It can never speak very definitely. There is that famous 'Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, etc.,' in Handel: nothing can sound more simple and devotional: but it is only lately adapted to these words, being originally (I believe) a love song in Rodelinda. Well, lovers adore their mistresses more than their God. Then the famous music of 'He layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, etc.,' was originally fitted to an Italian pastoral song--'Nasce al bosco in rozza cuna, un felice pastorello, etc.' That part which seems so well to describe 'and walketh on the wings of the wind' falls happily in with 'e con l'aura di fortuna' with which this pastorello sailed along. The character of the music is ease and largeness: as the shepherd lived, so God Almighty walked on the wind. The music breathes ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. Beethoven's Sonata--Op. 14--is meant to express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually overcome--Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for instance. Music is so far the most universal language, that any one piece in a particular strain symbolizes all the analogous phenomena spiritual or material--if you can talk of spiritual phenomena. The Eroica symphony describes the battle of the passions as well as of armed men. This is long and muddy discourse: but the walls of Charlotte Street present little else, especially during this last week of Lent, to twaddle about. The Cambridge Dons have been up in town for the Easter vacation: so we have smoked and talked over Peacock, Whewell, etc. Alfred is busy preparing a new volume for the press: full of doubts, troubles, etc. The reviewers will doubtless be at him: and with justice for many things: but some of the poems will outlive the reviewers. Trench, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Taylor, also appear in new volumes this Spring, and Milnes, I hear, talks of publishing a popular edition of his poems. He means, a cheap one. Nothing has been heard of Spedding: {114a} but we all conclude, from the nature of the case, that he has not been scalped. _To W. F. Pollock_. {114b} BOULGE HALL, _May_ 11/42. DEAR POLLOCK, . . . I have just been reading the great Library of Athanasius. {114c} Certainly only you and I and Thackeray understand it. When men like Spedding quote to me such a passage as 'Athanasius alas is innocent of many smiles, etc.,' they shew me they don't understand it. The beauty--if one may dare to define--lies more in such expressions as 'adjusting the beaks of the macaws, etc.' I have laughed outright (how seldom one does this alone!) at the Bishops' meeting. 'Mr. Talboys--that candle behind Dr. Allnut--really that I should be obliged--.' I suppose this would be the most untranslateable book in the world. I never shall forget how I laughed when I first read it. [GELDESTONE HALL, 22 _May_ 1842.]