y is so wet that I shall try and pay you my
plenilunal due, not much to your satisfaction; for the Wet really gets
into one's Brain and Spirits, and I have as little to write of as ever
any Full Moon ever brought me. And yet, if I accomplish my letter, and
'take it to the Barber's' where I sadly want to go, and after being
wrought on by him, post my letter, why, you will, by your Laws, be
obliged to answer it. Perhaps you may have a little to tell me of
yourself in requital for the very little you have to hear of me.

I have made a new Acquaintance here. Professor Fawcett (Postmaster
General, I am told) married a daughter of one Newson Garrett of this
Place, who is also Father of your Doctor Anderson. Well, the Professor
(who was utterly blinded by the Discharge of his Father's Gun some twenty
or five and twenty years ago) came to this Lodging to call on Aldis
Wright; and, when Wright was gone, called on me, and also came and smoked
a Pipe one night here. A thoroughly unaffected, unpretending, man: so
modest indeed that I was ashamed afterwards to think how I had harangued
him all the Evening, instead of getting him to instruct me. But I would
not ask him about his Parliamentary Shop: and I should not have
understood his Political Economy: and I believe he was very glad to be
talked to instead, about some of those he knew, and some whom I had
known. And, as we were both in Crabbe's Borough, we talked of him: the
Professor, who had never read a word, I believe, about him, or of him,
was pleased to hear a little; and I advised him to buy the Life written
by Crabbe's Son; and I would give him my abstract of the Tales of the
Hall, by way of giving him a taste of the Poet's self.

Yes; you must read Froude's Carlyle above all things, and tell me if you
do not feel as I do about it. . . . I regret that I did not know what
the Book tells us while Carlyle was alive; that I might have loved him as
well as admired him. But Carlyle never spoke of himself in that way. I
never heard him advert to his Works and his Fame, except one day he
happened to mention 'About the time when Men began to talk of me.'

WOODBRIDGE. _Oct._ 17, [1882].

MY DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

I suppose that you are returned from the Loire by this time; but as I am
not sure that you have returned to the 'Hotel des Deux Mondes' whence you
dated your last, I make bold once more to trouble Coutts with adding your
Address to my Letter. I think I shall have