LLOCK,

The Spectator, as also the Athenaeum, somewhat over-praise Gareth, I
think: but I am glad they do so. . . . The Poem seems to me scarce more
worthy of what A. T. was born to do than the other Idylls; but you will
almost think it is out of contradiction that I like it better: except, of
course, the original Morte. The Story of this young Knight, who can
submit and conquer and do all the Devoir of Chivalry, interests me much
more than the Enids, Lily Maids, etc. of former Volumes. But Time
_is_--Time _was_--to have done with the whole Concern: pure and noble as
all is, and in parts more beautiful than any one else can do. . . .

Rain--Rain--Rain! What will become of poor Italy? I think we ought to
subscribe for her. Did you read of one French Caricature of the Pope
leaving Rome with the Holy Ghost in a Bird Cage?

WOODBRIDGE, _Nov._ 20.

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

I am glad the Rogers Verses {144} gratified you. I forget where I saw
them quoted, some ten years ago; but as I had long wished for them
myself, and thought others might wish for them also, I got them reprinted
here in the form I sent you. . . . I have no compunction at all in
reviving this Satire upon the old Banker, whom it is only paying off in
his own Coin. Spedding (of course) used to deny that R. deserved his ill
Reputation: but I never heard any one else deny it. All his little
malignities, unless the epigram on Ward be his, are dead along with his
little sentimentalities; while Byron's Scourge hangs over his Memory. The
only one who, so far as I have seen, has given any idea of his little
cavilling style, is Mrs. Trench in her Letters; her excellent Letters, so
far as I can see and judge, next best to Walpole and Cowper in our
Language. . . .

I have bought Regnard, of the old Moliere times, very good; and (what is
always odd to me) as French as the French of To-day: I mean, in point of
Language.

[_Nov._ 1872.]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

In a late Box of books which I had from Mudie were Macmillan and Fraser,
for 1869-1870. And in one of these--I am nearly sure, Macmillan--is an
Article called 'Objects of Art' {145} which treats very well, I think, on
the subject you and I talked of at Whitsun. . . .

My new Reader . . . has been reading to me Fields' 'Yesterdays with
Authors,' Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray. The latter seems to me a
Caricature: the Dickens has one wonderful bit about Macready in 1869,
which ought not to have been printe