self Owen
Meredith. Poetry in England is assuming a new character, and not a
better character. It has a sort of pre-Raphaelite tendency which
does not suit my aged feelings. I am for Love, or the World well
lost. But I forget that, if I live beyond the 21st of next November,
I shall be _seventy-four_ years of age. I have been obliged to
resign my Commissionership of Lunacy, not being able to bear the
pain of travelling. By this I lose about L900 a year. I am,
therefore, sufficiently poor, even for a poet. Browning, as you
know, has lost his wife. He is coming with his little boy to live in
England. I rejoice at this, for I think that the English should live
in England, especially in their youth, when people learn things that
they never forget afterward."

Near the close of 1864 he writes:--

"Since I last heard from you, nothing except what is melancholy
seems to have taken place. You seem all busy killing each other in
America. Some friends of yours and several friends of mine have
died. Among the last I cannot help placing Nathaniel Hawthorne, for
whom I had a sincere regard.... He was about your best prose writer,
I think, and intermingled with his humor was a great deal of
tenderness. To die so soon!

"You are so easily affronted in America, if we (English) say
anything about putting an end to your war, that I will not venture
to hint at the subject. Nevertheless, I wish that you were all at
peace again, for your own sakes and for the sake of human nature. I
detest fighting now, although I was a great admirer of fighting in
my youth. My youth? I wonder where it has gone. It has left me with
gray hairs and rheumatism, and plenty of (too many other)
infirmities. I stagger and stumble along, with almost seventy-six
years on my head, upon failing limbs, which no longer enable me to
walk half a mile. I see a great deal, all behind me (the Past), but
the prospect before me is not cheerful. Sometimes I wish that I had
tried harder for what is called Fame, but generally (as now) I care
very little about it. After all,--unless one could be Shakespeare,
which (clearly) is not an easy matter,--of what value is a little
puff of smoke from a review? If we could settle permanently who is
to be the Homer or Shakespeare of our time, it might be worth
something; but we cannot. Is it Jones