r Cowell, Cambridge, England' direct?

I have been rubbing up a little Latin from some Criticisms and
Elucidations of Catullus, by H. Munro, who edited Lucretius so capitally
that even German Scholars, I am told, accept it with a respect which they
accord to very few English. Do you know it in America? If not, do. The
Text and capital English prose Translation in vol. I; and Notes in vol.
II: all admirable, it seems to me, though I do not understand his English
Punctuation. I do not follow all Lucretius' Atoms, etc.: but other parts
are as fine to me as any Poet has done. Catullus I have never taken much
to: though some of him too is as fine as anything else in its way, I
think. So I have read through this Book of Munro's, only 240 pages, not
commenting on the best of the Poems, but on those which most needed
Elucidation; which are many of them the least interesting, and even most
disagreeable. Like your Olympia, I don't understand much: but what I do
understand is so good that I feel sure the rest (and that is the larger
and perhaps more important part) is as good for those it is intended for.

Just as I shut up Catullus, I opened Keats' Love Letters just published;
and really felt no shock of change between the one Poet and the other.
This Book will doubtless have been in America long before my Letter
reaches it. Mr. Lowell, who justly writes (in his Keats) that there is
much in a Name, will wish Keats' mistress went by some other than 'Fanny
Brawne,' which I cannot digest.

And Mr. Lowell himself? I do not like to write to him amid his
diplomatic avocations; if I did, I should perhaps tell him that I did not
like the style of his 'Moosehead Journal,' which has been sent me by I
know not whom. I hope he is getting on with his Cervantes; which I know
I shall like, if it be at all of the same Complexion as his other two
Volumes, which I still think are best of their kind.

WOODBRIDGE. _February_ 20/78.

MY DEAR NORTON!

If Packet follows Packet duly, you will have received ere this a letter I
wrote you, and posted, a few hours before yours reached me. You will
have seen that I guessed at some Shadow as of Illness in your household:
no wonderful conjecture in this World in any case; still less where a
Life of eighty years is concerned. It is in vain to wish well: but I
wish the best.

Your mention of your Mother reminded me of another Eighty years that I
had forgotten to tell you of--Carlyle. I wrote