et as a medium of
expression, as for other reasons already assigned. The opening passage
alludes to a lyric of humble life.

You may be sure I do not mean essential discouragement when I say that,
full as _Nell_ is of reality and pathos, your swing of arm seems to me
firmer and freer in prose than in verse. I do think I see your field to
lie chiefly in the achievements of fervid and impassioned prose.... I am
sure that, when sending me your first sonnet, you wished me to say quite
frankly what I think of it. Well, I do not think it shows a special
vocation for this condensed and emphatic form. The prose version you
sent me seems to say much more distinctly what this says with some
want of force. The octave does not seem to me very clearly put, and the
sestet does not emphasize in a sufficiently striking way the idea which
the prose sketch conveyed to me,--that of Keats's special privilege in
early death: viz., the lovely monumentalized image he bequeathed to us
of the young poet. Also I must say that more special originality and
even _newness_ (though this might be called a vulgarizing word), of
thought and picture in individual lines--more of this than I find
here--seems to me the very first qualification of a sonnet--otherwise it
puts forward no right to be so short, but might seem a severed passage
from a longer poem depending on development. I would almost counsel you
to try the same theme again--or else some other theme in sonnet-form.
I thought the passage on Night you sent showed an aptitude for choice
imagery. I should much like to see something which you view as your best
poetic effort hitherto. After all, there is no need that every gifted
writer should take the path of poetry--still less of sonneteering. I am
confident in your preference for frankness on my part.

I tried the theme again before I abandoned it, and was so fortunate as
to get him to admit a degree of improvement such as led to his
desiring to recall his conjectural judgment on my possibilities as a
sonnet-writer, but as the letters in which he characterises the
advance are neither so terse in criticism, nor so interesting from the
exposition of principles, as the one quoted, I pass them by. With
more confidence in my ultimate comparative success than I had ever
entertained, Rossetti was only anxious that I should engage in that work
to which I. could address myself with a sense of command; and I think it
will be agreed that, where temperate co