Office--to which he must return the day after To-morrow, poor Fellow!

I suppose you will see--if you have not yet seen--Tennyson's Q. Mary. I
don't know what to say about it; but the Times says it is the finest Play
since Shakespeare; and the Spectator that it is superior to Henry VIII.
Pray do you say something of it, when you write:--for I think you must
have read it before that time comes.

Then Spedding has written a delicious Paper in Fraser about the late
Representation of The Merchant of Venice, and his E. Terry's perfect
personation of his perfect Portia. I cannot agree with him in all he
says--for one thing, I must think that Portia made 'a hole in her
manners' when she left Antonio trembling for his Life while she all the
while [knew] how to defeat the Jew by that knowledge of the Venetian Law
which (oddly enough) the Doge knew nothing about. Then Spedding thinks
that Shylock has been so pushed forward ever since Macklin's time as to
preponderate over all the rest in a way that Shakespeare never intended.
{77} But, if Shakespeare did not intend this, he certainly erred in
devoting so much of his most careful and most powerful writing to a
Character which he meant to be subsidiary, and not principal. But
Spedding is more likely to be right than I: right or wrong he pleads his
cause as no one else can. His Paper is in this July number of Fraser: I
would send it you if you had more time for reading than your last Letter
speaks of; I _will_ send if you wish.

I have not heard of Donne lately: he had been staying at Lincoln with
Blakesley, the Dean: and is now, I suppose, at Chislehurst, where he took
a house for a month.

And I am yours ever and sincerely
E. F.G.

XXXI.

WOODBRIDGE, _Aug._ 24, [1875.]

Now, my dear Mrs. Kemble, you will have to call me 'a Good Creature,' as
I have found out a Copy of your capital Paper, {78} and herewith post it
to you. Had I not found this Copy (which Smith & Elder politely found
for me) I should have sent you one of my own, cut out from a Volume of
Essays by other friends, Spedding, etc., on condition that you should
send me a Copy of such Reprint as you may make of it in America. It is
extremely interesting; and I always think that your Theory of the
Intuitive _versus_ the Analytical and Philosophical applies to the other
Arts as well as that of the Drama. Mozart couldn't tell how he made a
Tune; even a whole Symphony, he said, unrolled itself out of