My dear Sir

I have got safely through the work, I will not say to my own satisfaction—but after all it does not much matter.¹ The book wont live—I doubt whether a work of travels can be made to live—unless like your Journal it is also a work of science—or unless like Eothen it is a collection of witty essays.²

I thought afterwards that what I said at lunch the other day³ seemed to show an indifference to painstaking in style: but my opinion (such as it is) is really quite the other way. For my own part I find it so difficult to make a paragraph read well, that I have always had a pleasure in finding out that the great masters of style only did what they did by means of transposition—erasure &c.— All such cases I have noted down & can mention a few from memory— Pascal wrote one of his short Lettres Provinciales—seven times— Balzac had 16 proofs of the Peau de Chagrin—⁴ He is considered the best modern French writer so far as style is concerned— Rousseau is another case— item Dickens & Macaulay. In short it seems to be a rule to which there are few exceptions Thackeray seems to have been one—⁵

I am down here not for the cure, but merely for air & water— I know a lady in this neighbourhood who told me that D^r. Rayner took non-patients,⁶ and that there was always plenty of croquet going on—so here I have come in preference to making visits, and going through heavy late dinners &c.—

I hope that you were none the worse for your trip to London which certainly gave pleasure (to my knowledge) to a great number of your friends & disciples—⁷ I met an American young lady in London the other day—an old friend of mine—& we spoke of Chauncey Wright— Oh, she said, M^r. Wright thinks that there is no country like England; & I believe he thinks that there is no man like M^r. Darwin. Here she made une petite moue⁸—probably not liking your theory— One young lady with whom I correspond was shocked to hear I was a Darwinian— Me a monkey indeed! she said— However in her last letter she said she was pretty nearly converted for she sat next at dinner to a naval man who described the Fuegians to her—their habit of eating missionaries raw &c.—& her opinion seems to be now precisely what you express in your Conclusion—that if we must own them for our ancestors, we can go a little lower down without feeling the drop.

I dont write this to inveigle you into a correspondence— I know how much you have to do in that way, and beg you wont trouble to answer this letter. But if you can spare me a few lines, after you have read my book I shall be very glad to have them   You will receive a copy in a fortnight or less—⁹

Yours very truly | Winwood Reade