preceding our time). I have half
committed myself to contributing, but not altogether as yet.
The name of the projector, S. Waddington, is new to me, and
I don't know who is to publish.... Really you ought to do
the sonnet-book you aspire to do. I know but of one London
critic (Theodore Watts) whom I should consider the leading
man for such a purpose, and I have tried to incite him to it
so often that I know now he won't do it; but I have always
meant _a complete_ series in which the dead poets must, of
course, predominate. As to a series of the living only, I
told you of a Mr. Waddington who seems engaged on such a
supplementary scheme. What his gifts for it may be I know
not, but I suppose he knows it is in requisition. However,
there need not be but one such if you felt your hand in for
it. His view happens to be also (as you suggest) about 160
sonnets. In reply to your query, I certainly think there
must be 20 living writers (male and female--my sister a
leader, I consider) who have written good sonnets such as
would afford an interesting and representative selection,
though assuredly not such as would all take the rank of
classics by any means. The number of sonnets now extant,
written by poets who did not exist as such a dozen years
ago, I believe to be almost infinite, and in sufficiently
numerous instances good, however derivative. One younger
poet among them, Philip Marston, has written many sonnets
which yield to few or none by any poet whatever; but he has
printed such a large number in the aggregate, and so unequal
one with the other, that the great ones are not to be found
by opening at random. "How are they (the poets) to be
approached?--" you innocently ask. Ye heavens! how does the
cat's-meat-man approach Grimalkin?--and what is that
relation in life when compared to the _rapport_ established
between the living bard and the fellow-creature who is
disposed to cater to his caterwauling appetite for
publicity? However, to be serious, I must at least exonerate
the bard, I am sure, from any desire to appropriate an
"interest in the proceeds." There are some, I feel certain,
to whom the collector might say with a wink, "What are you
going to stand?"

I do not myself think that a collection of sonnets inserted at interval