I liked your paper on the Mesnavi {232} very much; both your criticism
and your Mosaic legend. That I may not seem to give you careless and
undistinguishing praise, I will tell you that I could not quite hook on
the latter part of Moses to the former; did you leave out any necessary
link of the chain in the hiatus you made? or is the inconsequence only in
my brains? So much for the legend: and I must reprehend you for one tiny
bit of Cockney about Memory's rosary at the end of your article, which,
but for that, I liked so much.
So judges Fitz-Dennis; who, you must know by this time, has the judgment
of Moliere's old woman, and the captiousness of Dennis. Ten years ago I
might have been vext to see you striding along in Sanscrit and Persian so
fast; reading so much; remembering all; writing about it so well. But
now I am glad to see any man do any thing well; and I know that it is my
vocation to stand and wait, and know within myself whether it is done
well.
I have just finished, all but the last three chapters, the fourth Book of
Thucydides, and it is now no task to me to go on. This fourth book is
the most interesting I have read; containing all that blockade of Pylos;
that first great thumping of the Athenians at Oropus, after which they
for ever dreaded the Theban troops. And it came upon me 'come stella in
ciel,' when, in the account of the taking of Amphipolis, {233}
Thucydides, [Greek text], comes with seven ships to the rescue! Fancy
old Hallam sticking to his gun at a Martello tower! This was the way to
write well; and this was the way to make literature respectable. Oh,
Alfred Tennyson, could you but have the luck to be put to such
employment! No man would do it better; a more heroic figure to head the
defenders of his country could not be.
_To S. Laurence_.
BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE,
[30 _Jan_. 1848.]