R. L. S.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[HOTEL BELVEDERE], DAVOS, DECEMBER 12 [1880].
MY DEAR FATHER, - Here is the scheme as well as I can foresee. I begin the book immediately after the '15, as then began the attempt to suppress the Highlands.
I. THIRTY YEARS' INTERVAL
(1) Rob Roy. (2) The Independent Companies: the Watches. (3) Story of Lady Grange. (4) The Military Roads, and Disarmament: Wade and (5) Burt.
II. THE HEROIC AGE
(1) Duncan Forbes of Culloden. (2) Flora Macdonald. (3) The Forfeited Estates; including Hereditary Jurisdictions; and the admirable conduct of the tenants.
III. LITERATURE HERE INTERVENES
(1) The Ossianic Controversy. (2) Boswell and Johnson. (3) Mrs. Grant of Laggan.
IV. ECONOMY
(1) Highland Economics. (2) The Reinstatement of the Proprietors. (3) The Evictions. (4) Emigration. (5) Present State.
V. RELIGION
(1) The Catholics, Episcopals, and Kirk, and Soc. Prop. Christ. Knowledge. (2) The Men. (3) The Disruption.
All this, of course, will greatly change in form, scope, and order; this is just a bird's-eye glance. Thank you for BURT, which came, and for your Union notes. I have read one-half (about 900 pages) of Wodrow's CORRESPONDENCE, with some improvement, but great fatigue. The doctor thinks well of my recovery, which puts me in good hope for the future. I should certainly be able to make a fine history of this.
My Essays are going through the press, and should be out in January or February. - Ever affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
HOTEL BELVEDERE, DAVOS PLATZ [DEC. 6, 1880].
MY DEAR WEG, - I have many letters that I ought to write in preference to this; but a duty to letters and to you prevails over any private consideration. You are going to collect odes; I could not wish a better man to do so; but I tremble lest you should commit two sins of omission. You will not, I am sure, be so far left to yourself as to give us no more of Dryden than the hackneyed St. Cecilia; I know you will give us some others of those surprising masterpieces where there is more sustained eloquence and harmony of English numbers than in all that has been written since; there is a machine about a poetical young lady, and another about either Charles or James, I know not which; and they are both indescribably fine. (Is Marvell's Horatian Ode good enough? I half think so.) But my great point is a fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our old Tennyson's Duke of Wellington. I have just been talking it over with Symonds; and we agreed that whether for its metrical effects, for its brief, plain, stirring words of portraiture, as - he 'that never lost an English gun,' or - the soldier salute; or for the heroic apostrophe to Nelson; that ode has never been surpassed in any tongue or time. Grant me the Duke, O Weg! I suppose you must not put in yours about the warship; you will have to admit worse ones, however. - Ever yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
[HOTEL BELVEDERE], DAVOS, DEC. 19, 1880.
This letter is a report of a long sederunt, also steterunt in small committee at Davos Platz, Dec. 15, 1880.
Its results are unhesitatingly shot at your head.
MY DEAR WEG, - We both insist on the Duke of Wellington. Really it cannot be left out. Symonds said you would cover yourself with shame, and I add, your friends with confusion, if you leave it out. Really, you know it is the only thing you have, since Dryden, where that irregular odic, odal, odous (?) verse is used with mastery and sense. And it's one of our few English blood-boilers.
(2) Byron: if anything: PROMETHEUS.
(3) Shelley (1) THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE from Hellas; we are both dead on. After that you have, of course, THE WEST WIND thing. But we think (1) would maybe be enough; no more than two any way.
(4) Herrick. MEDDOWES and COME, MY CORINNA. After that MR. WICKES: two any way.
(5) Leave out stanza 3rd of Congreve's thing, like a dear; we can't stand the 'sigh' nor the 'peruke.'
(6) Milton.