a sort of Lincolnshire Idyll: I will bet on Miss
Ingelow now: he should never have left his old County, and gone up to be
suffocated by London Adulation. He has lost that which caused the long
roll of the Lincolnshire Wave to reverberate in the measure of Locksley
Hall. Don't believe that I rejoice like a Dastard in what I believe to
be the Decay of a Great Man: my sorrow has been so much about it that
(for one reason) I have the less cared to meet him of late years, having
nothing to say in sincere praise. Nor do I mean that his Decay is all
owing to London, etc. He is growing old: and I don't believe much in the
Fine Arts thriving on an old Tree: I can't think Milton's Paradise Lost
so good as his Allegro, etc.; one feels the strain of the Pump all
through: only Shakespeare--the exception to all rule--struck out Macbeth
at past fifty. {47a}

By the way, there is a new--and the best--edition {47b} of _Him_ coming
out: edited by two men (Fellows) of Cambridge. Just the Text, with the
various readings of Folio and Quartos: scarce any notes: but suggestions
of Alteration from Pope, Theobald, Coleridge, etc., and--Spedding; who
(as I told him twenty years ago) should have done the work these men are
doing. He also says they are well doing about _half_ what is wanted to
be done. He should--for he could--have done all; and one Frontispiece
Portrait would have served for Author and Editor.

Come--here is a long Letter--and (as I read it over) with more _Go_ than
usually attends my old Pen now. Let it inspire you to answer: never mind
_the Birds_:--which really suggests to me one of Dante's beautiful lines
which made me _cry_ the other Day at Sea.

Mentre che gli occhi per la fronda verde
Ficcava io cosi, come far suole
Chi dietro all' uccellin la vita perde,
Lo piu che Padre mi dicea, etc. {48a}

_To W. B. Donne_.

MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE.
_October_ 4/63.

MY DEAR DONNE,

Very rude of me not to have acknowledged your Tauchnitz {48b} before: but
I have been almost living in my Ship ever since: and I supposed also that
you were abroad in Norfolk. I pitied you undergoing those dreadful
Oratorios: I never heard one that was not tiresome, and in part
ludicrous. Such subjects are scarce fitted for Catgut. Even Magnus
Handel--even Messiah. He (Handel) was a good old Pagan at heart, and
(till he had to yield to the fashionable Piety of England) stuck to
Opera, and Cantatas, such as Acis and Gal