. I wished to draw a few readers to a Book
which nobody reads, by an Abstract of the most readable Parts connected
with as little of my Prose as would tell the story of much prosaic Verse,
but that very amount of prosy Verse may help to soak the story into the
mind (as Richardson, etc.) in a way that my more readable Abstract does
not. So it may only serve to remind any one of a Book--which he never
read! The Original must be more obsolete in America than here in
England; however, I should like to know what you make of it: and you see
that you may tell me very plainly, for it is not as an Author, but only
as Author's Showman that I appear.

It is rather shameful to take another Sheet because of almost filling the
first with myself. And I have but little to tell in it. Carlyle I have
not heard of for these six months: nor Tennyson: I must write to hear how
they have weathered this mortal Winter. Tennyson's elder, not eldest,
Brother Charles is dead: and I was writing only yesterday to persuade
Spedding to insist on Macmillan publishing a complete edition of Charles'
Sonnets: graceful, tender, beautiful, and quite original, little things.
Two thirds of them would be enough: but no one can select in such a case,
you know. I have been reading again your Hawthorne's Journal in England
when he was Consul here; this I have: I cannot get his 'Our old Home,'
nor his Foreign Notes: can you send me any small, handy, Edition of these
two last? I delight in them because of their fearless Truthfulness as
well as for their Genius. I have just taken down his Novels, or
Romances, to read again, and try to relish more than I have yet done; but
I feel sure the fault must be with me, as I feel about Goethe, who is yet
as sealed a Book to me as ever. . . . I have (alas!) got through all Sir
Walter's Scotch Novels this winter, even venturing further on Kenilworth:
which is wonderful for Plot: and one scene, Elizabeth reconciling her
Rival Earls at Greenwich, seeming to me as good as Shakespeare's Henry
VIII., which is mainly Fletcher's, I am told. I have heard nothing of
Mr. Lowell since I heard of you, and do think that I will pitch him a
Crabbe into the midst of Madrid, if he be still there. (N.B. Some of
Crabbe is not in the Text but from MS. first (and best) readings printed
in the Son's edition.)

The Nightingale is now telling me that he is not dead.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 20/79.

MY DEAR SIR,

By t