ittle fountain as old as the Augustan age bubbling up as
fresh, Tennyson says, 'as when its silver sounds mixed with the deep
voice of the orator as he sate there in the stillness of the noon day,
devoting the siesta-hours to study.' When I first read of these things I
wish to see them; but, on reflection, I am sure I see them much better in
such letters as these.

I have seen one good picture about here: a portrait of O. Cromwell by
Lely--so said--unlike other Lelys, but very carefully painted: and, I
should think, an original portrait. . . I also read Hayley's Life of
Romney the other day. Romney wanted but education and reading to make
him a very fine painter: but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How
touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and, because
Sir Joshua and others had said that marriage spoilt an artist, almost
immediately left his wife in the North, and scarce saw her till the end
of his life: when, old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to
her, and she received him, and nursed him till he died. This quiet act
of hers is worth all Romney's pictures; even as a matter of Art, I am
sure.

Whether this letter will ever reach you, I don't know. I am going in two
days to Naseby for a little while, and shall then find my way home to
Suffolk for the greater part of the Winter and Spring, I suppose.

O beate Sesti,
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.

I think of hiring a house in some country town like this, but nearer
Suffolk, and there have my books, etc. I want a house much: and a very
small one will content me, with a few old women close by to play cards
with at night. What a life, you will say!

His virtues walked then humble round,
Nor knew a pause, nor felt a void:
And sure the Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.

That was not in playing picquet, I doubt. What fine lines of Johnson's
{125} these!

* * * * *

On the 15th of September 1842 FitzGerald first made Carlyle's personal
acquaintance. He always spoke of his having first gone to Chelsea in
company with Thackeray, and in the Notes which he left of his excavations
at Naseby he repeats what he frequently told myself and others. But his
memory was clearly at fault, for in a letter to Pollock, written on the
16th, but dated by mistake the 17th, of September, he says, 'I have come
up to London for two days on a false errand: and am therefor