seems to me a
sort of anachronism. The one certain pleasure that I shall derive
from this arrangement will be, having my name and yours joined
together in the American edition, for we reserve the early sheets.
Nothing ever vexed me so much as the other book not being in your
hands. That was Mr. ----'s fault, for, stiff as Bentley is, Mr.
Bennoch would have managed him..... Of a certainty my first strong
interest in American poetry sprang from dear Dr. Holmes's exquisite
little piece of scenery painting, which he delivered where his
father had been educated. You sent me that, and thus made the
friendship between Dr. Holmes and me; and now you are yourself--you,
my dearest American friend--delivering an address at the greatest
American University. It is a great honor, and one....

I suppose Mr. Ticknor tells you the book-news? The most striking
work for years is "Haydon's Life." I hope you have reprinted it, for
it is sure, not only of a run, but of a durable success. You know
that the family wanted me to edit the book. I shrank from a task
that required so much knowledge which could only be possessed by one
living in the artist world _now_, to know who was dead and who
alive, and Mr. Tom Taylor has done it admirably. I read the book
twice over, so profound was my interest in it. In his early days, I
used to be a sort of safety-valve to that ardent spirit most like
Benvenuto Cellini both in pen and tongue and person. Our dear Mr.
Bennoch was the providence of his later years. They tell me that
that powerful work has entirely stopped the sale of Moore's Life,
which, all tinsel and tawdry rags, might have been written by a
court newsman or a court milliner. I wonder whether they will print
the other six volumes; for the four out they have given Mrs. Moore
three thousand pounds. A bad account Mr. Tupper gives of ----. Fancy
his conceit! When Mr. Tupper praised a passage in one of his poems,
he said, "If I had known you liked it, I would have omitted that
passage in my new edition," and he has done so by passages praised
by persons of taste, cut them out bodily and left the sentences
before and after to join themselves how they could. What a bad
figure your President and Mr. ---- cut at the opening of your
Exhibition! I am sorry for ----, for, although he has quite
forgotten me since