spedding, mind: who is a dear fellow. But one
finds few in London _serious_ men: I mean _serious_ even in fun: with a
true purpose and character whatsoever it may be. London melts away all
individuality into a common lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the
humour and worth and noble feeling in the country, however much railroads
have mixed us up with metropolitan civilization. I can still find the
heart of England beating healthily down here, though no one will believe
it.
You know my way of life so well that I need not describe it to you, as it
has undergone no change since I saw you. I read of mornings; the same
old books over and over again, having no command of new ones: walk with
my great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows,
up to which China roses climb, with my pipe, while the blackbirds and
thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale to
have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a spring (bating the
last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such
verdure! white clouds moving over the new fledged tops of oak trees, and
acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to
see! I believe that Leslie's Life of Constable (a very charming book)
has given me a fresh love of Spring. Constable loved it above all
seasons: he hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont who was of the old
classical taste asked him if he did not find it difficult to place _his
brown tree_ in his pictures, 'Not at all,' said C., 'I never put one in
at all.' And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the old masters'
landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper tone of colour for a
picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid it down on the
sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of all this, I
have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles indeed: but I
agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures that are not
like nature. I can have nature better than any picture by looking out of
my window. Yet I respect the man who tries to paint up to the freshness
of earth and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what he tried at: and
perhaps the old masters chose a soberer scale of things as more within
the compass of lead paint. To paint dew with lead!
I also plunge away at my old Handel of nights, and delight in the Allegro
and Penseroso, full of pomp and fancy. What a pity Handel could not have
written music to some great Masque, such as Ben Jonson or Milton would
have written, if they had known of such a musician to write for.
_To S. Laurence_.
_May_, 1844.