t them, had I not
gathered from the Reviews that they were not derogatory to him. You
know, I suppose, that she of whom K. wrote about to others so warmly, his
Charmian, was not Fanny Brawne. Some years ago Lord Houghton wrote me it
was: but he is a busy man of the World, though really a very good Fellow:
indeed, he did not deserve your _skit_ about his 'Finsbury Circus
gentility,' which I dare say you have forgotten. I have not seen him,
any more than much older and dearer friends, for these twenty years:
never indeed was very intimate with him; but always found him a good
natured, unaffected, man. He sent me a printed Copy of the first draught
of the opening of Keats' Hyperion; very different from the final one: if
you wished, I would manage to send it to you, quarto size as it is. This
now reminds me that I will ask his Lordship why it was not published (as
I suppose it was not). For it ought to be. He said he did not know if
it were not the second draught rather than the first. But he could
hardly have doubted if he gave his thoughts to it, I think. . . .

I want you to do De Quincey; certainly a very remarkable Figure in
Literature, and not yet decisively drawn, as you could do it. There is a
Memoir of him by one Page, showing a good deal of his familiar, and
Family, Life: all amiable: perhaps the frailties omitted. It is curious,
his regard to Language even when writing (as quite naturally he does) to
his Daughter, 'I was disturbed last night at finding no natural, or
spontaneous, opening--how barbarous by the way, is this collision of
_ings_--find_ing_--open_ing_, etc.' And some other instances.

I cannot understand why I have not yet taken to Hawthorne, a Man of real
Genius, and that of a kind which I thought I could relish. I will have
another Shot. His Notes of Travel seemed to me very shrewd, original,
and sincere. Charles Sumner, of so different a Genius, also appears to
me very truthful, and, I still fancy, strongly attached to the few he
might care for. I am sorry he got a wrong idea of Sir Walter from Lord
Brougham, and the Whigs, who always hated Scott. Indeed (as I well
remember) it was a point of Faith with them that Scott had not written
the Novels, till the Catastrophe discovered him: on which they changed
their Cry into a denunciation of his having written them only for money,
'Scott's weak point,' Sumner quotes from Brougham. As if Scott loved
Money for anything else than to spend