but there's an end
of them now.

I had a longish letter from Donne himself some while ago; indicating, I
thought, _some_ debility of Mind and Body. He said, however, he was
going on very well. And a Letter from Mowbray (three or four days old)
speaks of his Father as 'remarkably well.' But these Donnes won't
acknowledge Bodily any more than Mental fault in those they love. Blanche
had been ill, of neuralgic Cold: Valentia not well: but both on the
mending hand now.

It has been indeed the Devil of a Winter: and even now--To-day as I
write--no better than it was three months ago. The Daffodils scarce dare
take April, let alone March; and I wait here till a Green Leaf shows
itself about Woodbridge.

I have been looking over four of Shakespeare's Plays, edited by Clark and
Wright: editors of the 'Cambridge Shakespeare.' These 'Select Plays' are
very well done, I think: Text, and Notes; although with somewhat too much
of the latter. Hamlet, Macbeth, Tempest, and Shylock--I heard them
talking in my room--all alive about me.

By the by--How did _you_ read 'To-morrow and To-morrow, etc.' All the
Macbeths I have heard took the opportunity to become melancholy when they
came to this: and, no doubt, some such change from Fury and Desperation
was a relief to the Actor, and perhaps to the Spectator. But I think it
_should_ all go in the same Whirlwind of Passion as the rest:
Folly!--Stage Play!--Farthing Candle; Idiot, etc. Macready used to drop
his Truncheon when he heard of the Queen's Death, and stand with his
Mouth open for some while--which didn't become him.

I have not seen his Memoir: only an extract or two in the Papers. He
always seemed to me an Actor by Art and Study, with some native Passion
to inspire him. But as to Genius--we who have seen Kean!

I don't know if you were acquainted with Sir A. Helps, {68} whose Death
(one of this Year's Doing) is much regretted by many. I scarcely knew
him except at Cambridge forty years ago: and could never relish his
Writings, amiable and sensible as they are. I suppose they will help to
swell that substratum of Intellectual _Peat_ (Carlyle somewhere calls it)
{69} from [which] one or two living Trees stand out in a Century. So
Shakespeare above all that Old Drama which he grew amidst, and which (all
represented by him alone) might henceforth be left unexplored, with the
exception of a few twigs of Leaves gathered here and there--as in Lamb's
Specimens. Is Ca