Desk for all the Winter, I suppose, with my old Crabbe once more open
before me, disembowelled too; for I positively meditate a Volume made up
of 'Readings' from his Tales of the Hall, that is, all his better Verse
connected with as few words of my own Prose as will connect it
intelligibly together.

_To C. E. Norton_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 15/78.

MY DEAR NORTON,

You are very good to ask for my _OEdipodes_, etc. And when I can find
Eyes as well as Courage to copy out a '_brouillon_,' I will see what can
be done. Only, you and Professor Goodwin must not feel any way bound to
print them, even if you both approved of them; and that is not at all
certain. How would you two Scholars approve of two whole Scenes omitted
in either OEdipus (as I know to be the case), and the Choephori {259a}
reduced almost to an Act? So that would be, I doubt. Then, as you know,
Sophocles does not strike Fire out of the Flint, as old AEschylus does;
and though my Sophocles has lain by me (lookt at now and then) these ten
years, I was then a dozen years older than when Agamemnon haunted me,
until I laid his Ghost so far as I myself was concerned. By the way, I
see that Dr. Kennedy, Professor of Greek at our Cambridge, has published
a Translation of Agamemnon in 'rhythmic English.' So, at any rate, I
have been the cause of waking up two great men (Browning and Kennedy) and
a minor Third (I forget his name) {259b} to the Trial, if it were only
for the purpose of extinguishing my rash attempt. However that may be, I
cannot say my attempt on Sophocles would please you and my American
Patrons (in England I have none) so well as AEschylus; indeed I only see
in what I remember to have done, good English, and fair Verse, beyond the
chief merit of shaping the Plays to modern Taste by the very excisions
which Scholars will most deprecate. However, you shall see, one day. . . .

I want to send you a very little volume by Charles Tennyson, long ago
published: too modest to make a noise: worth not only all me, but all ---
, ---, & Co. put together. Three such little volumes have appeared, but
just appeared; like Violets, I say: to be overlooked by the 'madding
Crowd,' but I believe to smell sweet and blossom when all the gaudy
Growths now in fashion are faded and gone. He ought to be known in
America--everywhere; is he?

_To J. R. Lowell_.

WOODBRIDGE. _Decr._ 19/78.

MY DEAR SIR,

I am writing to you because you say you like to hear