I forget if I told you in my last of my surprising communication with the Spanish Ambassador who sent me the Calderon medal, I doubt not at Mr. Lowell's instance. But I think I must have told you. Cowell came over to me here on Monday: he, to whom a Medal is far more due than to me; always reading, and teaching, Calderon at Cambridge now (as he did to me thirty years ago), in spite of all his Sanskrit Duties. I wish I could send him to you across the Atlantic, as easily as Arbuthnot once bid Pope 'toss Johnny Gay' to him over the Thames. Cowell is greatly delighted with Ford's '_Gatherings in Spain_,' a Supplement to his Spanish Handbook, and in which he finds, as I did, a supplement to Don Quixote also. If you have not read, and cannot find, the Book, I will toss it over the Atlantic to you, a clean new Copy, if that be yet procurable, or my own second-hand one in default of a new. . . . _To Mrs. Kemble_. [_Jan._ 1882.] I see my poor little Aconites--'New Year's Gifts'--still surviving in the Garden-plot before my window: 'still surviving,' I say, because of their having been out for near a month agone. I believe that Messrs. Daffodil, Crocus and Snowdrop are putting in appearance above ground, but (old Coward) I have not put my own old Nose out of doors to look for them. I read (Eyes permitting) the Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller (translated) from 1798 to 1806, extremely interesting to me, though I do not understand, and generally skip, the more purely AEsthetic Parts: which is the Part of Hamlet, I suppose. But in other respects, two such men so freely discussing together their own, and each other's, works interest me greatly. At night, we have the Fortunes of Nigel; a little of it, and not every night: for the reason that I do not wish to eat my Cake too soon. The last night but one I sent my Reader to see Macbeth played by a little Shakespearian company at a Lecture Hall here. He brought me one new Reading; suggested, I doubt not by himself, from a remembrance of Macbeth's tyrannical ways: 'Hang out our _Gallows_ on the outward walls.' Nevertheless, the Boy took great Interest in the Play, and I like to encourage him in Shakespeare rather than in the Negro Melodists. _To C. E. Norton_. WOODBRIDGE. _Jan._ 25/82. MY DEAR NORTON, I forgot in my last letter to beg you not to write for the mere purpose of acknowledging the revised OEdipus who was to travel along with it. You know that I am glad to hear from you at any time when you are at leisure, not otherwise; and I shall take for granted that you think my alterations are improvements, so far as they go. And that is enough.