As usual I blunder. I have been taking for granted all this while that
of course we could not write to you till you had written to us! Else how
several times I could have written! could have sent you some Lines of
Hafiz or Jami or Nizami that I thought wanted Comment of some kind: so as
the Atlantic should have been no greater Bar between us than the two
hours rail to Oxford. And now I have forgot many things, or have left
the Books scattered in divers places; or, if I had all here, 'twould be
too much to send. So I must e'en take up with what the present Hour
turns up.
It was only yesterday I heard from your Brother of a Letter from you,
telling of your safe Arrival; of the Dark Faces about you at your
Calcutta Caravanserai! Methinks how I should like to be there! Perhaps
should not, though, were the Journey only half its length! Write to me
one day. . . .
I have now been five weeks alone at my old Lodgings in London where you
came this time last year! My wife in Norfolk. She came up yesterday;
and we have taken Lodgings for two months in the Regent's Park. And I
positively stay behind here in the old Place on purpose to write to you
in the same condition you knew me in and I you! I believe there are new
Channels fretted in my Cheeks with many unmanly Tears since then,
'remembering the Days that are no more,' in which you two are so mixt up.
Well, well; I have no news to tell you. Public Matters you know I don't
meddle with; and I have seen scarce any Friends even while in London
here. Carlyle but once; Thackeray not once; Spedding and Donne pretty
often. Spedding's first volume of Bacon is out; some seven hundred
pages; and the Reviews already begin to think it over-commentaried. How
interested would you be in it! and from you I should get a good Judgment,
which perhaps I can't make for myself. I hear Tennyson goes on with King
Arthur; but I have not seen or heard from him for a long long while.
Oddly enough, as I finished the last sentence, Thackeray was announced;
he came in looking gray, grand, and good-humoured; and I held up this
Letter and told him whom it was written to and he sends his Love! He
goes Lecturing all over England; has fifty pounds for each Lecture: and
says he is ashamed of the Fortune he is making. But he deserves it.
And now for my poor Studies. I have read really very little except
Persian since you went: and yet, from want of Eyes, not very much of
that. I have gone carefully over two-thirds of Hafiz again with
Dictionary and Von Hammer: and gone on with Jami and Nizami. But my
great Performance all lies in the last five weeks since I have been alone
here; when I wrote to Napoleon Newton to ask him to lend me his MS. of
Attar's Mantic uttair; and, with the help of Garcin de Tassy {311} have
nearly made out about two-thirds of it. For it has greatly interested
me, though I confess it is always an old Story. The Germans make a Fuss
about the Sufi Doctrine; but, as far as I understand, it is not very
abstruse Pantheism, and always the same. One becomes as wearied of the
_man-i_ and _du-i_ in their Philosophy as of the _bulbul_, etc., in their
Songs. Attar's Doctrine seems to me only Jami and Jelaleddin (of whom I
have poked out a little from the MS. you bought for me), but his Mantic
has, like Salaman, the advantage of having a Story to hang all upon; and
some of his illustrative Stories are very agreeable: better than any of
the others I have seen. He has not so much Fancy or Imagination as Jami,
nor I dare say, so much depth as Jelaleddin; but his touch is lighter. I
mean to make a Poetic Abstract of the Mantic, I think: neither De Tassy
nor Von Hammer {312} gives these Stories which are by far the best part,
though there are so many childish and silly ones. Shah Mahmud figures in
the best. I am very pleased at having got on so well with this MS.
though I doubt at more cost of Eyesight than it is worth. I have
exchanged several Letters with Mr. Newton, though by various mischances
we have not yet met; he has however introduced me to Mr. Dowson of the
Asiatic, with whom, or with a certain Seyd Abdullah recommended by Allen,
I mean (I think) to read a little. No need of this had you remained
behind! Oh! how I should like to read the Mantic with you! It is very
easy in the main. But I believe I shall never see you again; I really do
believe that. And my Paper is gradually overcome as I write this: and I
must say Good Bye. Good Bye, my dear dear Friends! I dare not meddle
with Mr. and Mrs. Charlesworth. {313} Thackeray coming in overset me,
with one thing and another. Farewell. Write to me; direct--whither? For
till I see better how we get on I dare fix on no place to live or die in.
Direct to me at Crabbe's, Bredfield, till you hear further.
24 PORTLAND TERRACE, REGENT'S PARK.
Saturday _January_ 23 [? 24] 1857.