Autograph letter signed : London, to Thomas Arnold [1857] December 28.

Discussing the "...great transformation in the intellectual nature of the English, and consequently, in their estimate of their own writers...;" expressing his happiness that his brother knows about Merope and adding "There are so few people in England who have ever read Alfieri or heard of Maffei that I must ask you, at the risk of insulting you, how you came to know that each had composed a "Merope". Your savoir I knew, but not that it extended to such matters, on which even the most cultivated English are generally so ignorant;" commenting on Voltaire's "Merope" and saying he believes "Maffei's poetically the best tragedy of the three, as you will see by my Preface which I think you will find interesting;" discussing the popularity of Wordsworth, Shelley and Coleridge and comparing the poetry in the time of Pope to the present time; saying "...our time is a first class one - an infinitely fuller richer age than Pope's; but our poetry is not adequate to it: it interests therefore only a small body of sectaries; hundreds of cultivated & intelligent men find nothing that speaks to them in it. But it is a hard thing to make poetry adequate to a first-class epoch;" comparing the literature of the "Greece of Pericles" to Shakespeare and commenting on Voltaire & Goethe; adding that he expects to discuss all of this in his "inaugural lecture & the debating of which will be continued in the two next. I have a vow against sending MSS to anyone: the disadvantage to a work in being read in MSS is so incredibly great, according to my own feeling - but you shall have the three lectures printed, if we all live, in June or July next;" asking that he tell him "...what you think of "Merope": in literary matters we may still have strong sympathy."