748 FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK. [1883, 



spring, we hope, if we live and thrive, to take a holi- 

 day. Just how and where is not yet clear, but I hope 

 to have something to say of it before I am done with 

 this letter. Meanwhile I am curious to know if you 

 have disposed of Bacon. If your essay pleases me as 

 much as your remarks in your letter to me, I shall 

 enjoy it. I recant all I wrote you long ago, begging 

 you would drop him and take up a more congenial 

 subject. . . . 



I am just back this evening from hearing Matthew 

 Arnold read some of his poems to a great hallful of 

 undergraduates and others, in place of a lecture which 

 he was to give, but, poor man ! was prevented by his 

 agent, who seems to be rather his master. He was 

 well received ; but one cannot say that he is a very 

 graceful or a good reader to an audience of eight hun- 

 dred or a thousand people. 



He tells me you offered him an introduction to 

 me, which he thought he hardly needed, as we had 

 met him and Mrs. Arnold at a lunch given by Miss 

 North. We are sorry to hear of the determining 

 reason of his visit and lecturing tour. . . . He will 

 succeed in this, no doubt ; but it is a sort of dog's 

 life, this lecturing all over the country, four times a 

 week, at the beck of an agent, who controls all his 

 movements, often to audiences that will not appreciate 

 him, the more as what he tells me is true, that he has 

 no gift as a speaker. But he is pleasant, and will be 

 most kindly received. 



Your Lord Chief Justice was most kindly cared for 

 and made a most pleasant impression. But in Bos- 

 ton, besides coming when every one was away who 

 should have attended to him, he fell, unwisely, into 

 the hands of ... Governor Butler, and saw a side of 



