gh no one ever took more pleasure in
continually using the form I prefer when not interfering
with thought, to insist on it would after a certain point be
ruin to common sense.

As to what you say of _The One Hope_--it is fully equal to
the very best of my sonnets, or I should not have wound up
the series with it. But the fact is, what is peculiar
chiefly in the series is, that scarcely one is worse than
any other. You have much too great a habit of speaking of a
special octave, sestette, or line. Conception, my boy,
_fundamental brainwork_, that is what makes the difference
in all art. Work your metal as much as you like, but first
take care that it is gold and worth working. A Shakspearean
sonnet is better than the most perfect in form, because
Shakspeare wrote it.

As for Drayton, of course his one incomparable sonnet is the
_Love-Parting_. That is almost the best in the language, if
not quite. I think I have now answered queries, and it is
late. Good-night!

Rossetti had somewhat mistaken the scope of the letter referred to,
and when he came to know exactly what was intended, I found him in warm
agreement with the views therein taken. I have said at an earlier stage
that Rossetti's instinct for what was good in poetry was unfailing,
whatever the value of his opinions on critical principles, and hence I
felt naturally anxious to have the benefit of his views on certain of
the elder writers. He said:

I am sorry I am no adept in elder sonnet literature. Many of
Donne's are remarkable--no doubt you glean some. None of
Shakspeare's is more indispensable than the wondrous one on
_Last_ (129). Hartley Coleridge's finest is

"If I have sinned in act, I may repent."

There is a fine one by Isaac Williams, evidently on the
death of a worldly man, and he wrote other good ones. To
return to the old, I think Stillingfleet's _To Williamson_
very fine....

I would like to send you a list of my special favourites
among Shakspeare's sonnets--viz.:--

15, 27, 29, 30, 36, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59, 61, 62,
64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 73, 76, 77, 90, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 102,
107, 110, 116, 117, 119, 120, 123, 129, 135, 136, 138, 144,
145.

I made the selection long ago, and of course love them in
varying degrees.

There should be an essenti