my letter, and
'take it to the Barber's,' where I sadly want to go, and, after being
wrought on by him, post my letter--why, you will, by your Laws, be
obliged to answer it. Perhaps you may have a little to tell me of
yourself in requital for the very little you have to hear of me.

I have made a new Acquaintance here. Professor Fawcett (Postmaster
General, I am told) married a Daughter of one Newson Garrett of this
Place, who is also Father of your Doctor Anderson. Well, the Professor
(who was utterly blinded by the Discharge of his Father's Gun some twenty
or twenty-five years ago) came to this Lodging to call on Aldis Wright;
and, when Wright was gone, called on me, and also came and smoked a Pipe
one night here. A thoroughly unaffected, unpretending, man; so modest
indeed that I was ashamed afterwards to think how I had harangued him all
the Evening, instead of getting him to instruct me. But I would not ask
him about his Parliamentary Shop: and I should not have understood his
Political Economy: and I believe he was very glad to be talked to
instead, about some of those he knew, and some whom I had known. And, as
we were both in Crabbe's Borough, we talked of him: the Professor, who
had never read a word, I believe, about him, or of him, was pleased to
hear a little; and I advised him to buy the Life written by Crabbe's Son;
and I would give him my Abstract of the Tales of the Hall, by way of
giving him a taste of the Poet's self.

Yes; you must read Froude's Carlyle above all things, and tell me if you
do not feel as I do about it. Professor Norton persists {248} in it that
I am proof against Froude's invidious insinuations simply because of my
having previously known Carlyle. But how is it that I did not know that
Carlyle was so good, grand, and even loveable, till I read the Letters,
which Froude now edits? I regret that I did not know what the Book tells
us while Carlyle was alive; that I might have loved him as well as
admired him. But Carlyle never spoke of himself in that way: I never
heard him advert to his Works and his Fame, except one day he happened to
mention 'About the time when Men began to talk of me.'

I do not know if I told you in my last that (as you foretold me would be
the case) I did not find your later Records so interesting as the
earlier. Not from any falling off of the recorder, but of the material.

The two dates of this Letter arise from my having written this second
half-