he read 'Richard's Story
of his Boyhood,' in the Tales of the Hall, with the same delight as on
its first appearance, and he considers that a Poem which thus pleases in
Age as it pleased in Youth must be called (in the 'accidental' sense of
the word, logically speaking) 'Classical.'

I owe this Courtesy on Mr. Stephen's part to my having sent him a little
Preface to my Crabbe, in which I contested Mr. Stephen's judgment as to
Crabbe's Humour: and I did not choose to publish this without apprizing
him, whom I know so far as he is connected with the Thackerays. He
replied very kindly, and sent me the Newman quotation I tell you of. The
Crabbe is the same I sent you some years ago: left in sheets, except the
few Copies I sent to friends. And now I have tacked to it a little
Introduction, and sent forty copies to lie on Quaritch's counter: for I
do not suppose they will get further. And no great harm done if they
stay where they are. . . .

One day you must write, and tell me how you and yours have fared through
this winter. It has been a very mild, even, a warm, one over here; and I
for my part have not yet had much to complain of in point of health thus
far; no, not even though winter has come at last in Snow and Storm for
the last three days. I do not know if we are yet come to the worst, so
terrible a Gale has been predicted, I am told, for the middle of March.
Yesterday morning I distinctly heard the sea moaning some dozen miles
away; and to-day, why, the enclosed little scrap, {342} enclosed to me,
will tell you what it was about, on my very old Crabbe's shore. It (the
Sea) will assuredly cut off his old Borough from the Slaughden River-quay
where he went to work, and whence he sailed in the 'Unity' Smack (one of
whose Crew is still alive) on his first adventure to London. But all
this can but little interest you, considering that we in England (except
some few in this Eastern corner of it) scarce know more of Crabbe and his
where about than by name.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

[_Easter_, 1883].

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . Professor Norton sent me his Carlyle-Emerson--all to the credit of
all parties, I think. I must tell the Professor that in my opinion he
should have omitted some personal observations which are all fair in a
private letter; as about Tennyson being of a 'gloomy' turn (which you
know is not so), Thackeray's 'enormous appetite' ditto; and such mention
of Richard Milnes as a 'Robin Redbreast,' et