B. Donne_.

[31 _Oct_. 1846.]

MY DEAR DONNE,

. . . I only got home to-day: and found one letter on my table from
Ireland. I did not notice it had a black edge and seal: saw it was from
Edgeworthstown: written in the hand of Edgeworth's wife, who often wrote
down from his dictation since his eyes became bad. But she tells me that
he is dead after twelve days illness! I do not yet feel half so sorry as
I shall feel: I shall constantly miss him. {211a}

_To E. B. Cowell_.

[End of 1846.]

DEAR COWELL,

The weather is so ungenial, and likely to be so, that I put off my
journey to Ipswich till next week. I do not dislike the weather for my
part: but one is best at home in such: and as I am to stay two days with
the Hockleys, I would fain have tolerably fair days, and fair ways, for
it: that one may get about and so on. One does not mind being cooped up
in one's own room all day. I think of going on Monday. Shall you be at
home next week?

I have read Longus and like him much. Is it the light easy Greek that
pleases one? Or is it the story, the scenery, etc.? Would the book
please one if written in English as good as the Greek?

The lines from Nonnus are very beautiful. It is always a pleasure to me
to get from you such stray leaves from gardens I shall never enter.

I have been doing some of the dialogue, {211b} which seems the easiest
thing in the world to do but is not. It is not easy to keep to good
dialectic, and yet keep up the disjected sway of natural conversation. I
talk, you see, as if I were to do some good thing: but I don't mean that.
But any such trials of one's own show one the art of such dialogues as
Plato's, where the process is so logical and conversational at once: and
the result so plain, and seemingly so easy. They remain the miracles of
that Art to this day: and will do for many a day: for I don't believe
they will ever be surpassed; certainly not by Landor.

Yours ever,

E. F. G.

[Postmark WOODBRIDGE, _Jan_. 13, 1847.]

DEAR COWELL,

I am always delighted to see you whenever you can come, and Friday will
do perfectly well for me. But do not feel bound to come if it snow, etc.
In other respects I have small compunction, for I think it must do you
good to go out, even to such a desert as this.

I have not got Phidippus into any presentible shape: and indeed have not
meddled with him lately: as the spirit of light dialogue evaporated from
me under an influenza, and