from the Garden as we look'd above,
No Cloud was seen, and nothing seem'd to move;
[When the wide River was a silver Sheet,
And upon Ocean slept the unanchored fleet;] {256a}
When the wing'd Insect settled in our sight,
And waited wind to recommence its flight. {256b}

You see I cross out two lines which, fine as they are, go beyond the
Garden: but I am not sure if I place them aright. The two last lines you
will feel, I think: for I suppose some such Insect is in America too.
(You must not mind Crabbe's self-contradiction about 'nothing moving.') . . .

I have two Letters I want to send Lowell: but I do not like writing as if
to extort answers from him. You see Carlyle's Note within: I do not want
it back, thank you. Good night: for Night it is: and my Reader is
coming. We look forward to The Lammermoor, and Old Mortality before
long. I made another vain attempt on George Eliot at Lowestoft,
Middlemarch.

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Octr._ 17/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I scarce like to write to you again because of seeming to exact a Letter.
I do not wish that at all, pray believe it: I don't think letter-writing
men are much worth. What puts me up to writing just now is, the enclosed
two Letters by other men; one of them relating to yourself; the other to
the Spain you are now in. I sent Frederic Tennyson, eldest Brother of
the Laureate, your Study Windows: and now you see what he says about it.
He is a Poet too, as indeed all the Brethren more or less are; and is _a
Poet_: only with (I think) a somewhat monotonous Lyre. But a very noble
Man in all respects, and one whose good opinion is worth having, however
little you read, or care for, opinion about yourself, one way or other. I
do not say that I agree with all he says: but here is his Letter. I am
going to send him a Volume of yours 'Among my Books,' which I know is a
maturer work than the Windows; and you know what I think of it.

The other Letter, or piece of Letter, is from our Professor Cowell, and
has surely a good Suggestion concerning a Spanish Dictionary. You might
put some Spanish Scholar on the scent. And so much about my two Letters.

I was but little at my old Dunwich this Summer, for my Landlady fell
sick, and died: and the Friend I went to be with was obliged to leave; I
doubt his Brain is becoming another Ruin to be associated with that old
Priory wall, already so pathetic to me. So here am I back again at my
old