VIII_. Charles Kemble
acted Cromwell.

{87b} _Atlantic Monthly_, August 1875, p. 165.

{88a} 'The Exile,' quoted from memory.

{88b} See letter of August 24, 1875.

{89} _Atlantic Monthly_, August 1875, p. 156.

{90a} Thomas Griffiths Wainewright. De Quincey's account of him is in
his essay on Charles Lamb ('Works,' ed. 1862, viii. 146). His career was
the subject of a story by Dickens, called 'Hunted Down.'

{90b} Minnie Thackeray (Mrs. Leslie Stephen) died Nov. 28.

{91} About the same time he wrote to me:--

'A dozen years ago I entreated Annie Thackeray, Smith & Elder, &c., to
bring out a Volume of Thackeray's better Drawings. Of course they
wouldn't--now Windus and Chatto have, you know, brought out a Volume
of his inferior: and now Annie T. S. & E. prepare a Volume--when it is
not so certain to pay, at any rate, as when W. M. T. was the Hero of
the Day. However, I send them all I have: pretty confident they will
select the worst; of course, for my own part, I would rather have any
other than copies of what I have: but I should like the World to
acknowledge he could do something beside the ugly and ridiculous.
Annie T. sent me the enclosed Specimen: very careless, but full of
Character. I can see W. M. T. drawing it as he was telling one about
his Scotch Trip. That disputatious Scotchman in the second Row with
Spectacles, and--teeth. You may know some who will be amused at
this:--but send it back, please: no occasion to write beside.'

{92} When I was preparing the first edition of FitzGerald's Letters I
wrote to Mrs. Kemble for permission to quote the passage from her Gossip
which is here referred to. She replied (11 Dec. 1883):--

'I have no objection whatever to your quoting what I said of Edward
Fitzgerald in the _Atlantic Monthly_, but I suppose you know that it
was omitted from Bentley's publication of my book at Edward's _own
desire_. He did not certainly knock me on the head with Dr. Johnson's
sledge-hammer, but he did make me feel painfully that I had been
guilty of the impertinence of praising.'

I did not then avail myself of the permission so readily granted, but I
venture to do so now, in the belief that the publicity from which his
sensitive nature shrank during his lifetime may now without impropriety
be given to what was written in all sincerity by one of his oldest and
most intimate friends. It was Mrs. Kembl