inal: but we should float at last. Only I don't want to spend a lot
of money to be hooted at, without having time to wait for the floating.

I have spent lots of money on my Herring-lugger, which has made but a
poor Season. So now we are going (like wise men) to lay out a lot more
for Mackerel; and my Captain (a dear Fellow) is got ill, which is much
worst of all: so hey for 1868! Which is wishing you better luck next
time, Sir, etc.

Spedding at last found and sent me his delightful little Paper about
Twelfth Night. I was glad to be set right about Viola: but I think he
makes too much of the whole play, 'finest of Comedies,' etc. It seems to
me quite a light, slight, sketch--for Twelfth Night--What you will, etc.
What else does the Name mean? Have I uttered these Impieties! No more!
Nameless as shameless.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE: _May_ 28/68.

MY DEAR COWELL,

I was just about to post you your own Calcutta Review when your Letter
came, asking about some Euphranors. Oh yes! I have a Lot of them:
returned from Parker's when they were going to dissolve their House; I
would not be at the Bother of any further negociation with any other
Bookseller, about half a dozen little Books which so few wanted: so had
them all sent here. I will therefore send you six copies. I had
supposed that you didn't like the second Edition so well as the first:
and had a suspicion myself that, though I improved it in some respects, I
had done more harm than good: and so I have never had courage to look
into it since I sent it to you at Oxford. Perhaps Tennyson {104} only
praised the first Edition and I don't know where to lay my hands on that.
I wonder he should have thought twice about it. Not but I think the
Truth is told: only, a Truth every one knows! And told in a shape of
Dialogue really something Platonic: but I doubt rather affectedly too.
However, such as it is, I send it you. I remember being anxious about it
twenty years ago, because I thought it was the Truth (as if my telling it
could mend the matter!): and I cannot but think that the Generation that
has grown up in these twenty years has not profited by the Fifty Thousand
Copies of this great work!

I am sorry to trouble you about Macmillan; I should not have done so had
I kept my Copy with your corrections as well as my own. As Lamb said of
himself, so I say; that I never had any Luck with printing: I certainly
don't mean that I have had much cause