Volume Ii Part 46 (2/2)
”It is one of those cases which will be as long kept before the public, for it is the attack on a great principle--and in that sense no mere grievance of the hour.
”As a means of lowering the House of Lords--if such was the intention--it has totally failed, and even 'Pall Mall' has come to the side of the Peers, which is significant.
”I see Seymour, my old friend, has got his first verdict in the Hertford case. It is 70,000 a-year at issue, but of course the great battle will be fought before 'the Lords,'”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Trieste, _Aug_. 17,1871.
”About half an hour after your pleasant letter and its handsome enclosure reached me, Langford came in. He was on his way to Venice, but, like a good fellow, stopped to dine with myself and daughter.
”We are delighted with him,--not only with his talk about books and writers, Garrick men and reviewers, but with his fine fresh-hearted appreciation of all he sees in his tour. He likes everything, and travels really to enjoy it.
”I wish I knew how to detain him here a little longer; though, G.o.d knows, no place nor no man has fewer pretensions to lay an embargo on any one.
”I took him out to see Miramar last evening, and we both wished greatly you had been with us. It was a cool drive of some miles along the Adriatic, with the Dalmatian mountains in front, and to the westward the whole Julian Alps snow-topped and edged. I know you would have enjoyed it.
”I am so glad you like the O'Ds. As I grow older I become more and more distrustful of all I do; in fact, I feel like the man who does not know when he draws on his banker that he may not have overdrawn his account and have his cheque returned. This is very like intellectual bankruptcy, or the dread of it, which is much the same.
”The finest part of Scott's nature to my thinking was the grand heroic spirit--that trumpet-stop on his organ--which elevated our commonplace people and stirred the heart of all that was high-spirited and generous amongst us. It was the anti-climax to our realism and sensationalism--detective Police Literature or Watch-house Romance.
”This was the tone I wanted to see praised and recommended, and I was sorry to see how little it was touched on. The very influence that a gentleman exerts in society on a knot of inferiors was the sort of influence Scott brought to bear upon the whole nation. All felt that there was at least one there before whom nothing mean or low or shabby should be exhibited.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
”Trieste, _Aug_. 28, 1871.
”The day after Langford left this, my horse, treading on a sharp stone that cut his frog, fell on me and crushed my foot,--not severely, but enough to bring on the worst attack of gout I ever had in my life, and which all my precautions have only kept down up to this from seizing on the stomach. My foot was about as big and as shapely as Cardwell's head.
I am now unable to move, and howl if any one approaches me rashly.
”I told Langford of a curious police trial for swindling here at Vienna--curious as ill.u.s.trating Austrian criminal procedure, &c. He thought I ought to report it in 'O'Dowd.' I send it off now for your opinion and judgment (and hope favourably). It might want a little retouching here and there, but you will see and say.
”I was delighted with your 'Scott' speech--the best of them of all that I read, and I see it has been copied and recopied largely. Your allusion to Wilson was perfect, and such a just homage to a really great man whom all the c.o.c.kneyism in the world cannot disparage.
”I am in such d.a.m.nable pain that I can hardly write a line, but I want you to see the 'Police' sketch at once. Can I have a proof, if you like it, early? as perhaps when I am able to move I shall have to get to some of the sulphur springs in Styria at once.
”My enemy is now making a demonstration about my left knee, and, as the newspapers say, _La situation est difficile_.
”I am not so ill but that I can desire to be remembered to Mrs Blackwood.”
_To Mr John Blackwood._
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