ur says, is a very proper Wife), but
I was abroad--though no further off than my own little Estate; and he
knows I do not visit elsewhere. But I do not the less thank him, and am
always yours

E. F.G.

Pollock writes me he had just visited Carlyle--quite well for his Age:
and vehement against Darwin, and the Turk.

XLI.

WOODBRIDGE, _July_ 31/76.

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

A better pen than usual tempts me to write the little I have to tell you;
so that [at] any rate your Eyes shall not be afflicted as sometimes I
doubt they are by my MS.

Which MS. puts me at once in mind of Print: and to tell you that I shall
send you Quaritch's Reprint of Agamemnon: which is just done after many
blunders. The revises were not sent me, as I desired: so several things
are left as I meant not: but 'enfin' here it is at last so fine that I am
ashamed of it. For, whatever the merit of it may be, it can't come near
all this fine Paper, Margin, etc., which Quaritch _will_ have as counting
on only a few buyers, who will buy--in America almost wholly, I think.
And, as this is wholly due to you, I send you the Reprint, however little
different to what you had before.

'Tragedy wonders at being so fine,' which leads me to that which ought
more properly to have led to _it_: your last two Papers of 'Gossip,'
which are capital, both for the Story told, and the remarks that arise
from it. To-morrow, or next day, I shall have a new Number; and I really
do count rather childishly on their arrival. Spedding also is going over
some of his old Bacon ground in the Contemporary, {111} and his writing
is always delightful to me though I cannot agree with him at last. I am
told he is in full Vigour: as indeed I might guess from his writing. I
heard from Donne some three weeks ago: proposing a Summer Holyday at
Whitby, in Yorkshire: Valentia, I think, not very well again: Blanche
then with her Brother Charles. They all speak very highly of Mrs.
Santley's kindness and care. Mowbray talks of coming down this way
toward the end of August: but had not, when he last wrote, fixed on his
Holyday place.

Beside my two yearly elder Nieces, I have now a younger who has spent the
last five Winters in Florence with your once rather intimate (I think)
Jane FitzGerald my Sister. She married, (you may know) a Clergyman
considerably older than herself. I wrote to Annie Thackeray lately, and
had an answer (from the Lakes) to say she was pretty well--a