y whom I know not:
but so good as to be cheap at 4 pounds: 10_s._, which the man wants for
it. My Twilight _is_ an upright picture: about a foot wide, and rather
more than a foot high.
Mr. Browne has declined taking my Opie, unless in conjunction with some
others which I won't part with: so the Forest Girl must set up her stall
at a Broker's. I doubt she will never bring me the money I gave for her.
She is the only bad speculation of the season. Were she but sold, I
should be rejoicing in the Holborn Battle Piece. After this year however
I think I shall bid complete adieu to picture-_hunting_: only taking what
comes in my way. There is a great difference between these two things:
both in the expense of time, thought, and money. Who can sit down to
Plato while his brains are roaming to Holborn, Christie's, Phillips's,
etc.?
My Father talks of going down to Suffolk early next week. Whether I
shall accompany him is not certain. Do you remember what a merry Good
Friday you and I passed last year? I suppose I shall find the banks
covered with primroses, the very name carries a dew upon it.
'As one who long in populous city pent, etc.' {111}
Good-bye. I am going to pay my compliments at Portland Place, and then
to walk in a contrary direction to Holborn.
_To F. Tennyson_.
[31 _March_, 1842.]
DEAR FREDERIC,
. . . Concerning the bagwigs of composers. Handel's was not a bagwig,
which was simply so named from the little stuffed black silk watch-pocket
that hung down behind the back of the wearer. Such were Haydn's and
Mozart's--much less influential on the character: much less ostentatious
in themselves: not towering so high, nor rolling down in following curls
so low as to overlay the nature of the brain within. But Handel wore the
Sir Godfrey Kneller wig: greatest of wigs: one of which some great
General of the day used to take off his head after the fatigue of the
battle, and hand over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it.
Such a wig was a fugue in itself. I don't understand your theory about
trumpets, which have always been so little spiritual _in use_, that they
have been the provocatives and celebrators of physical force from the
beginning of the world. '_Power_,' whether spiritual or physical, is the
meaning of the trumpet: and so, well used, as you say, by Handel in his
approaches to the Deity. The fugue in the overture to the Messiah
expresses perhaps the thorny wandering
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