y also
judge that indifferent readers might not. And that you will all of you
have to tell me when the thing is done. I shall not be in the least
disappointed if you tell me to keep it among 'ourselves,' so long as
'ourselves' are pleased; for I know well that Publication would not carry
it much further abroad; and I am very well content to pay my money for
the little work which I have long meditated doing. I shall have done 'my
little owl.' Do you know what that means?--No. Well then; my
Grandfather had several Parrots of different sorts and Talents: one of
them ('Billy,' I think) could only huff up his feathers in what my
Grandfather called an owl fashion; so when Company were praising the more
gifted Parrots, he would say--'You will hurt poor Billy's feelings--Come!
Do your little owl, my dear!'--You are to imagine a handsome,
hair-powdered, Gentleman doing this--and his Daughter--my Mother--telling
of it.

And so it is I do my little owl.

This little folly takes a long bit of my Letter paper--and I do not know
that you will see any fun in it. Like my Book, it would not tell in
Public.

Spedding reads my proofs--for, though I have confidence in my Selection
of the Verse (owl), I have but little in my interpolated Prose, which I
make obscure in trying to make short. Spedding occasionally marks a
blunder; but (confound him!) generally leaves me to correct it.

Come--here is more than enough of my little owl. At night we read Sir
Walter for an Hour (Montrose just now) by way of 'Play'--then 'ten
minutes' refreshment allowed'--and the Curtain rises on Dickens
(Copperfield now) which sends me gaily to bed--after one Pipe of solitary
Meditation--in which the--'little owl,' etc.

By the way, in talking of Plays--after sitting with my poor friend and
his brave little Wife till it was time for him to turn bedward--I looked
in at the famous Lyceum Hamlet; and soon had looked, and heard enough. It
was incomparably the worst I had ever witnessed, from Covent Garden down
to a Country Barn. I should scarce say this to you if I thought you had
seen it; for you told me you thought Irving might have been even a great
Actor, from what you saw of his Louis XI. I think. When he got to
'Something too much of this,' I called out from the Pit door where I
stood, 'A good deal too much,' and not long after returned to my solitary
inn. Here is a very long--and, I believe (as owls go) a rather pleasant
Letter. You know you