I must write you a few lines, on my knee (not, on my knees, however), in return for your kind letter. As to my thinking you could be 'importunate' in asking again for my two Sophocles Abstracts, you must know that such importunity cannot but be grateful. I am only rather ashamed that you should have to repeat it. I laid the Plays by after looking them over some months ago, meaning to wait till another year to clear up some parts, if not all. Thus do my little works arrive at such form as they result in, good or bad; so as, however I may be blamed for the liberties I take with the Great, I cannot be accused of over haste in doing so, though blamed I may be for rashness in meddling with them at all. Anyhow, I would not send you any but a fair MS. if I sent MS. at all; and may perhaps print it in a small way, not to publish, but so as to ensure a final Revision, such as will also be more fitting for you to read. It is positively the last of my Works! having been by me these dozen years, I believe, occasionally looked at. So much for that. Now, you would like to be here along with me and my delightful Cowell, when we read the Second Part of Don Quixote together of a morning. This we have been doing for three weeks; and shall continue to do for some ten days more, I suppose: and then he will be returning to his Cambridge. If we read very continuously we should be almost through the Book by this time: but, as you may imagine we play as well as work; some passage in the dear Book leads Cowell off into Sanskrit, Persian, or Goody Two Shoes, for all comes within the compass of his Memory and Application. Job came in to the help of Sancho a few days ago: and the Duenna Rodriguez' age brought up a story Cowell recollected of an old Lady who persisted in remaining at 50; till being told (by his Mother) that she could not be elected to a Charity because of not being 64, she said 'She thought she could manage it'; and the Professor shakes with Laughter not loud but deep, from the centre. . . . Pray read in our Athenaeum some letters of Severn's about Keats, full of Love and intelligent Admiration, all the better for coming straight from the heart without any style at all. If I thought that Mr. Lowell would not find these Athenaeums somewhere in Madrid, I would send them to him, as I would also to you in a like predicament. . . . This letter has run on further than I expected: and I am now going to see Sancho off to his Island, under convoy of my Professor. _To S. Laurence_. 11 MARINE TERRACE, LOWESTOFT. _Septr._ 22/79. MY DEAR LAURENCE,