holly 'secret errand,' as bad form, which shocked
him as much in persons as bad style did in books. He hated every form of
extravagance, noise, mental or physical, with a temperamental hatred: he
suffered from it, in his nerves and in his mind. And he had no less
dislike of whatever seemed to him either morbid or sordid, two words
which he often used to express his distaste for things and people. He
never would have appreciated writers like Verlaine, because of what
seemed to him perhaps unnecessarily 'sordid' in their lives. It pained
him, as it pains some people, perhaps only because they are more acutely
sensitive than others, to walk through mean streets, where people are
poor, miserable, and hopeless.

And since I have mentioned Verlaine, I may say that what Pater most
liked in poetry was the very opposite of such work as that of Verlaine,
which he might have been supposed likely to like. I do not think it was
actually one of Verlaine's poems, but something done after his manner in
English, that some reviewer once quoted, saying: 'That, to our mind,
would be Mr. Pater's ideal of poetry.' Pater said to me, with a sad
wonder, 'I simply don't know what he meant.' What he liked in poetry was
something even more definite than can be got in prose; and he valued
poets like Dante and like Rossetti for their 'delight in concrete
definition,' not even quite seeing the ultimate magic of such things as
_Kubla Khan_, which he omitted in a brief selection from the poetry of
Coleridge. In the most interesting letter which I ever had from him, the
only letter which went to six pages, he says:

12 EARL'S TERRACE,
KENSINGTON, W.,
_Jan. 8, 1888._

MY DEAR MR. SYMONS,--I feel much flattered at your choosing me as
an arbiter in the matter of your literary work, and thank you for
the pleasure I have had in reading carefully the two poems you have
sent me. I don't use the word 'arbiter' loosely for 'critic'; but
suppose a real controversy, on the question whether you shall spend
your best energies in writing verse, between your poetic
aspirations on the one side, and prudence (calculating results) on
the other. Well! judging by these two pieces, I should say that you
have a poetic talent remarkable, especially at the present day, for