test Poet? etc., like Boys
at some Debating Society.

You can imagine the little dull Country town on whose Border I live; our
one merit is an Estuary that brings up Tidings of the Sea twice in the
twenty-four hours, and on which I sail in my Boat whenever I can.

I must add a P.S. to say that having written my half-yearly Letter to
Carlyle, just to ask how he was, etc., I hear from his Niece that he has
been to his own Dumfries, has driven a great deal about the Country: but
has returned to Chelsea very weak, she says, though not in any way ill.
He has even ceased to care about Books; but, since his Return, has begun
to interest himself in them a little again. In short, his own Chelsea is
the best Place for him.

Another reason for this other half Sheet is--that--Yes! I wish very much
for your Translation of the Vita Nuova, which I did read in a slovenly
(slovenly with Dante!) way twenty or thirty years ago, but which I did
not at all understand. I should know much more about it now with you and
Mr. Lowell.

I could without 'roaring' persuade you about Don Quixote, I think; if I
were to roar over the Atlantic as to 'Which is the best of the Two Parts'
in the style of Macaulay & Co. 'Oh for a Pot of Ale, etc.,' rather than
such Alarums. Better dull Woodbridge! What bothered me in London
was--all the Clever People going wrong with such clever Reasons for so
doing which I couldn't confute. I will send an original Omar if I find
one.

_To E. B. Cowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _October_ 5/76.

MY DEAR COWELL,

. . . I bought Clemencin's Quixote after all: but have looked little into
him as yet, as I had finished my last Reading of the Don before he came . . .
I fear his Notes are more than one wants about errors, or
inaccuracies of Style, etc. Cervantes had some of the noble carelessness
of Shakespeare, Scott, etc., as about Sancho's stolen Dicky. {202} But
why should Clemencin, and his Predecessors, decide that Cervantes changed
the title of his second Part from 'Hidalgo' to 'Caballero' from
negligence? Why should he not have intended the change for reasons of
his own? Anyhow, they should have printed the Title as he printed it,
and pointed out what they thought the oversight in a Note. This makes
one think they may have altered other things also: which perhaps I shall
see when I begin another Reading: which (if I live) won't be very far
off. I think I almost inspired Alfred Tennyson (who suddenly came here a