rawn anguish-streaks,
And made thy forehead fearfully serene.
Even in thy steady hair her work is seen,
For its still parted darkness--till it breaks
In heavy curls upon thy shoulders--speaks
Like the stern wave, how hard the storm hath been!

"So looked that hapless lady of the South,
Sweet Isabella! at that dreary part
Of all the passion'd hours of her youth;
When her green Basil pot by brother's art
Was stolen away; so look'd her pained mouth
In the mute patience of a breaking heart!"

There let us leave him, the gay rhymer of prize-fighters and eminent
persons--let us leave him in a serious hour, and with a memory of Keats.
{5}

ON VIRGIL

_To Lady Violet Lebas_.

Dear Lady Violet,--Who can admire too much your undefeated resolution to
admire only the right things? I wish I had this respect for authority!
But let me confess that I have always admired the things which nature
made me prefer, and that I have no power of accommodating my taste to the
verdict of the critical. If I do not like an author, I leave him alone,
however great his reputation. Thus I do not care for Mr. Gibbon, except
in his Autobiography, nor for the elegant plays of M. Racine, nor very
much for some of Wordsworth, though his genius is undeniable, nor
excessively for the late Prof. Amiel. Why should we force ourselves into
an affection for them, any more than into a relish for olives or claret,
both of which excellent creatures I have the misfortune to dislike? No
spectacle annoys me more than the sight of people who ask if it is
"right" to take pleasure in this or that work of art. Their loves and
hatreds will never be genuine, natural, spontaneous.

You say that it is "right" to like Virgil, and yet you admit that you
admire the Mantuan, as the Scotch editor joked, "wi' deeficulty." I,
too, must admit that my liking for much of Virgil's poetry is not
enthusiastic, not like the admiration expressed, for example, by Mr.
Frederic Myers, in whose "Classical Essays" you will find all that the
advocates of the Latin singer can say for him. These heights I cannot
reach, any more than I can equal that eloquence. Yet must Virgil always
appear to us one of the most beautiful and moving figures in the whole of
literature.

How sweet must have been that personality which can still win our
affections, across eighteen hundred years of change, and through the
mists of commentarie