Pray read the Scene at Mrs. MacCandlish's Inn when Colonel Mannering returns from India to Ellangowan. It is Shakespeare. WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 16/1878. Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire-Carlyle from you: and a kind long letter from Mr. Lowell: and--and the first Nightingale, who sang in my Garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days: and, before the Day had closed, Dandie Dinmont came into my room on his visit to young Bertram in Portanferry Gaol-house. _To J. R. Lowell_. WOODBRIDGE. _April_ 17/78. MY DEAR (SIR ---)--(LOWELL)? Your letter reached me just after hearing this year's first Nightingale in my Garden: both very welcome. I am very glad you did not feel bound to answer me before; I should not write otherwise to you or to some very old Friends who, like most sensible men as they grow older, dislike all unnecessary writing more and more. So that I scarce remind them of myself more than once a year now. I shall feel sure of your good Will toward me whether you write or not; as I do of theirs. Mr. Norton thinks, as a Gentleman should, that Keats' Letters should not have been published. I hope I should not have bought them, had I not gathered from the Reviews that they were not derogatory to him. You know, I suppose, that she of whom K. wrote about to others so warmly, his Charmian, was not Fanny Brawne. Some years ago Lord Houghton wrote me it was: but he is a busy man of the World, though really a very good Fellow: indeed, he did not deserve your _skit_ about his 'Finsbury Circus gentility,' which I dare say you have forgotten. I have not seen him, any more than much older and dearer friends, for these twenty years: never indeed was very intimate with him; but always found him a good natured, unaffected, man. He sent me a printed Copy of the first draught of the opening of Keats' Hyperion; very different from the final one: if you wished, I would manage to send it to you, quarto size as it is. This now reminds me that I will ask his Lordship why it was not published (as I suppose it was not). For it ought to be. He said he did not know if it were not the second draught rather than the first. But he could hardly have doubted if he gave his thoughts to it, I think. . . . I want you to do De Quincey; certainly a very remarkable Figure in Literature, and not yet decisively drawn, as you could do it. There is a Memoir of him by one Page, showing a good deal of his familiar, and Family, Life: all amiable: perhaps the frailties omitted. It is curious, his regard to Language even when writing (as quite naturally he does) to his Daughter, 'I was disturbed last night at finding no natural, or spontaneous, opening--how barbarous by the way, is this collision of _ings_--find_ing_--open_ing_, etc.' And some other instances.