from me. I dare
say, a Letter from your home, or mine, is acceptable in Madrid, which, by
the by, if Travellers' Stories be true, must be terrible this winter: and
I always try to stuff my Letters with all I can about other people more
or less worth hearing of. But for that I have but little to say,
certainly nothing worth your keeping. But if you like me to write, no
matter why. I wish I could find you a short Letter written to me this
time last year by C. Merivale, Dean of Ely, Roman Historian; a man of
infinite dry humour, and quaint fancy. I have put it away in some safe
place where (of course) I can't find it. Perhaps the like may happen to
yourself now and then. I tell him that some one should pick up his Table-
talk and Letter-talk: for he of course would not do it himself. I have
known him from College days, fifty years ago; but have never read his
History: never having read any History but Herodotus, I believe. But I
should like you to see how an English Dean and Roman Historian can write
in spite of Toga and Canonicals.

_December_ 22.

I left off when my Reader came to finish The Bride of Lammermoor; as
wonderful to me as ever. O, the Austens, Eliots, and even Thackerays,
won't eclipse Sir Walter for long.

To come down rather a little from him, my Calderon, which you speak
of--very many beside myself, with as much fair Dramatic Spirit, knowledge
of good English and English Verse, would do quite as well as you think I
do, if they would not hamper themselves with Forms of Verse, and Thought,
irreconcilable with English Language and English Ways of Thinking. I am
persuaded that, to keep Life in the Work (as Drama must) the Translator
(however inferior to his Original) must re-cast that original into his
own Likeness, more or less: the less like his original, so much the
worse: but still, the live Dog better than the dead Lion; in Drama, I
say. As to Epic, is not Cary still the best Dante? Cowper and Pope were
both Men of Genius, out of my Sphere; but whose Homer still holds its
own? The elaborately exact, or the 'teacup-time' Parody? Is not
Fairfax' Tasso good? I never read Harington's Ariosto, English or
Italian. Another shot have I made at Faust in Bayard Taylor's Version:
but I do not even get on with him as with Hayward, hampered as he
(Taylor) is with his allegiance to original metres, etc. His Notes I was
interested in: but I shall die ungoethed, I doubt, so far as Poetry goes:
I alwa