believe that people may so meet. I like to
think that some day in Elysium I shall--not without diffidence--approach
those two and reintroduce myself. I can see just how courteously
Swinburne will bow over my hand, not at all remembering who I am.
Watts-Dunton will remember me after a moment: 'Oh, to be sure, yes
indeed! I've a great deal of work on hand just now--a great deal of
work, but' we shall sit down together on the asphodel, and I cannot but
think we shall have whisky-toddy even there. He will not have changed.
He will still be shaggy and old and chubby, and will wear the same
frock-coat, with the same creases in it. Swinburne, on the other hand,
will be quite, quite young, with a full mane of flaming auburn locks,
and no clothes to hinder him from plunging back at any moment into the
shining Elysian waters from which he will have just emerged. I see him
skim lightly away into that element. On the strand is sitting a man of
noble and furrowed brow. It is Mazzini, still thinking of Liberty. And
anon the tiny young English amphibian comes ashore to fling himself
dripping at the feet of the patriot and to carol the Republican ode he
has composed in the course of his swim. 'He's wonderfully active--active
in mind and body,' Watts-Dunton says to me. 'I come to the shore now
and then, just to see how he's getting on. But I spend most of my time
inland. I find I've so much to talk over with Gabriel. Not that he's
quite the fellow he was. He always had rather a cult for Dante, you
know, and now he's more than ever under the Florentine influence. He
lives in a sort of monastery that Dante has here; and there he sits
painting imaginary portraits of Beatrice, and giving them all to Dante.
But he still has his great moments, and there's no one quite like
him--no one. Algernon won't ever come and see him, because that fellow
Mazzini's as Anti-Clerical as ever and makes a principle of having
nothing to do with Dante. Look!--there's Algernon going into the water
again! He'll tire himself out, he'll catch cold, he'll--' and here the
old man rises and hurries down to the sea's edge. 'Now, Algernon,' he
roars, 'I don't want to interfere with you, but I do think, my dear old
friend,'--and then, with a guffaw, he breaks off, remembering that his
friend is not deaf now nor old, and that here in Elysium, where no ills
are, good advice is not needed.

A LETTER THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN 1914.

One morning lately I saw in my newspaper