send--'Coals
to Newcastle.'

With Keats I shall send you an Athenaeum with a rather humorous account
of a Cockney squabble about whether Shelley called his Lark an
'_un_-bodied,' or '_em_-bodied,' Spirit. I really forget which way was
settled by MS. Shelley is now the rage in Cockayne; but he is too
unsubstantial for me.

It is now hot here: I suppose something [like] February in Andalusia. Do
you find Madrid Climate as bad as Rose and others describe it? He has
also a very pleasant [chapter] about the Lavanderas of the Manzanares.
What delightful words!

_To W. A. Wright_.

[1878.]

On looking into my dear old Montaigne, I find a passage which may have
rustled in Shakespeare's head while doing Othello: it is about the
pleasures of Military Life in the Chapter 'De l'Experience' beginning 'Il
n'est occupation plaisante comme la militaire, etc.' in course of which
occurs in Florio, 'The courageous _minde-stirring_ harmonic of warlike
music, etc.' What a funny thing is that closing Apostrophe to
Artillery--but this is not AEsthetic.

Bacon's appropriation you know of C'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas'
(De la Vanite, I _think_).

WOODBRIDGE. _June_ 11, [1878]

MY DEAR WRIGHT,

If you do not remember the passage in Bacon's Essays {251} about 'not to
decide, etc.' I must have fancied it. I am glad you recognize the
Othello bit of Montaigne. You know, as I know, the nonsense of talking
of Shakespeare stealing such things: one is simply pleased at finding his
footsteps in the Books he read, just as one is in walking over the fields
he walked about Stratford and seeing the Flowers, and hearing the Birds,
he heard and saw, and told of. My Canon is, there is no plagiarism when
he who adopts has proved that he could originate what he adopts, and a
great deal more: which certainly absolves Shakespeare from any such
Charge--even 'The Cloud capt Towers, etc.' That Passage in Othello about
the Propontic and the Hellespont, was, I have read, an afterthought,
after reading some Travel: and, like so many Afterthoughts, I must think,
a Blunder: breaking the Torrent of Passion with a piece of Natural
History. One observes it particularly when acted: the actor down on his
Knees, etc. Were I to act Othello (there'd be many a Bellow

From Pit, Boxes, etc., on that occasion) {252}

I should leave out the passage. . . .

An answer from Carlyle's Niece to my half-yearly enquiry tells me that he
is well, and har