rlyle himself--with all his Genius--to subside into the
Level? Dickens, with all his Genius, but whose Men and Women act and
talk already after a more obsolete fashion than Shakespeare's? I think
some of Tennyson will survive, and drag the deader part along with it, I
suppose. And (I doubt) Thackeray's terrible Humanity.

And I remain yours ever sincerely,
A very small Peat-contributor,
E. F.G.

I am glad to say that Clark and Wright Bowdlerize Shakespeare, though
much less extensively than Bowdler. But in one case, I think, they have
gone further--altering, instead of omitting: which is quite wrong!

XXVIII.

LOWESTOFT: _April_ 19/75.

DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,

Yesterday I wrote you a letter: enveloped it: then thought there was
something in it you might misunderstand--Yes!--the written word across
the Atlantic looking perhaps so different from what intended; so kept my
Letter in my pocket, and went my ways. This morning your Letter of April
3 is forwarded to me; and I shall re-write the one thing that I yesterday
wrote about--as I had intended to do before your Letter came. Only, let
me say that I am really ashamed that you should have taken the trouble to
write again about my little, little, Book.

Well--what I wrote about yesterday, and am to-day about to re-write,
is--Macready's Memoirs. You asked me in your previous Letter whether I
had read them. No--I had not: and had meant to wait till they came down
to Half-price on the Railway Stall before I bought them. But I wanted to
order something of my civil Woodbridge Bookseller: so took the course of
ordering this Book, which I am now reading at Leisure: for it does not
interest me enough to devour at once. It is however a very unaffected
record of a very conscientious Man, and Artist; conscious (I think) that
he was not a great Genius in his Profession, and conscious of his defect
of Self-control in his Morals. The Book is almost entirely about
_himself_, _his_ Studies, _his_ Troubles, _his_ Consolations, etc.; not
from Egotism, I do think, but as the one thing he had to consider in
writing a Memoir and Diary. Of course one expects, and wishes, that the
Man's self should be the main subject; but one also wants something of
the remarkable people he lived with, and of whom one finds little here
but that 'So-and-so came and went'--scarce anything of what they said or
did, except on mere business; Macready seeming to have no Humour; no
intuition int