at
all if there had been any danger of his taking to the modern
habit eventually--treating material as product, and shooting
it all out as it comes. Of course, however, he wouldn't; he
was getting always choicer and simpler, and my favourite
piece in his works is _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_--I suppose
about his last. As to Shelley, it is really a mercy that he
has not been hatching yearly universes till now. He might, I
suppose; for his friend Trelawny still walks the earth
without great-coat, stockings, or underclothing, this
Christmas (1879). In criticism, matters are different, as to
seasons of production.... I am writing hurriedly and
horribly in every sense. Write on the subject again and I'll
try to answer better. All greetings to you.

P.S.--I think your reference to Keats new, and on a high
level It calls back to my mind an adaptation of his self-
chosen epitaph which I made in my very earliest days of
boyish rhyming, when I was rather proud to be as cockney as
Keats _could_ be. Here it is,--

Through one, years since damned and forgot
Who stabbed backs by the Quarter,
Here lieth one who, while Time's stream
Still runs, as God hath taught her,
Bearing man's fame to men, hath writ
His name upon that water.

Well, the rhyme is not so bad as Keats's

Ear
Of Goddess of Theraea!--

nor (tell it not in Gath!) as---

I wove a crown before her
For her I love so dearly,
A garland for Lenora!

Is it possible the laurel crown should now hide a venerated
and impeccable ear which was once the ear of a cockney?

This letter was written in 1879, and the opening clauses of it were no
doubt penned under the impression, then strong on Rossetti's mind, that
his first volume of poems would prove to be his only one; but when,
within two years afterwards he completed _Rose Mary_, and wrote _The
King's Tragedy_ and _The White Ship_, this accession of material
dissipated the notion that a man does much his best work before
twenty-five. It can hardly escape the reader that though Rossetti's
earlier volume displayed a surprising maturity, the subsequent one
exhibited as a whole infinitely more power and feeling, range of
sympathy, and knowledge of life. The poet's dramatic instinct