Woodbridge, March 1, [1880.]

My dear Lady,

I am something like my good old friend Bernard Barton, who would begin—and end—a letter to some one who had just gone away from his house. I should not mind that, only you will persist in answering what calls for no answer. But the enclosed came here To-day, and as I might mislay it if I waited for my average time of writing to you, I enclose it to you now. It shows, at any rate, that I do not neglect your Queries; nor does he to whom I refer what I cannot answer myself. [174]

This Wright edits certain Shakespeare Plays for Macmillan: very well, I fancy, so far as Notes go; simply explaining what needs explanation for young Readers, and eschewing all Æsthetic (now, don’t say you don’t know what ‘Æsthetic’ means, etc.) Æsthetic (detestable word) observation. With this the Swinburnes, Furnivalls, AthenÆums, etc., find fault: and a pretty hand they make of it when they try that tack. It is safest surely to give people all the Data you can for forming a Judgment, and then leave them to form it by themselves.

You see that I enclose you the fine lines [175] which I believe I repeated to you, and which I wish you to paste on the last page of my Crabbe, so as to be a pendant to Richard’s last look at the Children and their play. I know not how I came to leave it out when first printing: for certainly the two passages had for many years run together in my Memory.

Adieu, Madame: non pas pour toujours, j’espÈre; pas mÊme pour long temps. Cependant, ne vous gÊnez pas, je vous prie, en rÉpondant À une lettre qui ne vaut—qui ne rÉclame pas mÊme—aucune rÉponse: tandis que vous me croyez votre trÈs dÉvouÉ

Edouard de Petitgrange.