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My dear Mr. Tenn[yson]

Since I last wrote you, (your kind response was duly rec'd) I have been laid up here nearly all the time, & still continue so, quite shattered, but somehow with good spirits—not well enough to go out in the world & go to work—but not sick enough to give up either, or lose my interest in affairs, life, literature, &c. I keep up & dressed, & go out a little nearly every day.

I have been reading your Queen Mary, & think you have excelled yourself in it. I did not know till I read it, how much eligibility to passion, character and art arousings was still left to me in my sickness & old age. Though I am Democrat enough to realize the deep criticism of Jefferson on Walter Scott's writings, (& many of the finest plays, poems & romances) that they fail to give at all the life of the great mass of the people then & there.

But I shall print a new volume before long, & will send you a copy. I send you a paper about same mail with this.

Soon as convenient write me a few lines. (Put in your letter your exact p.o. address.) If you have leisure, tell me about yourself. I shall never see you & talk to you—so I hope you will write to make it up.