theless,
I send you a Copy pencilled, rather than references and alterations
written by way of Letter: I hope the least trouble to you of either
Alternative. . . .

I scarcely know what I have written, but I know it must be bad MS.; all
which I ought in good manners to rectify, or re-write. I think you in
America think more of Calligraphy than we here do: a really polite
accomplishment, I always maintain: and yet 'deteriora sequor.' But you
know that my eyes are not very active: and now my hand is less than
usually so, possessed as I am with a Devil of a Chill (in spite, or in
consequence, of warm wet weather) attended with something of Bronchitis,
I think. . . .

I forget if I told you in my last of my surprising communication with the
Spanish Ambassador who sent me the Calderon medal, I doubt not at Mr.
Lowell's instance. But I think I must have told you. Cowell came over
to me here on Monday: he, to whom a Medal is far more due than to me;
always reading, and teaching, Calderon at Cambridge now (as he did to me
thirty years ago), in spite of all his Sanskrit Duties. I wish I could
send him to you across the Atlantic, as easily as Arbuthnot once bid Pope
'toss Johnny Gay' to him over the Thames. Cowell is greatly delighted
with Ford's '_Gatherings in Spain_,' a Supplement to his Spanish
Handbook, and in which he finds, as I did, a supplement to Don Quixote
also. If you have not read, and cannot find, the Book, I will toss it
over the Atlantic to you, a clean new Copy, if that be yet procurable, or
my own second-hand one in default of a new. . . .

_To Mrs. Kemble_.

[_Jan._ 1882.]

I see my poor little Aconites--'New Year's Gifts'--still surviving in the
Garden-plot before my window: 'still surviving,' I say, because of their
having been out for near a month agone. I believe that Messrs. Daffodil,
Crocus and Snowdrop are putting in appearance above ground, but (old
Coward) I have not put my own old Nose out of doors to look for them. I
read (Eyes permitting) the Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller
(translated) from 1798 to 1806, extremely interesting to me, though I do
not understand, and generally skip, the more purely AEsthetic Parts:
which is the Part of Hamlet, I suppose. But in other respects, two such
men so freely discussing together their own, and each other's, works
interest me greatly. At night, we have the Fortunes of Nigel; a little
of it, and not every night: for the reason that I