more splendid Moors would soon have effaced the memory of our poor
Dunwich. If you have a Map of England, look for it on the Eastern Coast.
If Mr. Lowell should return this way, and return in the proper Season for
such cold Climate as ours, he shall see it: and so shall you, if you
will, under like conditions; including a reasonable and available degree
of Health in myself to do the honours. . . .

I live down in such a Corner of this little Country that I see scarce any
one but my Woodbridge Fellow-townsmen, and learn but little from such
Friends as could tell me of the World beyond. But the English do not
generally love Letter writing: and very few of us like it the more as we
get older. So I have but little to say that deserves an Answer from you:
but please to write me a little: a word about Mr. Lowell, whom you have
doubtless heard from. [One politeness I had prepared for him here was,
to show him some sentences in his Books which I did not like!] Which
also leads me to say that some one sent me a number of your American
'Nation' with a Review of my redoubtable Agamemnon: written by a superior
hand, and, I think, quite discriminating in its distribution of Blame and
Praise: though I will not say the Praise was not more than deserved; but
it was where deserved, I think.

_To J. R. Lowell_. {224}

WOODBRIDGE. _August_ 26/77.

MY DEAR SIR,

I ought scarce to trouble you amid your diplomatic cares and dignities.
But I will, so far as to say I hope you had my second letter before you
left London: saying that my house was emptied of Nieces, and I was ready
to receive you for as long as you would. Indeed, I chiefly flinched at
the thought of your taking the trouble to come down only for a Day: which
means, less than half a Day: a sort of meeting that seems a mockery in
the lives of two men, one of whom I know by Register to be close on
Seventy. I do indeed deprecate any one coming down out of his way: but,
if he come, I would rather he did so for such time as would allow of some
palpable Acquaintance. And I meant to take you to no other sight than
the bare grey walls of an old Grey Friars' Priory near the Sea; and I
proposed to make myself further agreeable by showing you three or two
passages in your Books that I do not like amid all the rest which I like
so much: and had even meant to give you a very small thirty year old
Dialogue of my own, which one of your 'Study Windows' reminded me of. All
this I mea