w
as connected with Lord Bacon. To re-edit his Works, which did not want
any such re-edition, and to vindicate his Character which could not be
cleared, did this Spedding sacrifice forty years which he might well have
given to accomplish much greater things; Shakespeare, for one. But
Spedding had no sort of Ambition, and liked to be kept at one long work
which he knew would not glorify himself. He was the wisest man I have
known: not the less so for plenty of the Boy in him; a great sense of
Humour, a Socrates in Life and in Death, which he faced with all Serenity
so long as Consciousness lasted. I suppose something of him will reach
America, I mean, of his Death, run over by a Cab and dying in St.
George's Hospital to which he was taken, and from which he could not be
removed home alive. I believe that had Carlyle been alive, and but as
well as he was three months ago, he would have insisted on being carried
to the Hospital to see his Friend, whom he respected as he did few
others. I have just got the Carlyle Reminiscences, which will take me
some little time to read, impatient as I may be to read them. What I
have read is of a stuff we can scarce find in any other Autobiographer:
whether his Editor Froude has done quite well in publishing them as they
are, and so soon, is another matter. Carlyle's Niece thinks, not quite.
She sent me a Pipe her Uncle had used, for Memorial. I had asked her for
the Bowl, and an Inch of stem, of one of the Clay Pipes such as I had
smoked with him under that little old Pear Tree in his Chelsea garden
many an Evening. But she sent me a small Meerschaum which Lady Ashburton
had given him, and which he used when from home.

_To S. Laurence_.

_March_ 13/81.

MY DEAR LAURENCE,

It was very very good of you to think of writing to me at all on this
occasion: {303} much more, writing to me so fully, almost more fully than
I dared at first to read: though all so delicately and as you always
write. It is over! I shall not write about it. He was all you say.

So I turn to myself! And that is only to say that I am much as usual:
here all alone for the last six months, except a two days visit to London
in November to see Mrs. Kemble, who is now removed from Westminster to
Marshall Thompson's Hotel Cavendish Square: and Mrs. Edwards who is
naturally better and happier than a year ago, but who says she never
should be happy unless always at work. And that work is taking off
impres