are 'bosomed high' in dusky
clouds ... it is a 'passion-created imagery' which has no clear
outline. In this ballad of the 'Knights,' and in the Monk's too, we
may _look at_ things, as on the satyr who swears by his horns and
mates not with his kind afterwards, 'While, _holding beards_, they
dance in pairs--and that is all excellent and reminds one of those
fine sylvan festivals, 'in Orion.' But now tell me if you like
altogether 'Ben Capstan' and if you consider the sailor-idiom to be
lawful in poetry, because I do not indeed. On the same principle we
may have Yorkshire and Somersetshire 'sweet Doric'; and do recollect
what it ended in of old, in the Blowsibella heroines. Then for the Elf
story ... why should such things be written by men like Mr. Horne? I
am vexed at it. Shakespeare and Fletcher did not write so about
fairies:--Drayton did not. Look at the exquisite 'Nymphidia,' with its
subtle sylvan consistency, and then at the lumbering coarse ...
'_machina intersit_' ... Grandmama Grey!--to say nothing of the 'small
dog' that isn't the 'small boy.' Mr. Horne succeeds better on a larger
canvass, and with weightier material; with blank verse rather than
lyrics. He cannot make a fine stroke. He wants subtlety and elasticity
in the thought and expression. Remember, I admire him honestly and
earnestly. No one has admired more than I the 'Death of Marlowe,'
scenes in 'Cosmo,' and 'Orion' in much of it. But now tell me if you
can accept with the same stretched out hand all these lyrical poems? I
am going to write to him as much homage as can come truly. Who
combines different faculties as you do, striking the whole octave? No
one, at present in the world.

Dearest, after you went away yesterday and I began to consider, I
found that there was nothing to be so over-glad about in the matter
of the letters, for that, Sunday coming next to Saturday, the best now
is only as good as the worst before, and I can't hear from you, until
Monday ... Monday! Did you think of _that_--you who took the credit of
acceding so meekly! I shall not praise you in return at any rate. I
shall have to wait ... till what o'clock on Monday, tempted in the
meanwhile to fall into controversy against the 'new moons and sabbath
days' and the pausing of the post in consequence.

You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this moment in the
physiology of our intercourse, the curious double feeling I had about
you--you personally, and you as the