characterises his criticism of this kind throughout (except, perhaps,
in the case of Browning). The first is on Alexander Smith--it was the
time of the undue ascension of the _Life-Drama_ rocket before its
equally undue fall. "It can do me no good [an odd phrase] to be
irritated with that young man, who certainly has an extraordinary
faculty, although I think he is a phenomenon of a very dubious
character." The second, harsher but more definite, is on
_Villette_. "Why is _Villette_ disagreeable? Because the
writer's mind [it is worth remembering that he had met Charlotte
Brontë at Miss Martineau's] contains nothing but hunger, rebellion,
and rage, and therefore that is all she can in fact put into her book.
No fine writing can hide this thoroughly, and it will be fatal to her
in the long-run." The Fates were kinder: and Miss Brontë's mind did
contain something besides these ugly things. But it _was_ her
special weakness that her own thoughts and experiences were
insufficiently mingled and tempered by a wider knowledge of life and
literature. The third is on _My Novel_, which he says he has
"read with great pleasure, though Bulwer's nature is by no means a
perfect one either, which makes itself felt in his book; but his gush,
his better humour, his abundant materials, and his mellowed
constructive skill--all these are great things." One would give many
pages of the _Letters_ for that naïf admission that "gush" is "a
great thing."

A little later (May 1853), all his spare time is being spent on a
poem, which he thinks by far the best thing he has yet done, to wit,
_Sohrab and Rustum_. And he "never felt so sure of himself or so
really and truly at ease as to criticism." He stays in barracks at the
depot of the 17th Lancers with a brother-in-law, and we regret to find
that "Death or Glory" manners do not please him. The instance is a