nor the second nor the third even that I have written to him of
you, though I admire how in all those previous times I did it in pure
disinterestedness, ... purely because your name belonged to my country
and to her literature, ... and how I have a sort of reward at this
present, in being able to write what I please without anyone's saying
'it is a new fancy.' As for the Americans, they have 'a zeal without
knowledge' for poetry. There is more love for _verse_ among them than
among the English. But they suffer themselves to be led in their
choice of poets by English critics of average discernment; this is
said of them by their own men of letters. Tennyson is idolized deep
down in the bush woods (to their honour be it said), but to
understand _you_ sufficiently, they wait for the explanations of the
critics. So I wanted them to see what Landor says of you. The comfort
in these questions is, that there can be _no_ question, except between
the sooner and the later--a little sooner, and a little later: but
when there is real love and zeal it becomes worth while to try to
ripen the knowledge. They love Tennyson so much that the colour of his
waistcoats is a sort of minor Oregon question ... and I like that--do
not _you_?

_Monday._--Now I have your letter: and you will observe, without a
finger post from me, how busily we have both been preoccupied in
disavowing our own letters of old on 'Ion'--Mr. Talfourd's collection
goes to prove too much, I think--and you, a little too much, when you
draw inferences of no-changes, from changes like these. Oh yes--I
perfectly understand that every sort of inconstancy of purpose regards
a 'presumably better' thing--but I do not so well understand how any
presumable doubt is to be set to rest by that fact, ... I do not
indeed. Have you seen all the birds and beasts in the world? have you
seen the 'unicorns'?--Which is only a pebble thrown down into your
smooth logic; and we need not stand by to watch the bubbles born of
it. And as to the 'Ion' letters, I am delighted that you have anything
to repent, as I have everything. Certainly it is a noble play--there
is the moral sublime in it: but it is not the work of a poet, ... and
if he had never written another to show what was _not_ in him, this
might have been 'predicated' of it as surely, I hold. Still, it is a
noble work--and even if you over-praised it, (I did not read your
letter, though you read mine, alas!) you, under the circumstances