I don't think you ever told me if you had got, or read, Spedding's two first volumes of Bacon. My opinion is not the least altered of the Case: and (as I anticipated) Spedding has brooded over his Egg so long he has rather addled it. Thompson told me that the very Papers he adduces to clear Bacon in Essex's Business, rather go against him: I haven't seen any Notice of the Book in any Review but Fraser: where Donne (of course) was convinced, etc., and I hear that even the wise old Spedding is _mortified_ that he has awakened so little Interest for his Hero. You know his Mortification would not be on _his own_ score. His last Letter to me (some months ago) seemed to indicate that he could scarce lift up his Pen to go on--he had as yet, he said, written nothing of volumes 3 and 4. But I suppose he _will_ in time. I say this Life of his wasted on a vain work is a Tragedy pathetic as Antigone or Iphigenia. Of Tennyson I hear but little: and I have ceased to look forward to any future Work of his. Thackeray seems dumb as a gorged Blackbird too: all growing old! I have lost my sister Kerrich, the only one of my family I much cared for, or who much cared for me. But (not to dwell on what cannot be helped, and to which my talking of all growing old led me) I see in last week's Athenaeum great Praise of a new Volume of Poems by Jean Ingelow. The Reviewer talks of a 'new Poet,' etc., quite unaware that some dozen years ago the 'new Poet' published a Volume (as you may remember) with as distinct Indications of sweet, fresh, and original Genius as anything he adduces from this second Volume. I remember writing a sort of Review, when about you at Bramford, which I sent to Mitford, to try and give the Book a little move: but Mitford had just quitted the Gentleman's Magazine, and I tore up my Paper. Your Elizabeth knows (I think) all about this Lady: who, I suppose, is connected with Lincolnshire: for the Reviewer speaks of some of the Poems as relating to that Coast--Shipwrecks, etc. I was told that Tennyson was writing a sort of Lincolnshire Idyll: I will bet on Miss Ingelow now: he should never have left his old County, and gone up to be suffocated by London Adulation. He has lost that which caused the long roll of the Lincolnshire Wave to reverberate in the measure of Locksley Hall. Don't believe that I rejoice like a Dastard in what I believe to be the Decay of a Great Man: my sorrow has been so much about it that (for one reason) I have the less cared to meet him of late years, having nothing to say in sincere praise. Nor do I mean that his Decay is all owing to London, etc. He is growing old: and I don't believe much in the Fine Arts thriving on an old Tree: I can't think Milton's Paradise Lost so good as his Allegro, etc.; one feels the strain of the Pump all through: only Shakespeare--the exception to all rule--struck out Macbeth at past fifty. {47a}