I enclose you a scrap from 'The Leader' as you like to see criticisms on my Calderon. I suppose your sisters will send you the Athenaeum in which you will see a more determined spit at me. I foresaw (as I think I told you) how likely this was to be the case: and so am not surprized. One must take these chances if one will play at so doubtful a game. I believe those who read the Book, without troubling themselves about whether it is a free Translation or not, like it: but Critics must be supposed to know all, and it is safe to condemn. On the other hand, the Translation may not be good on any ground: and then the Critics are all right. _To E. B. Cowell_. 3 PARK VILLAS WEST, RICHMOND, SURREY, _October_ 25/53. MY DEAR COWELL, . . . I think I forgot to tell you that Mr. Maccarthy (my literal Rival in Calderon) mentions in his Preface a masterly Critique on Calderon in the Westminster 1851, which I take to be yours. {284} He says it, and the included translations, are the best Commentary he has seen on the subject. I have ordered Eastwick's Gulistan: for I believe I shall potter out so much Persian. The weak Apologue {285a} goes on (for I have not had time for much here) and I find it difficult enough even with Jones's Translation. I am now going to see the last of the Tennysons at Twickenham. _To F. Tennyson_. BREDFIELD RECTORY, {285b} WOODBRIDGE. _December_ 27/53. MY DEAR FREDERIC, I am too late to wish you a Happy Christmas; so must wish you a happy New Year. Write to me here, and tell me (in however few words) how you prospered in your journey to Italy: how you all are there: and how your Book progresses. I saw Harvest Home advertised in Fraser: and I have heard from Mrs. Alfred it is so admired that Parker is to print two thousand copies of the Volume. I am glad of this: and I think, little ambitious or vain as you really are, you will insensibly be pleased at gaining your proper Station in public Celebrity. Had I not known what an invidious office it is to meddle with such Poems, and how assuredly people would have said that one had helped to clip away the Best Poems, and the best part of them, I should have liked to advise you in the selection: a matter in which I feel confidence. But you would not have agreed with me any more than others: though on different grounds: and so in all ways it was, and is, and will be, best to say nothing more on the subject. I am very sure that, of whatever your Volume is composed, you will make public almost the only Volume of Verse, except Alfred's, worthy of the name.