ther pleased when I sit down on a Bench under an Ivied
Pollard, where I suppose he has a Nest, poor little Fellow. But we have
terrible Superstitions about him here; no less than that he always kills
his Parents if he can: my young Reader is quite determined on this head:
and there lately has been a Paper in some Magazine to the same effect.

My dear old Spedding sent me back to old Wordsworth too, who sings (his
best songs, I think) about the Mountains and Lakes they were both
associated with: and with a quiet feeling he sings, that somehow comes
home to me more now than ever it did before.

As to Carlyle--I thought on my first reading that he must have been
'_egare_' at the time of writing: a condition which I well remember
saying to Spedding long ago that one of his temperament might likely fall
into. And now I see that Mrs. Oliphant hints at something of the sort.
Hers I think an admirable Paper: {218} better than has yet been written,
or (I believe) is likely to be written by any one else. Merivale, who
wrote me that he had seen you, had also seen Mrs. Procter, who was vowing
vengeance, and threatening to publish letters from Carlyle to Basil
Montagu full of 'fulsome flattery'--which I do not believe, and should
not, I am sorry to say, unless I saw it in the original. I forget now
what T. C. says of him: (I have lent the Book out)--but certainly Barry
Cornwall told Thackeray he was 'a humbug'--which I think was no uncommon
opinion: I do not mean dishonest: but of pretension to Learning and
Wisdom far beyond the reality. I must think Carlyle's judgments mostly,
or mainly, true; but that he must have 'lost his head,' if not when he
recorded them, yet when he left them in any one's hands to decide on
their publication. Especially when not about Public Men, but about their
Families. It is slaying the Innocent with the Guilty. But of all this
you have doubtless heard in London more than enough. 'Pauvre et triste
humanite!' One's heart opens again to him at the last: sitting alone in
the middle of her Room--'I want to die'--'I want--a Mother.' 'Ah, Mamma
Letizia!' Napoleon is said to have murmured as he lay. By way of pendant
to this, recurs to me the Story that when Ducis was wretched his mother
would lay his head on her Bosom--'Ah, mon homme, mon pauvre homme!'

Well--I am expecting Aldis Wright here at Easter: and a young London
Clerk (this latter I did invite for his short holiday, poor Fellow!).
Wright