If you knew how glad I am to hear from you, you would write to me
oftener. You see I make a quick return whenever I get an epistle from
you. I should indeed have begun to indite before, but I had not a scrap
of serviceable paper in the house: and I am only this minute returned
from a wet walk to Woodbridge bringing home the sheet on which I am now
writing, along with the rest of a half-quire, which may be filled to you,
if we both live. I now count the number of sheets: there are nine. I do
not think we average more than three letters a year each. Shall both of
us, or either, live three years more, beginning with the year that opens
to-morrow? I somehow believe _not_: which I say not as a doleful thing
(indeed you may look at it as a very ludicrous one). Well, we shall see.
I am all for the short and merry life. Last night I began the sixth Book
of Lucretius in bed. You laugh grimly again? I have not looked into it
for more than a year, and I took it up by mistake for one of Swift's
dirty volumes; and, having got into bed with it, did not care to get out
to change it.
The delightful lady . . . is going to leave this neighbourhood and carry
her young Husband {261} to Oxford, there to get him some Oriental
Professorship one day. He is a delightful fellow, and, _I_ say, will, if
he live, be the best Scholar in England. Not that I think Oxford will be
so helpful to his studies as his counting house at Ipswich was. However,
being married he cannot at all events become Fellow, and, as so many do,
dissolve all the promise of Scholarship in Sloth, Gluttony, and sham
Dignity. I shall miss them both more than I can say, and must take to
Lucretius! to comfort me. I have entirely given up the _Genteel_ Society
here about; and scarce ever go anywhere but to the neighbouring Parson,
{262a} with whom I discuss Paley's Theology, and the Gorham Question. I
am going to him to-night, by the help of a Lantern, in order to light out
the Old Year with a Cigar. For he is a great Smoker, and a very fine
fellow in all ways.
I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from any
one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two days
with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, {262b} in
their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River
side. Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say, in
all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume. For has
he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some personal Beauty
to boot? He explained to us one day about the laws of reflection in
water: and I said then one never could look at the willow whose branches
furnished the text without thinking of him. How beastly this reads! As
if he gave us a lecture! But you know the man, how quietly it all came
out; only because I petulantly denied his plain assertion. For I really
often cross him only to draw him out; and vain as I may be, he is one of
those that I am well content to make shine at my own expense.
Don't suppose that this or any other ideal day with him effaces my days
with you. Indeed, my dear Frederic, you also mark many times and many
places in which I have been with you. Gravesend and its [Greek text]
shrimps cannot be forgotten. You say I shall never go to see you at
Florence. I have said to you before and I now repeat it, that if ever I
go abroad it shall be to see you and my Godchild. I really cannot say if
I should not have gone this winter (as I hinted in my last) in case you
had answered my letter. But I really did not know if you had not left
Florence; and a fortnight ago I thought to myself I would write to
Horatio at Cheltenham and ask him for news of you. As to Alfred, I have
heard of his marriage, etc., from Spedding, who also saw and was much
pleased with her indeed. But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor
indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well satisfied to
see one when one falls in his way. You will think I have a spite against
him for some neglect, when I say this, and say besides that I cannot care
for his In Memoriam. Not so, if I know myself: I always thought the same
of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never
did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest
things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a
Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now,
at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical oestrus, is gone. . . It is the
cursed inactivity (very pleasant to me who am no Hero) of this 19th
century which has spoiled Alfred, I mean spoiled him for the great work
he ought now to be entering upon; the lovely and noble things he has done
must remain. It is dangerous work this prophesying about great Men. . . .
I beg you very much to send me your poems, the very first opportunity;
as I want them very much. Nobody doubts that you ought to make a volume
for Moxon. Send your poems to Spedding to advise on. No doubt Alfred
would be best adviser of all: but then people would be stupid, and say
that he had done all that was good in the Book--(wait till I take my tea,
which has been lying on the table these ten minutes)--Now, animated by
some very inferior Souchong from the village shop, I continue my letter,
having reflected during my repast that I have seen two College men you
remember since I last wrote, Thompson and Merivale. The former is just
recovering of the water cure, looking blue: the latter, Merivale, is just
recovering from--Marriage!--which he undertook this Midsummer, with a
light-haired daughter of George Frere's. Merivale lives just on the
borders of Suffolk: and a week before his marriage he invited me to meet
F. Pollock and his wife at the Rectory. There we spent two easy days,
and I heard no more of Merivale till three weeks ago when he asked me to
meet Thompson just before Christmas. . . . Have you seen Merivale's
History of Rome, beginning with the Empire? Two portly volumes are out,
and are approved of by Scholars, I believe. I have not read them, not
having money to buy, nor any friend to lend.
I hear little music but what I make myself, or help to make with my
Parson's son and daughter. We, with not a voice among us, go through
Handel's Coronation Anthems! Laughable it may seem; yet it is not quite
so; the things are so well-defined, simple, and grand, that the faintest
outline of them tells; my admiration of the old Giant grows and grows:
his is the Music for a Great, Active, People. Sometimes too, I go over
to a place elegantly called _Bungay_, where a Printer {265} lives who
drills the young folks of a manufactory there to sing in Chorus once a
week. . . . They sing some of the English Madrigals, some of Purcell,
and some of Handel, in a way to satisfy me, who don't want perfection,
and who believe that the _grandest_ things do not depend on delicate
finish. If you were here now, we would go over and hear the Harmonious
Blacksmith sung in Chorus, with words, of course. It almost made me cry
when I heard the divine Air rolled into vocal harmony from the four
corners of a large Hall. One can scarce comprehend the Beauty of the
English Madrigals till one hears them done (though coarsely) in this way
and on a large scale: the play of the parts as they alternate from the
different quarters of the room.
I have taken another half sheet to finish my letter upon: so as my
calculation of how far this half-quire is to spread over Time is
defeated. Let us write oftener, and longer, and we shall not tempt the
Fates by inchoating too long a hope of letter-paper. I have written
enough for to-night: I am now going to sit down and play one of Handel's
Overtures as well as I can--Semele, perhaps, a very grand one--then,
lighting my lantern, trudge through the mud to Parson Crabbe's. Before I
take my pen again to finish this letter the New Year will have dawned--on
some of us. 'Thou fool! this night thy soul may be required of thee!'
Very well: while it is in this Body I will wish my dear old F. T. a happy
New Year. And now to drum out the Old with Handel. Good Night.
New Year's Day, 1851. A happy new Year to you! I sat up with my Parson
till the Old Year was past, drinking punch and smoking cigars, for which
I endure some headache this morning. Not that we took much; but a very
little punch disagrees with me. Only I would not disappoint my old
friend's convivial expectations. He is one of those happy men who has
the boy's heart throbbing and trembling under the snows of sixty-five.
_To G. Crabbe_.
[GELDESTONE, _Feb_. 11, 1851.]