Fortnight ago) to begin on the Spanish. Yes: A. T. called one day, after
near twenty years' separation, and we were in a moment as if we had been
together all that while. He had his son Hallam with him: whom I liked
much: unaffected and unpretentious: so attentive to his Father, with a
humorous sense of his Character as well as a loving and respectful. It
was good to see them together. We went one day down the Orwell and back
again by Steamer: but the weather was not very propitious. Altogether, I
think we were all pleased with our meeting.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Novr._ 8/76.

MY DEAR SIR,

'Vita Nuova' reached me safe, and 'siempre verde,' untarnished by its
Voyage. I am afraid I liked your account of it more than itself: I mean,
I was more interested: I suppose it is too mystical for me. So I felt
when I tried to read it in the original twenty years ago: and I fear I
must despair of relishing it as I ought now I have your Version of it,
which, it seems to me, must be so good. I don't think you needed to
bring in Rossetti, still less Theodore Martin, to bear Witness, or to put
your Work in any other Light than its own.

After once more going through my Don Quixote ('siempre verde' too, if
ever Book was), I returned to another of the Evergreens, Boccaccio, which
I found by a Pencil mark at the Volume's end I had last read on board the
little Ship I then had, nine years ago. And I have shut out the accursed
'Eastern Question' by reading the Stories, as the 'lieta Brigata' shut
out the Plague by telling them. Perhaps Mr. Lowell will give us
Boccaccio one day, and Cervantes? And many more, whom Ste. Beuve has
left to be done by him. I fancy Boccaccio must be read in his Italian,
as Cervantes in his Spanish: the Language fitting either 'like a Glove'
as we say. Boccaccio's Humour in his Country People, Friars, Scolds,
etc., is capital: as well, of course, as the easy Grace and Tenderness of
other Parts. One thinks that no one who had well read him and Don
Quixote would ever write with a strain again, as is the curse of nearly
all modern Literature. I know that 'Easy Writing is d---d hard Reading.'
Of course the Man must be a Man of Genius to take his Ease: but, if he
be, let him take it. I suppose that such as Dante, and Milton, and my
Daddy, took it far from easy: well, they dwell apart in the Empyrean; but
for Human Delight, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Boccaccio, and Scott!

Tennyson (a Man