In short I wish _you_ my dear friend to take charge of this pious act in all its details; considering me to be loyally passive to whatever you decide on respecting it. If on those terms you will let me bear half the expense and flatter myself that in this easy way I have gone halves with you in this small altogether genuine piece of patriotism, I shall be extremely obliged to you. Pollock has told you an altogether flattering tale about my strength, as it is nearly impossible for any person still on his feet to be more completely useless. Yours ever truly, T. CARLYLE. J. A. Froude (just come to walk with me) _scripsit_. _To W. F. Pollock_. WOODBRIDGE, _June_ 16, [1872]. MY DEAR POLLOCK, Some forty years ago there was a set of Lithograph Outlines from Hayter's Sketches of Pasta in Medea: caricature things, though done in earnest by a Man who had none of the Genius of the Model he admired. Looking at them now people who never saw the Original will wonder perhaps that Talma and Mrs. Siddons should have said that they might go to learn of Her: and indeed it was only the Living Genius and Passion of the Woman herself that could have inspired and exalted, and enlarged her very incomplete Person (as it did her Voice) into the Grandeur, as well as the _Niobe_ Pathos, of her Action and Utterance. All the nobler features of Humanity she had indeed: finely shaped Head, Neck, Bust, and Arms: all finely related to one another: the superior Features too of the Face fine: Eyes, Eyebrows--I remember Trelawny saying they reminded him of those in the East--the Nose not so fine: but the whole Face 'homogeneous' as Lavater calls it, and capable of all expression, from Tragedy to Farce. For I have seen her in the 'Prova d' un' Opera Seria,' where no one, I believe, admired her but myself, except Thomas Moore, whose Journal long after published revealed to me one who thought,--yes, and _knew_--as I did. Well, these Lithographs are as mere Skeleton Outlines of the living Woman, but I suppose the only things now to give an Idea of her, I have been a dozen years looking out for a Copy. I think I love the Haymarket as much as any part of London because of the Little Theatre where Vestris used to sing 'Cherry Ripe' in her prime: and (soon after) because of the old Bills on the opposite Colonnade: 'MEDEA IN CORINTO. Medea, _Signora Pasta_.' You know what she said, to the Confusion of all aesthetic People, one of whom said to her, 'sans doute vous avez beaucoup etudie l'Antique?' 'Peut-etre je l'ai beaucoup senti.' MY DEAR POLLOCK,