Doctor Johnson used to say that he never in his life had eaten as much fruit as he desired.  I think I never talked to you as much as I desired.  You once told me that you would show me your novel. [Footnote:  I began two, but they were not at all clever and have long since disappeared.] Is it a reality or a myth?  I should be interested to see it if you like to send me that or any other writing of yours.

“Robert Elsmere,” as the authoress tells me, has sold 60,000 in England and 400,000 in America!  It has considerable merit, but its success is really due to its saying what everybody is thinking.  I am astonished at her knowing so much about German theology—­she is a real scholar and takes up things of the right sort.  I do not believe that Mrs. Ward ever said “she had pulverised Christianity.”  These things are invented about people by the orthodox, i. e., the infidel world, in the hope that they will do them harm.  What do you think of being “laughed to death”?  It would be like being tickled to death.

Good-bye,

Ever yours truly,

B. Jowett.

Balliol college, May 22nd, 1891.

My dear Margaret,

It was very good of you to write me such a nice note.  I hope you are better.  I rather believe in people being able to cure themselves of many illnesses if they are tolerably prudent and have a great spirit.

I liked your two friends who visited me last Sunday, and shall hope to make them friends of mine.  Asquith is a capital fellow, and has abilities which may rise to the highest things in the law and politics.  He is also very pleasant socially.  I like your lady friend.  She has both “Sense and Sensibility,” and is free from “Pride and Prejudice.”  She told me that she had been brought up by an Evangelical grandmother, and is none the worse for it.

I begin to think bed is a very nice place, and I see a great deal of it, not altogether from laziness, but because it is the only way in which I am able to work.

I have just read the life of Newman, who was a strange character.  To me he seems to have been the most artificial man of our generation, full of ecclesiastical loves and hatred.  Considering what he really was, it is wonderful what a space he has filled in the eyes of mankind.  In speculation he was habitually untruthful and not much better in practice.  His conscience had been taken out, and the Church put in its place.  Yet he was a man of genius, and a good man in the sense of being disinterested.  Truth is very often troublesome, but neither the world nor the individual can get on without it.

Here is the postman appearing at 12 o’clock, as disagreeable a figure as the tax-gatherer.

May you have good sleep and pleasant dreams.  I shall still look forward to seeing you with Lady Wemyss.

Believe me always,

Yours affectionately,

B. Jowett.