LITMIR.BIZ

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wish I had Bright’s speech in time for a quiz this month. It was a rare occasion. A mock classic oration, for a tribune of the people, full of gross flattery of the Plebs, would have been good fun; but [? the opportunity] is everything, and the joke that comes late looks, at least, as if it took labour to arrive at.

      “Oh dear, but I am down! down! Write to me, I entreat you.

      “Give my heartiest good wishes to the Corps Dramatique, – say that I am with them in spirit. ‘My heart’s in the side scenes, my heart is not here.’”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Villa Morelli, Feb. 4, 1865.

      “I am impatient to show you a brick of the new house: first, because if you don’t like it I’ll not go on; and secondly, if you should think well of it, your encouragement will be a great strengthener to me, and give me that confidence that none of my own connections ever inspire. My womenkind like Sir F., partly perhaps because I have said something about my ‘intentions.’ Not that I have any intentions, however, so fixed that the course of the story may not serve to unhinge them. At all events, you are well able to predicate from a molar tooth what sort of a beast it was that owned it, or might own it. Say your say then, and as boldly as our interests require.

      “I’d like to write you the best story in my market – that is, if I have a market; but now and then I half feel as if I were only manufacturing out of old wearables, like the devil’s dust folk at Manchester.

      “I have no heart to talk of ‘Tony,’ because I think the book is a deal better than what the scoundrels are daily praising, and I know there is better ‘talk’ in it than the rascals ever did talk or listen to in the dirty daily Covent Garden lines. There’s a burst of indignant vanity for you, and I’m ‘better for it’ already. If ‘The Times’ had noticed us at once, it would have given the key-note; but patienzia, as the Italians say.

      “Now let me have a line at your earliest about B. F., for though we don’t start till All Fools’ Day, I’d like to get in advance. I hope you’ll like the O’Ds. I sent last. When vol. ii. is ready let me have one by post. Your cheque is come all safe – my thanks for it.

      “We are in great commotion here; the K. has arrived. Turin being in a state that may be any moment ‘of siege,’ things look very ill here, and the men in power are quite unequal to the charge.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Florence, Feb. 11, 1865.

      “You are wrong about the scandal – there is none abroad whatever! For the same reason that Lycurgus said there was no adultery in Sparta, because every one had a legal right to every one else. There can be no criticism where there is no default.

      “‘The Times’ on ‘Tony’ was miserable: the book is – ‘though I that oughtn’t,’ &c, – good. That is, there is a devilish deal more good in it than half of the things that are puffed up into celebrity, and had it been written by any man but my unlucky self, would have had great success. I have not seen the M. P. notice. I have just seen the ‘P. Mall Gazette.’ It is deplorably bad: the attempts at fun and smartness positively painful. I am impatient to hear what you say of the new story.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Villa Morelli, Feb. 21,1865.

      “I hasten to answer your note, which has just come and relieved me of some gloomy apprehensions. I had begun to fancy that your delay in pronouncing on B. F. is out of dislike to say that you are not pleased with it. This fear of mine was increased by being low and depressed. Your judgment has relieved me, however, and done me much good already, and to-morrow I’ll go to work ‘with a will’ and, I hope, a ‘way.’

      “‘The Judge and his Wife’4 are life sketches, the rest are fictional.

      “I send you a batch of O’Ds. for April No. Some of them I think good. By the way, Smith – of Smith & Elder – has been begging me to send him something, as O’Ds. I refused, and said that Cornelius was your property, and if I sent him an occasional squib it should be on no account under that title.

      “From what I have seen I agree with you about the style and pretensions of the ‘P. M. Gazette.’ They are heavy when trying to be light and volatile, the dreariest sort of failure imaginable. It is strange fact that what the world regards as the inferior organisation – the temperament for drollery – is infinitely the most difficult to imitate. Your clown might possibly play Hamlet. I’ll be shot if Hamlet could play Clown! Now original matter on daily events, to be read at all, ought to have the stamp of originality on its style. These fellows have not caught this. They are as tiresome as real members of Parliament.

      “There is a great dearth of ‘passing topics’ for O’Dowderie; Parliament is dull, and society duller. I am sure that a little stupidity – a sort of prosy platitude just now in O’D. – would conciliate my critics of the press. My pickles have given them a heartburn, d – them; but they shall have them hotter than ever.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Feb. 29, 1866.

      “I have just got your note and its ‘farce’: thanks for both. ‘Tony Butler’ is a deal too good for the stupid public, who cram themselves with [] and [ ], which any one with a Newgate Calendar at hand and an unblushing temperament might accomplish after a few easy lessons.

      “It is very little short of an indignity for a man to write for a public who can gloat over [] or the stupid drolleries of [ ], so flauntingly proclaimed by ‘The Times,’ as most utter trash. I am decidedly sick of my readers and my critics, and not in any extravagance of self-conceit, because though I know I have a speciality for the thing I do, I neither want any one to believe it a high order of performance or myself a very great artist. I only say it is mine, and that another has not done it in the same way.

      “I shall be sorry if you omit the O’Ds. this month. Two of them, at least, are apropos, and would suffer. The careful meditation, too, is worth something, as I claim to be ready with my pen, even when I only wound my bird.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Villa MorElli, Florence, March 7, 1865.

      “I answer your note at once to acknowledge your cheque. It’s not necessary to tell you how I value your feeling for me, or how deeply I prize your treatment of me. Sorely as I feel the public neglect of ‘Tony,’ I declare I am more grieved on your account than on my own. It is in no puppyism I profess to think the book good: faults I know there are, scores of them, but there is more knowledge of men and women and better ‘talk’ in it, I honestly believe, than in those things which are run after and third-editioned. As to doing better – I frankly own I cannot. It is not in me. I will not say I may not hit off my public better, though I’m not too confident of even that, but as to writing better, throwing off more original sketches of character, – better contrasts in colour or sharper talkers, – don’t believe it! I cannot.

      “A more ignorant notice than the ‘Saturday Review’ I never read. M’Caskey is no more an anachronism than myself! though perhaps the writer of the paper would say that is not taking a very strong ground.

      “Why don’t you like the ‘Rope Trick’? It is better than most of the O’Ds. By the way, Smith only asked if I would send him O’Dowderies, and I misrepresented him if I conveyed anything stronger. I was not sorry, however, at the opportunity it gave me to say – how much and how strongly – I felt that they were yours so long as you cared for them. You had been the godfather when they were christened.

      “I am half disappointed we don’t start B. F. next month; but you are always right, – perhaps even that makes the thing harder to bear.

      “‘Piccadilly’ is very good, very amusing; one thing is pre-eminently clear, the writer is distinctively a ‘gentleman.’ None but a man hourly conversant with good society could give the tone he has given to Salon Life. It has the perfume of the drawing-room throughout it all, and

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