| Description | (Includes comments on a death from smallpox (Mrs Field]; the household of Mr & Mrs Willard and a mutual "dear friend"; offers encouragement to recipient concerning the success of his book ("it will be of incalculable use … bringing back young poets from the bad example of the Brownings & the Tennysons to truth & nature & the English tongue - which they maltreat in every page"); and notes the wish of Mrs Parry ("the mother of poor Mary Anne Parry whose enthusiastic verses you liked") to sell a cutting of horsehair taken by her deceased husband, a veterinary surgeon, from the tail of Copenhagen, the horse ridden by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo ("she talks of advertising it in the Times, but will probably fail to sell it (even if anyone were silly enough to set store by it) from the natural doubts of its authenticity"), asking if her correspondent knows "any of the crazy idolators of the Duke" or "a Worshipper of the English Hero".) |