‘I suppose you cannot have read _Middlemarch_, as you say nothing about it. It stands quite alone. As one only just moistens one’s lips with an exquisite liqueur to keep the taste as long as possible in one’s mouth, I never read more than a single chapter of _Middlemarch_ in the evening, dreading to come to the last, when I must wait two months for a renewal of the pleasure. The depth of humour has certainly never been surpassed in English literature. If there is ever a shade too much learning that is Lewes’s fault[64].’
But there was another reason for his enjoyment of Abergwili. Student as he was, he delighted in the sights, the sounds, the air of the country. He never left it for his annual migration to London without regret, partly because it was so troublesome to move the mass of books without which he could not bear to leave home, but still more because the bustle and dust of London annoyed him; and in the midst of congenial society, and the enjoyment of music and pictures, his thoughts reverted with longing regret to his trees, his flowers, and his domestic pets. He had begun his social relations with dogs and cats in Yorkshire, and an amusing story is told of the way in which the preparations for his formal reception when he came home after accepting the bishopric of S. David’s, were completely disconcerted by the riotous welcome of his dogs, who jumped on his shoulders and excluded all human attentions[65]. At Abergwili he extended his affections to birds, and kept peacocks, pheasants, canaries, swans, and tame geese, which he regularly fed every morning, no matter what the weather might be. They treated him with easy familiarity, for they used to seize his coattails with their beaks to show their welcome. His flowers had to yield to the tastes of his four-footed friends. One day his gardener complained, ‘What am I to do, my Lord? The hares have eaten your carnations.’ ‘Plant more carnations,’ was his only reply. Fine summer weather would draw him out of ‘Chaos’ into the field or garden; and one of his letters gives a delicious picture of his enjoyment of a certain June, sitting on the grass while the haymakers were at work in the field beyond, reading _The Earthly Paradise_, and watching the movements of ‘a dear horse’ who paced up and down with a ‘system of hay rakes behind him to toss it about and accelerate its maturity[66].’