Now have I any more that turns up for this wonderful Letter? I should put it in, for I do think it might amuse you in Madrid. But nothing does turn up this Evening. Tea, and a Walk on our River bank, and then, what do you think? An hour's reading (to me) of a very celebrated Murder which I remember just thirty years ago at Norwich: then 'Ten minutes' Refreshment'; and then, Nicholas Nickleby! Then one Pipe: and then to Bed. Yours sincerely, E. F. G. This Letter shall sleep a night too before Travelling. Next Morning. Revenons a notre Crabbe. 'Principles and Pew' very bad. 'The Flowers, etc., cut by busy hands, etc.,' are, or were, common on the leaden roofs of old Houses, Churches, etc. I made him stop at 'Till the Does ventured on our Solitude,' {271} without adding '_We were so still_!'--which is quite 'de trop.' You will see by the enclosed prefatory Notice what I have done in the matter, as little as I could in doing what was to be done. My own Copy is full of improvements. Yes, for any Poetaster may improve three-fourths of the careless old Fellow's Verse: but it would puzzle a Poet to improve the better part. I think that Crabbe differs from Pope in this thing for one: that he aims at Truth, not at Wit, in his Epigram. How almost graceful he can sometimes be too! What we beheld in Love's perspective Glass Has pass'd away--one Sigh! and let it pass. {272} LOWESTOFT. _August_ 20/79. MY DEAR SIR, Mr. Norton wrote me that you had been detained in Spain by Mrs. Lowell's severe, nay, dangerous, illness; a very great affliction to you. I venture a bit of a Letter, which you are not to answer, even by a word; no, not even read further than now you have got, unless a better day has dawned on you, and unless you feel wholly at liberty to write. I should be very glad to hear, in ever so few words, that your anxiety was over. I do not think I shall make a long letter of this; for I do not think of much that can amuse you in the least, even if you should be open to such sort of amusement as I could give you. I am come here to be a month with my friend Cowell; he and I are reading the Second Part of Don Quixote together, as we used to read together thirty years ago; he always the Teacher, and I the Pupil, although he is quite unaware of that Relation between us; indeed, rather reverses it. It so happens that he is not so well acquainted with this Second Part as with the First; indeed not so well with the Story of it as I, but then he is so much a better Scholar in all ways that he lights up passages of the Book in a way that is all new to me. Some of the strange words reminded me again of his wish for a Spanish Dictionary in the style of Littre's French: he would assuredly be the Man to do it, but he has his Sanskrit Professorship to mind.