s fancy. He is in full vigour play and pay
in London, writing in a dozen reviews, and a score of newspapers: and
while health lasts he sails before the wind. I have not heard of Alfred
since March. . . . Spedding devotes his days to Lord Bacon in the
British Museum: his nights to the usual profligacy. . . . My dear
Frederic, you must select some of your poems and publish them: we want
some bits of strong genuine imagination to help put to flight these--etc.
Publish a book of fragments, if nothing else but single lines, or else
the whole poems. When will you come to England and do it? I dare say I
should have stayed longer in London had you been there: but the wits were
too much for me. Not Spedding, mind: who is a dear fellow. But one
finds few in London _serious_ men: I mean _serious_ even in fun: with a
true purpose and character whatsoever it may be. London melts away all
individuality into a common lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the
humour and worth and noble feeling in the country, however much railroads
have mixed us up with metropolitan civilization. I can still find the
heart of England beating healthily down here, though no one will believe
it.

You know my way of life so well that I need not describe it to you, as it
has undergone no change since I saw you. I read of mornings; the same
old books over and over again, having no command of new ones: walk with
my great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows,
up to which China roses climb, with my pipe, while the blackbirds and
thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale to
have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a spring (bating the
last ten days) as would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such
verdure! white clouds moving over the new fledged tops of oak trees, and
acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to
see! I believe that Leslie's Life of Constable (a very charming book)
has given me a fresh love of Spring. Constable loved it above all
seasons: he hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont who was of the old
classical taste asked him if he did not find it difficult to place _his
brown tree_ in his pictures, 'Not at all,' said C., 'I never put one in
at all.' And when Sir George was crying up the tone of the old masters'
landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper tone of colour for a
picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and laid