Houses, Churches, etc. I made him stop at 'Till the Does ventured
on our Solitude,' {271} without adding '_We were so still_!'--which is
quite 'de trop.' You will see by the enclosed prefatory Notice what I
have done in the matter, as little as I could in doing what was to be
done. My own Copy is full of improvements. Yes, for any Poetaster may
improve three-fourths of the careless old Fellow's Verse: but it would
puzzle a Poet to improve the better part. I think that Crabbe differs
from Pope in this thing for one: that he aims at Truth, not at Wit, in
his Epigram. How almost graceful he can sometimes be too!

What we beheld in Love's perspective Glass
Has pass'd away--one Sigh! and let it pass. {272}

LOWESTOFT. _August_ 20/79.

MY DEAR SIR,

Mr. Norton wrote me that you had been detained in Spain by Mrs. Lowell's
severe, nay, dangerous, illness; a very great affliction to you. I
venture a bit of a Letter, which you are not to answer, even by a word;
no, not even read further than now you have got, unless a better day has
dawned on you, and unless you feel wholly at liberty to write. I should
be very glad to hear, in ever so few words, that your anxiety was over.

I do not think I shall make a long letter of this; for I do not think of
much that can amuse you in the least, even if you should be open to such
sort of amusement as I could give you. I am come here to be a month with
my friend Cowell; he and I are reading the Second Part of Don Quixote
together, as we used to read together thirty years ago; he always the
Teacher, and I the Pupil, although he is quite unaware of that Relation
between us; indeed, rather reverses it. It so happens that he is not so
well acquainted with this Second Part as with the First; indeed not so
well with the Story of it as I, but then he is so much a better Scholar
in all ways that he lights up passages of the Book in a way that is all
new to me. Some of the strange words reminded me again of his wish for a
Spanish Dictionary in the style of Littre's French: he would assuredly be
the Man to do it, but he has his Sanskrit Professorship to mind.

There is a Book rather worth reading called 'On Foot through Spain';
{273} meaning, as much of Spain as extends from St. Sebastian on the Bay
of Biscay to Barcelona on the Mediterranean; with a good deal of
Cervantesque Ventas, Carreteros, etc., in it. There is an account of the
Obsequies of PAU PI (Basque?) on the last Da