s) led his Spirit 'as the Boys follow Tom the Piper.'
I had not thought who Tom was: rather acquiesced in some idea of the
'pied Piper of Hamelin'; and, not half an hour after, chancing to take
down Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, {240a} found Tom against the
Maypole, with a ring of Dancers about him. I suppose Tom survived in
'_Folk lore_' . . . till dear Lamb's time: but how he, a Cockney, knew of
it, I don't know.

I was looking for Keats (when I happened on Browne) to find the passage
you quote {240b}: but (of course) I could not find the Book I wanted. Nor
can I construe him any more than so much of Shakespeare: whether from the
negligent hurry of both (Johnson says Shakespeare often contented himself
with a halfborn expression), or from some Printer's error. The meaning
is clear enough to me, if I conjecture the context right; and more so to
you, I dare say. The passage is one of those bad ones, except the first
line, which he afterwards repeated, mutatis mutandis,

The leaves
That _tremble_ round a Nightingale, {240c}

and is one of those which justly incensed the Quarterly, and which K.
himself knew were bad: but he must throw off the Poem red hot, and could
not alter.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 4, 1878.

MY DEAR NORTON,

I wish you would not impose on yourself to write me a Letter; which you
say is 'in your head.' You have Literary work, and a Family to enjoy
with you what spare time your Professional Studies leave you. Whereas I
have nothing of any sort that I am engaged to do: all alone for months
together: taking up such Books as I please; and rather liking to write
Letters to my Friends, whom I now only communicate with by such means.
And very few of my oldest Friends, here in England, care to answer me,
though I know from no want of Regard: but I know that few sensible men,
who have their own occupations, care to write Letters unless on some
special purpose; and I now rarely get more than one yearly Letter from
each. Seeing which, indeed, I now rarely trouble them for more. So pray
be at ease in this respect: you have written to me, as I to you, more
than has passed between myself and my fifty years old Friends for some
years past. I have had two notes from you quite lately: one to tell me
that Squire reached you; and another that he was on his way back here. I
was in no hurry for him, knowing that, if he got safe into your hands, he
would continue there as safe a