1853

     Swallowfield, January 5, 1853.

Your most welcome letter, my very dear friend, arrived to-day, and I write not only to acknowledge that, and your constant kindness, but because, if, as I believe, Mr. Bennoch has told you of my mischance, you will be glad to hear from my own hand that I am going on well.  Last Monday fortnight I was thrown violently from my own pony-chaise upon the hard road in Lady Russell’s park.  No bones were broken, but the nerves of one side were so terribly bruised and lacerated, and the shock to the system was so great, that even at the end of ten days Mr. May could not satisfy himself, without a most minute re-examination, that neither fracture nor dislocation had taken place, and I am writing to you at this moment with my left arm bound tightly to my body and no power whatever of raising either foot from the ground.  The only parts of me that have escaped uninjured are my head and my right hand, and this is much.  Moreover Mr. May says that, although the cure will be tedious, he sees no cause to doubt my recovering altogether my former condition, so that we may still hope to drive about together when you come back to England....

I wrote I think, dearest friend, to thank you heartily for the beautiful and interesting book called “The Homes of American Authors.”  How comfortably they are housed, and how glad I am to find that, owing to Mr. Hawthorne’s being so near the new President, and therefore keeping up the habit of friendship and intercourse, the want of which habit so frequently brings college friendship to an end, he is likely to enter into public life.  It will be an excellent thing for his future books,—­the fault of all his writings, in spite of their great beauty, being a want of reality, of the actual, healthy, every-day life which is a necessary element in literature.  All the great poets have it,—­Homer, Shakespeare, Scott.  It will be the very best school for our pet poet.

Nobody under the sun has so much right as you have to see Mr. Dillon’s book, which is in six quarto volumes, not one.  Our dear friend Mr. Bennoch knows him, and tells me to-day that Mr. Dillon has invited him to go and look at it.  He has just received it from the binders.  Of course Mr. Bennoch will introduce you.  I was so glad to read what looked like a renewed pledge of your return to England.

Mr. Bentley has sent me three several applications for a second series.  At present Mr. May forbids all composition, but I suppose the thing will be done.  I shall introduce some chapters on French poetry and literature.  At this moment I am in full chase of Casimer Delavigne’s ballads.  He thought so little of them that he published very few in his Poesies,—­one in a note,—­and several of the very finest not at all.  They are scattered about here and there. ——­ has reproduced two (which I had) in his Memories; but I want