_January 7th_.--Dined at Sir P. Shelley's; Spedding, Browning. _To Mr. E. Cheney_ _January 18th_.--I fully intended to come to see you to-day, and to bring you the MS. volumes of C. C. G.; but I am very lame with rheumatism in my knee, and the weather is so infernal that I cannot use the carriage, and I am afraid to make the expedition in a cab. I must therefore defer my call till I can move better. On such a day as this one can only burrow like the rabbits. I think the Cenci article in the new 'Ed. Rev.' will interest you. _January 22nd_.--I send you Vols. III. and IV. of the mystic record. Pray keep it locked up. In the 'True Tale of the Cenci,' by T. Adolphus Trollope, there was much that Mr. Cheney dissented from, and he wrote a long letter on the subject, which Reeve in due course forwarded to Trollope. This led to a reply, with which, as far as Reeve's correspondence shows, the discussion dropped. If it was continued further, it was without Reeve's assistance. _To Mr. E. Cheney_ _January 23rd_.--I saw Lady Shelley to-day, and, as I told her you could not call on her, she very obligingly said she would be happy to call on you and bring you the enlarged photograph of the poet to look at. These photographs are done on porcelain. There are only three copies of them, which Lady S. has got. The negative is destroyed. ... She says the drawing is the image of Shelley's sister, Helen Shelley. _January 31st_.--Many thanks for your prompt return of the volumes. I am glad they have amused you, and you can give evidence that they are not very wicked. I am afraid I cannot supply any more until I have been down to Foxholes, as I find I have locked up part of the MS. there; and I must now have the whole of it bound. _February 3rd_.--I send you Trelawny's book on Shelley, and I also enclose an interesting letter from Mr. Trollope in answer to your remarks on the Cenci article. You will see he has taken pains with the subject. I did not mention your name to him in connexion with the remarks, but only with reference to the Philobiblon notes. He therefore does not know that you are as well acquainted with the Italians as he is. _To Mr. Dempster_ _C. O., February 26th_.--I hope this will not arrive too late to congratulate you on having achieved in health and good spirits three-quarters of the road to our centenary. Unluckily, the last quarter is the most difficult. But _sursum corda_! When I look back and about me, I am astonished to have got so far. The great pleasure of advancing years is retrospection. One sees such groups and groups of pleasant people. The prospective eyes of youth see nothing so real or charming. I fancy I am sitting with you on a flowery bank of heather in the Highlands, about August 15th, talking of these things. There are a dozen brace of dead grouse in the bag. Donald is at the well. Don't remind me that it is February, 1 in London, the wind in the northeast. Here the Journal records:--