From the first a headlong yet delicate speed was in her pen; from the
first there was much to say. "Oh, for a horse with wings!" Mr Browning,
who had praised her poems, must tell her their faults. He must himself
speak out in noble verse, not merely utter himself through the masks of
_dramatis personae_. Can she, as he alleges, really help him by her
sympathy, by her counsel? Let him put ceremony aside and treat her _en
bon camerade_; he will find her "an honest man on the whole." She
intends to set about knowing him as much as possible immediately. What
poets have been his literary sponsors? Are not the critics wrong to deny
contemporary genius? What poems are those now in his portfolio? Is
not Æschylus the divinest of divine Greek spirits? but how inadequately
her correspondent has spoken of Dante! Shall they indeed--as he
suggests--write something together? And then--is he duly careful of his
health, careful against overwork? And is not gladness a duty? to give
back to the world the joy that God has given to his poet? Though,
indeed, to lean out of the window of this House of Life is for some the
required, perhaps the happiest attitude.

And why--replies the second voice--lean out of the window? His own foot
is only on the stair. Where are the faults of her poems, of which she
had inquired? Yes, he will speak out, and he is now planning such a poem
as she demands. But she it is, who has indeed spoken out in her verse?
In his portfolio is a drama about a Moor of Othello's country, one
Luria, with strange entanglings among his Florentines. See this, and
this, how grandly it is said in the Greek of Eschylus! But Dante, all
Dante is in his heart and head. And he has seen Tennyson face to face;
and he knows and loves Carlyle; and he has visited Sorrento and trod
upon Monte Calvano. Oh, the world in this year 1845 must be studied,
though solitude is best. He has been "polking" all night, and walked
home while the morning thrushes piped; and it is true that his head