You are old enough, like myself, to remember People reading and talking of Crabbe. I know not if you did so yourself; but you know that no one, unless as old as ourselves, does so now. As he has always been one of my Apollos, in spite of so many a cracked string, I wanted to get a few others to listen a little as I did; and so printed the Volume which I send you: printed it, not by way of improving, or superseding, the original, but to entice some to read the original in all its length, and (one must say) uncouth and wearisome '_longueurs_' and want of what is now called 'Art.' These Tales are perhaps as open to that charge as any of his; and, moreover, not principally made up of that 'sternest' stuff which Byron celebrated as being most characteristic of him. When writing these Tales, the Poet had reached his Grand Climacteric, and liked to look on somewhat of the sunnier side of things; more on the Comedy than the Tragedy of Human Life: and hence these Tales are, with all their faults, the one work of his which leaves me (ten years past my Grand Climacteric also) with a pleasant Impression. So I tried to make others think; but I was told by Friends whose Judgment I could trust that no Public would listen to me. . . . And so I paid for my printing, and kept my Book to be given away to some few as old as myself, and brought up in somewhat of another Fashion than what now reigns. And so I now take heart to send it to you whose Poems and Writings prove that you belong to another, and, as I think, far better School, whether you care for Crabbe or not. I dare say you will feel bound to acknowledge the Book; but pray do so, if at all, by a simple acknowledgment of its receipt; I mean, so far as I am concerned in it: any word about Crabbe I shall be very glad to have if you care to write it; but I always maintain it best to say nothing, unless to find fault, with what is sent to one in this Book Line. And so to be done by. _To Lord Houghton_. {285a} WOODBRIDGE. _May_ 10_th_ 1880. {285b} DEAR LORD HOUGHTON,