precise and intellectual grasp on the matter it deals with.
Rossetti, I believe, said that the value of every artistic product
was in direct proportion to the amount of purely intellectual force
that went to the initial conception of it: and it is just this
intellectual conception which seems to me to be so conspicuously
wanting in what, in some ways, is the most characteristic verse of
our time, especially that of our secondary poets. In your own
pieces, particularly in your MS. 'A Revenge,' I find Rossetti's
requirement fulfilled, and should anticipate great things from one
who has the talent of conceiving his motive with so much firmness
and tangibility--with that close logic, if I may say so, which is
an element in any genuinely imaginative process. It is clear to me
that you aim at this, and it is what gives your verses, to my mind,
great interest. Otherwise, I think the two pieces of unequal
excellence, greatly preferring 'A Revenge' to 'Bell in Camp.'
Reserving some doubt whether the watch, as the lover's gift, is not
a little bourgeois, I think this piece worthy of any poet. It has
that aim of concentration and organic unity which I value greatly
both in prose and verse. 'Bell in Camp' pleases me less, for the
same reason which makes me put Rossetti's 'Jenny,' and some of
Browning's pathetic-satiric pieces, below the rank which many
assign them. In no one of the poems I am thinking of, is the
inherent sordidness of everything in the persons supposed, except
the one poetic trait then under treatment, quite forgotten.
Otherwise, I feel the pathos, the humour, of the piece (in the
full sense of the word humour) and the skill with which you have
worked out your motive therein. I think the present age an
unfavourable one to poets, at least in England. The young poet
comes into a generation which has produced a large amount of
first-rate poetry, and an enormous amount of good secondary poetry.
You know I give a high place to the literature of prose as a fine
art, and therefore hope you won't think me brutal in saying that
the admirable qualities of your verse are those also of imaginative
prose; as I think is the case also with much of Browning's finest
verse. I should say, make prose your principal _metier_, as a man
of letters, and publish your