take them up and read them both
again. Pray look at lines 407-415 of Book VIII--the poor Matron kindling
her early fire--so Georgic! so Virgilian! so unsuited, or
disproportionate, to the Thing it illustrates.

Here is a long Letter--of the old Sort, I suppose. All these Books come
back to me with Summer and the Sea: in another Month all will be gone
together!--I look with Terror toward Winter, though I have not to
encounter one, at any rate, of the three Giants which old Mrs. Bloomfield
said were coming upon her--Winter, Want, and Sickness. {88}

Pray remember me, in spite of all practical Forgetfulness, to Wife and
Friends.

Ever yours, E. F. G.

_To F. Tennyson_.

WOODBRIDGE: _Jan._ 29/67.

MY DEAR FREDERIC,

Let me hear from you one Day. I would send you my MS. Book of Morton's
Letters: but I scarce know if the Post would carry it to you; though not
so very big: and I am still less sure that you would ever return it to
me. And what odds if you didn't? It might as well die in your
Possession as in mine.

In answer to my yearly Letter to Alfred and Co. I heard (from Mrs.) that
they were about to leave Freshwater, frightened away by Hero-worshippers,
etc., and were going to a Solitude called Greyshott Hall, Haslemere;
which, I am told, is in Hants. Whether they go to settle there I don't
know. Lucretius' Death is thought to be too free-spoken for Publication,
I believe; not so much in a religious, as an amatory, point of View. I
should believe Lucretius more likely to have expedited his Departure
because of Weariness of Life and Despair of the System, than because of
any Love-philtre. I wrote also my yearly Letter to Carlyle, begging my
compliments to his Wife: who, he replies, died, in a very tragical way,
last April. I have since heard that the Papers reported all the
Circumstances. So, if one lives so much out of the World as I do, it
seems better to give up that Ghost altogether. Old Spedding has written
a Pamphlet about 'Authors and Publishers'; showing up, or striving to
show up, the Publishers' system. He adduces his own Edition of Bacon as
a sample of their mismanagement, in respect of too bulky Volumes, etc.
But, as he says, Macaulay and Alison are still bulkier; yet they sell.
The truth is that a solemnly-inaugurated new Edition of all Bacon was not
wanted. The Philosophy is surely superseded; not a Wilderness of
Speddings can give men a new interest in the Politics and Letters. The