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press: full of doubts, troubles, etc. The reviewers will doubtless be at him: and with justice for many things: but some of the poems will outlive the reviewers. Trench, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Taylor, also appear in new volumes this Spring, and Milnes, I hear, talks of publishing a popular edition of his poems. He means, a cheap one. Nothing has been heard of Spedding: {114a} but we all conclude, from the nature of the case, that he has not been scalped. _To W. F. Pollock_. {114b} BOULGE HALL, _May_ 11/42. DEAR POLLOCK, . . . I have just been reading the great Library of Athanasius. {114c} Certainly only you and I and Thackeray understand it. When men like Spedding quote to me such a passage as 'Athanasius alas is innocent of many smiles, etc.,' they shew me they don't understand it. The beauty--if one may dare to define--lies more in such expressions as 'adjusting the beaks of the macaws, etc.' I have laughed outright (how seldom one does this alone!) at the Bishops' meeting. 'Mr. Talboys--that candle behind Dr. Allnut--really that I should be obliged--.' I suppose this would be the most untranslateable book in the world. I never shall forget how I laughed when I first read it. [GELDESTONE HALL, 22 _May_ 1842.] DEAR POLLOCK, . . . So Alfred is come out. {115a} I agree with you quite about the skipping-rope, etc. But the bald men {115b} of the Embassy would tell you otherwise. I should not wonder if the whole theory of the Embassy, perhaps the discovery of America itself, was involved in that very Poem. Lord Bacon's, honesty may, I am sure, be found there. Alfred, whatever he may think, cannot trifle--many are the disputes we have had about his powers of badinage, compliment, waltzing, etc. His smile is rather a grim one. I am glad the book is come out, though I grieve for the insertion of these little things, on which reviewers and dull readers will fix; so that the right appreciation of the book will be retarded a dozen years. . . . The rain will not come and we are burnt up, and in despair. But the country never looked more delicious than it does. I am as happy here as possible, though I don't like to boast. I am going to see my friend Donne in ten days, he is writing the dullest of histories--one of Rome. What the devil does it signify setting us in these days right as to the Licinian Rogation, and Livy's myths? Every school-boy knew that Livy lied; but the main story was cle
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