How long I shall yet be here I know not: but not long I doubt. I dare say I shall pass through London on my way to Suffolk: and then perhaps see the trans-Atlantic Secretary. {138} Don't trouble yourself to write answers to my gossip. I have just been at our Church where we have had five clergymen to officiate: two in shovel-hats. Our Vicar is near ninety; we have two curates: and an old Clergyman and his Archdeacon son came on a visit. The son having a shovel-hat, of course the Father could not be left behind. Shovel-hats (you know) came into use with the gift of Tongs. _To John Allen_. [BOULGE COTTAGE.] _Nov_. 18/42. MY DEAR ALLEN, . . . Do you know that I am really going to look out for some permanent abode, which I think I am well qualified to decide on now. But in this very judgment I may be most of all mistaken. I do not love London enough to pitch my tent there: Woodbridge, Ipswich, or Colchester--won't one of them do? . . . I have been reading Burton's Anatomy {139} lately: a captivating book certainly. That story of his going to the bridge at Oxford to listen to the bargemen's slang, etc., he reports of the old Democritus, his prototype: so perhaps biographers thought it must be Burton's taste also. Or perhaps Burton took to doing it after example. I cannot help fancying that I see the foundation (partly) of Carlyle's style in Burton: one passage quite like part of Sartor Resartus. Much of Barton's Biography may be picked up out of his own introduction to the Anatomy. Maurice's Introductory Lecture I shall be very glad to have. I do not fancy I should read his Kingdom of Christ, should I? You know. I have had bad cold and cough which still hang about me: this damp cottage is not good for a cure. . . . And now goodbye. _To F. Tennyson_. GELDESTONE HALL, BECCLES. [? 1843.] DEAR FREDERIC, I am glad you are back, and perhaps sorry. But glad let it be, for I shall be in London, as proposed, in another fortnight--more or less--and shall pig there in a garret for two months. We will go to picture sales and buy bad pictures: though I have scarce money left. But I am really at last going to settle in some spooney quarters in the country, and would fain carry down some better forms and colours to put about me. I cannot get the second or third best: but I can get the imitations of the best: and that is enough for me. What is become of Alfred? He never writes--nor is heard of.