July 2. All that precedes was written six weeks ago, when I was obliged to go up to London on business. . . . I saw Alfred, and the rest of the scavans. Thackeray is a great man: goes to Devonshire House, etc.: and _his_ book (which is capital) is read by the Great: and will, I hope, do them good. I heard but little music: the glorious Acis and Galatea; and the redoubtable Jenny Lind, for the first time. I was disappointed in her: but am told this is all my fault. As to naming her in the same Olympiad with great old Pasta, I am sure that is ridiculous. The Exhibition is like most others you have seen; worse perhaps. There is an 'Aaron' and a 'John the Baptist' by Etty far worse than the Saracen's Head on Ludgate Hill. Moore is turned Picture dealer: and that high Roman virtue in which he indulged is likely to suffer a Picture-dealer's change, I think. Carlyle writes in the Examiner about Ireland: raves and foams, but has nothing to propose. Spedding prospers with Bacon. Alfred seemed to me in fair plight: much dining out: and his last Poem is well liked I believe. Morton is still at Lisbon, I believe also: but I have not written to him, nor heard from him. And now, my dear Frederic, I must shut up. Do not neglect to write to me sometimes. Alfred said you ought to be in England about your Grimsby Land. _To E. B. Cowell_. [? 1848.] MY DEAR COWELL, . . . I do not know that I praised Xenophon's imagination in recording such things as Alcibiades at Lampsacus; {240} all I meant to say was that the history was not dull which does record such facts, if it be for the imagination of others to quicken them. . . . As to Sophocles, I will not give up my old Titan. Is there not an infusion of Xenophon in Sophocles, as compared to AEschylus,--a dilution? Sophocles is doubtless the better artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but AEschylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one will have AEschylus too a work of man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the genius of man aspiring up to the immeasurable, and reaching after the infinite in complexity and gloom, according as Christianity elevated and widened men's minds. A dozen lines of AEschylus have a more Almighty power on me than all Sophocles' plays; though I would perhaps rather save Sophocles, as the consummation of Greek art, than AEschylus' twelve lines, if it came to a choice which must be lost. Besides these AEschyluses _trouble_ us with their grandeur and gloom; but Sophocles is always soothing, complete, and satisfactory. _To W. B. Donne_. BOULGE, _Decr_. 27, [1848.] MY DEAR DONNE,