. But 'Hewel' may be a form of 'Yaffil,' which I read in some
Paper that Tennyson had used for the Woodpecker in his Last Tournament.
{133}

This reminded me that Tennyson once said to me, some thirty years ago, or
more, in talking of Marvell's 'Coy Mistress,' where it breaks in--

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near, etc.

'_That_ strikes me as Sublime, I can hardly tell why. Of course, this
partly depends on its place in the Poem.

Apropos of the Woodpecker, a Clergyman near here was telling our
Bookseller Loder, that, in one of his Parishioners' Cottages, he observed
a dried Woodpecker hung up to the Ceiling indoors; and was told that it
always pointed with its Bill to the Quarter whence the Wind blew.

_To Miss Anna Biddell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Feb._ 22, [1872].

. . . I have lost the Boy who read to me so long and so profitably: and
now have another; a much better Scholar, but not half so agreeable or
amusing a Reader as his Predecessor. We go through Tichborne without
missing a Syllable, and, when Tichborne is not long enough, we take to
Lothair! which has entertained me well. So far as I know of the matter,
his pictures of the manners of English High Life are good: Lothair
himself I do not care for, nor for the more romantic parts, Theodora,
etc. Altogether the Book is like a pleasant Magic Lantern: when it is
over, I shall forget it: and shall want to return to what I do not
forget, some of Thackeray's monumental Figures of 'pauvre et triste
Humanite,' as old Napoleon called it: Humanity in its Depths, not in its
superficial Appearances.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

THE OLD PLACE, _Feb._ 25/72.

. . . Aldis Wright must be right about 'sear' {135a}--French _serre_ he
says. What a pity that Spedding has not employed some of the forty years
he has lost in washing his Blackamoor in helping an Edition of
Shakespeare, though not in the way of these minute archaeologic
Questions! I never heard him read a page but he threw some new Light
upon it. When you see him pray tell him I do not write to him, because I
judge from experience that it is a labour to him to answer, unless it
were to do me any service I asked of him except to tell me of himself.

My heart leaped when the Boy read me the Attorney General's Quotation
from A. T. {135b}

_From T. Carlyle_.

CHELSEA, 15, _June_, 1872.

DEAR FITZGERALD,

I am glad that you are astir on the Naseby-Monument question; and tha