position--(the sea is monotonous, and so is lasting grief.) Your
complaint is against fate and humanity rather than against the poet
Tennyson. Who that has suffered has not felt wave after wave
break dully against one rock, till brain and heart, with all their
radiances, seemed lost in a single shadow? So the effect of the book
is artistic, I think, and indeed I do not wonder at the opinion which
has reached us from various quarters that Tennyson stands higher
through having written it. You see, what he appeared to want,
according to the view of many, was an earnest personality and direct
purpose. In this last book, though of course there is not room in it
for that exercise of creative faculty which elsewhere established
his fame, he appeals heart to heart, directly as from his own to the
universal heart, and we all feel him nearer to us--_I_ do--and so
do others. Have you read a poem called 'the Roman' which was praised
highly in the 'Athenaeum,' but did not seem to Robert to justify the
praise in the passages extracted? written by somebody with certainly
a _nom de guerre_--Sidney Yendys. Observe, _Yendys_ is _Sidney_
reversed. Have you heard anything about it, or seen? The 'Athenaeum'
has been gracious to me beyond gratitude almost; nothing could by
possibility be kinder. A friend of mine sent me the article from
Brussels--a Mr. Westwood, who writes poems himself; yes, and poetical
poems too, written with an odorous, fresh sense of poetry about them.
He has not original power, more's the pity: but he has stayed near the
rose in the 'sweet breath and buddings of the spring,' and although
that won't make anyone live beyond spring-weather, it is the
expression of a sensitive and aspirant nature; and the man is
interesting and amiable--an old correspondent of mine, and kind to me
always. From the little I know of Mr. Bennett, I should say that Mr.
Westwood stood much higher in the matter of gifts, though I fear
that neither of them will make way in that particular department of
literature selected by them for action. Oh, my dearest friend, you may
talk about coteries, but the English society at Florence (from what I
hear of the hum of it at a distance) is worse than any coterie-society
in the world. A coterie, if I understand the thing, is informed by a
unity of sentiment, or faith, or prejudice; but this society here is
not informed at all. People come together to gamble or dance, and if
there's an end, why so much the